Marketing Fluff

Do you remember which ones were your favorite books in school? Were there any? Kidding aside, were they the ones filled with facts?

Was there a particular subject matter that interested you? What was it about it that grabbed - and retained - your attention? Was it the writing? Perhaps the visuals?

Now think back at the material you actually used. You didn't simply read it, you wrote in the margins, you used pieces of paper or post it notes to mark specific parts so you could refer back to them later.

Take a look at your product or company brochures - what is the next thing you're going to do when you produce a new one?

The reason why so much marketing communications materials sucks - and I'm in the business, so I may say so - is that they ware not that compelling. Is it for lack of story? Maybe the dots are not connected as to why someone, anyone should care. A determination is made as to audience, what should be in it, etc. Yet the exercise, if you will, doesn't go far enough.

What is someone really going to learn from reading this? How are they going to use it? Most importantly, how are they going to feel? Are not part of the consideration. It's hard enough making those priorities for online user experience, isn't it? Then there's the committee thing - reviews upon reviews, agreements reached, getting everyone on the same page - except for the page is, well, not that moving.

Often the culprit for less than compelling material, what we call with a highly technical term - marketing fluff - is the lack of personality. Even when there's good narrative or story there, there is no point of view. And without a point of view, there is little, no make that "no" point. Without a point of view, what you have is, well, marketing fluff.

Point of view has not changed because of social media. It has not evolved, and blossomed all of a sudden. It was not invented through sharing more information, resources, tips of connections online or off line. Point of view has always been there, part of the human desire to put things on the record.

When Dante Alighieri wrote the Inferno - and the rest of the (Divine) Comedy - he was not inventing a new way of being human. He wrote the opus in a language that nobody had thought fit to write high level stuff in before - the Florentine dialect. He did that beautifully, weaving in the stories of his time - philosophy, theology, politics, the arts, astronomy and more on top of them.

He did it artfully, by employing allegory and the terza rima, an hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables) structure, with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded, etc. That in itself was a feat.

Those are not the reasons why his work is enduring, as compelling as they may seem. His words resonate because he wrote it in the first person. This is my journey, he wrote, and it goes through all of these situations.

You follow him through the adventure - and you see with his eyes, feel what you would feel in his place. Who would you put in that special place in Inferno? Exactly. Another writer I had the pleasure of meeting in the first person was Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Blithedale Romance (1852), his only work written that way.

Why the examples, why do you care? Because when a work is written to speak to us directly, when it has personality, when it connects with us emotionally - it is remembered, and used. That's why. Much of what resonates with social media is the ability to have an exchange and a dialogue with someone who has a point of view.

We speak of listening a lot - and that is good. Part of listening is also the ability to talk and write your side of the conversation so that it demonstrates you have heard. We bypass the marketing fluff. The opposite of fluff is not lots of hard data. The opposite of fluff is a decision. It's standing for something and communicating your point of view - however long or short it takes.

The connection is your feedback.

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Mike M.]

I couldn't agree more; a compelling story that draws a reader in is key. This type of marketing material seems to be in short supply today.

I'd also warn that one could go too far in telling the story. Unfortunately, I've read too many communication pieces that don't have a call-to-action. Some are simply interesting stories but the reader then puts it down and moves on.

This may be good for publishers but it’s bad for marketers who are trying to elicit a customer response.

Knowing where to draw the line the hard part.

[Richard Complainary]

Point well taken however I would have liked you to have referenced an example of a marketing piece that does have a compelling story.
I would say the same is true of other types of marketing pieces such as TV commercials.
A terrific commercial that tells a compelling story is a humorous series of Kaiser Permanente TV commercials directed toward Seniors that shows the joy of being a happy Senior under Kaiser care.
Richard Complainary, Publisher
http://www.complainary.com/

[Doug Firebaugh]

Amen ! This is spot on as a compelling story is a MUST for any kind of advertisement brochure or marketing piece! VERY insightful! Great job Valerie!

[Rod Gillies]

As a producer of comms materials (aka "slide monkey"), I generally try to construct what I think is a compelling story which flows from one slide to the next.

It drives me to distraction when someone then asks if you could "just drop in another chart" in the middle of it all. If it was a chart that would have added anything then it would already be in. Grrr.

And I love your chat about having a point of view and a personality. It seems that in the preparation of selling materials in particular this is taboo. I would argue that personality and point of view is the ONLY thing that differentiates one sales presentation from the next in commoditised product categories (ie. most of them). After all, the sales guy after you is probably presenting exactly the same data.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Mike - a call to action is critical in marketing. The story needs to go far enough (connect the dots, be compelling, etc.) but, as you point out, not too far. I will build on this post with a tactical one. Admittedly, I indulged in the literary references to drive the one point home.

@Richard - love the play on your name! And thank you for sharing the good example. It sounds like there is interest in continuing this conversation at a more tactical level. That sounds good to me. I follow my readers' interests willingly.

@Doug - thank you for stopping by.

@Rod - there is a time for every purpose in the buying cycle. In the example you provide - the sales presentation - it's advisable to say how you're different, but also how you're going to solve the problem. After all, that is the reason you're presenting in the first place. Easier said than done. We feel compelled to provide proof of experience (i.e., our capabilities) before we've demonstrated we're relevant to the opportunity.

[Karen Hegmann]

Valeria

I agree that most marketing communications materials suck.

I've worked in numerous corporate communications environments doing marketing work, and here are a few of my thoughts:

1) Committees kill innovation. Endless rounds of approvals lead to what I call the 'tin can' result. Remember that childhood game where you hooked up a string to a tin can and spoke to your friends? By the time the message got to the final person on the string, it had nothing to do with the original thought!

2) Corporate communications departments operate only through "approved" wording. If the word or approach doesn't fit the pre-approved company standard - forget it - it will never get printed

3) Companies for the most part don't like to tell stories because they're afraid of what they might hear. It's easier to whip up a dry, corporate approved message than to go to the source

Thanks for a great post.