Why Your Corporate Communication Is Getting Ignored. How to Avoid Content Purgatory.
- Vivien
- Sep 5, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 2
"Red Apples" was one of my first B2B campaigns - marketing an I.T. cybersecurity conference.
It was supposed to be a nod to the idiom "one bad apple spoils the barrel" - the concept being it only takes 1 clicked virus link to contaminate the whole network.
At the time, I thought it was brilliant and clever - I mean, who wouldn't get the reference?
In the end, we didn't use it, and looking back, I'm not sure if it would have worked.
Often, what we think is a good idea comes from our frame of reference.
As social beings, we tend to believe that our opinions, values, and beliefs are widely shared and accepted by others. This phenomenon is known as the false consensus effect; in other words, we assume that our views are the norm, and people who disagree with us are in the minority.
As a result, we often assume that our personal preferences or actions (What I would do...) are shared among our target audience.
This assumption can lead to our content getting lost in translation, where misaligned messaging, ineffective campaigns die in communication purgatory.
While I'll never know if my audience would have gotten the "rotten apple" reference or if they would have mistaken us for a farmer's market — when I train B2B communication teams about writing with clarity, I often give them this example and ask them what they think the message was about.
Clever wordplay, analogies, idioms, and puns have their place in copywriting, but as a writer, our first goal is to make it effortless for our reader/buyer to understand what we are trying to say.
Clarity is more than just communicating effectively; it's understanding your audience's point of view and reference.
The False Consensus Effect can lead to many errors, such as:
Misjudging customer preferences: Overestimating the appeal of certain products, features, or campaigns based on personal preferences can result in ineffective marketing strategies.
Neglecting the diversity of target audiences: Assuming a greater consensus among customers can cause marketers to overlook important differences in their target audience's needs, values, and preferences.
Impeding innovation: Relying on false consensus can discourage marketers from exploring new ideas or alternative perspectives, stifling innovation in product development and marketing strategies.
Here are 5 strategies to help you avoid the false consensus effect:
Self-awareness and self-questioning
Actively seeking diverse opinions
Use empirical data
Practice empathy
Open Dialogue
1/ Increase self-awareness
Recognizing the existence of the false consensus effect is the first step in overcoming its bias in our writing.
Not everyone will think like you - your point of view is not universal, but rather one among many options, and that's ok.
Take for example, the below conversation where the salesperson finds it impossible to understand why someone wouldn't want to use cold traffic sales and inadvertently annoys their prospect.
When we realise others will have different perspectives and experiences, it encourages more open-mindedness and dialogue.
Self-reflection involves questioning our assumptions. If we regularly reflect on our own beliefs and biases, for instance, by keeping a journal to record daily reflections on interactions and beliefs, we can reveal patterns of bias over time and try to avoid them.
A good example I saw recently was how to avoid the use of sexist language
This included suggestions to
Rewrite to avoid preference for a gender. Instead of “the Director will hold a safety meeting with his team,” write “the Director will hold a safety meeting with their team.”
Create an imaginary person to establish gender. For example: “April is our Safety Manager. When she walks the job site, she’s always on high alert for potential safety issues.”
2/ Seek diverse opinions
Engage in conversations with people who hold different views from you.
Escape the echo chamber by listening to a wide range of voices.
Engage with people from different backgrounds, cultures, and belief systems. For example, if I were to run my Red Apples Marketing today as a global campaign, I could ask people on a multinational platform how well "Rotten Apples in a Barrel" would translate in other cultures and then adapt my message to the local language
You want to understand your customer's behaviour and reduce the likelihood of assuming that one's own cultural norms are universally applicable.
3/ Seek real-world data
Don't assume everyone shares your views or preferences; look for hard data to either confirm or refute these assumptions.
Conduct objective research. You can use surveys and polls to gather data. Make sure your questions aren't leading. For example, Most parents will say their child eats healthily, yet 2.7 million McDonalds Happy Meals get sold every day.
4/ Practice Empathy
Put yourself into your customer's shoes to help gain insight into what they think and be open to challenge your own assumptions.
Canles Shoes messaging makes the "wide" assumption that people with wide feet struggle with bunions and have pain walking
- but what if the majority of their customer don't have hammertoes and instead want shoes they can wear all day that don't make their feet hurt?
Use the Zoom Out and Zoom In technique.
Start with a generic challenge that leads to a specific benefit (not the other way around).
For example: "Standing all day and Dancing all night - the shoe that fits like a glove without squashing your toes. 25% wider toe with a supportive arch that alleviates any pain and discomfort."
5/ Encourage open dialogue feedback
When working in a team, we can often find ourselves agreeing with others even when we don't.
Encourage open dialogue and differing opinions by fostering an environment that creates space for respectful debate and diversity of thought to reduce the assumption that everyone agrees with the majority view.
Say It With A Condom uses its wrappers as a marketing tool. But
in a poor attempt at wordplay, the brand released a condom wrapper that featured a cartoon doughnut followed by the words “go further without consent.”
The CEO later explained that the doughnut was meant to be read as ‘do not’ - because they thought ‘doughnut’ sounded like ‘do not’.
Unfortunately, our brains don't work like that, and at first glance, no one saw the doughnut - they just read "Go further without consent" (Ironically, these were supposed to highlight the issue of consent.)
Most people wondered how this copy got approved.
Say It With A Condom explained that when the design went through their usual feedback process, neither company employees or customers spoke up about any issues, so the condom packaging went ahead and was sold on the website, which makes you wonder what exactly is their usual feedback process!
And that's a wrap
As a business writer, your goal is to be as clear as possible, unfortunately, we all come with a bias, and it's become too easy to fall into the trap of writing from only our perspective because we're so close to our business that it's difficult to be objective.
Choose words and phrases that are simple, direct, and easily understood. If you have to explain what you mean - then it's not clear - Try again.
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