speaking in clicks

Discussions about message architecture, content development and branded narrative have a funny way of focusing on words. That’s not surprising, since many messages we receive are word-only affairs. But consider the expression:

 Get the message?

Clearly, our collective consciousness is fully aware that messages are transmitted many different ways, including a range of visual and sound cues, not to mention the implications of a string of text. From an audible sigh to a flick of an eyebrow, to a hand gesture or a subtle shift in posture, we experience the multidimensional aspects of human communication every day.

What does surprise me is the common practice of treating message and design as two separate elements, the one accompanying the other—like a night club band clucking softly behind a yearning chanteuse.

And while that may sound convincing in a boardroom, out in the real world, it just doesn’t play. Why? Ironically, it’s just beyond the power of words alone to explain that. But maybe a few comparisons will help reify this somewhat slippery concept.

Flowing together, creating context.
Consider the home page of Citibank.com as of 3-19-13.

While it’s hardly path breaking, it conjures up a specific train of thought: contentment and satisfaction at achieving your goals. As a backdrop to the distressingly functional copy, it does more than accompany the words. It puts the copy in perspective so that together, word and image transmit a branded message.

Compare it to the credit card imagery on display at Chase.com and feel the impact. Where the Citibank home page is about me, the Chase home page is about merchandising.

At a different place in the spectrum is the Wells Fargo home page, where consumer imagery is jammed between price point copy and a call to action—the price point being emblazened against a bright orange background. The message? You can save on car loans and take a car trip with your family. But first, you gotta get the loan, Baby.

Hence, an ill-considered message rings out bright and brassy—from creative elements stacked side by side. In this case, the result is true to formula, an exemplar of frozen TV dinner Web design, with each component of the page walled off in its own little bin.

Dollar menu messaging.
Not that American banks are the sole owners of this brand of miscommunication. The absence of human connection at McDonalds.com is no less real for being slightly more subtle.

The disconnect is palpable, between the words, chirping about love, and the images, retouched to Botox blandness, as if they were made out of 100% U.S. Grade A plastic. The token salad, surrounded by food items that practically cross-promote the stent industry, conveys a mixed message at best.

Now, I’d be the last one to say the food at Burger King is any healthier. On the marketing front, however, they are better aligned with my sense of taste. Throughout the site, the BK product line is presented in a human context with a more naturalistic touch. While no people are present, you can at least imagine yourself entering the frame and reaching for a drink, a ‘wich, a dessert.

Yet, here too, the balance is off, as the virtual absence of copy is more dehumanizing than the lack of people. After all these years, apparently, this mainstay of American business has nothing more to say to consumers than “Here. Food. Now.”

Trite and false.
Meanwhile, at KFC.com, you come up against a different kind of message architecture malfunction. On an interior page, lovingly photographed sandwiches are juxtaposed against a trite headline, “Mouthwatering Sandwiches.” At the very least, the status of the adjective “mouthwatering” as a hoary holdover from 1950s promotional lingo ought to have been enough to make someone at KFC intervene.

Such a literal approach is a triumph of Marketing Anxiety on a grand scale, topped only by a stunning shot of a luscious desert, captioned “The Grand Finale.” Brand differentiation? Not so much. While the photos convey a viable brand promise (“We deliver a sensual experience”), the copy merely informs us that dessert is typically served at the end of a meal. For this, you don’t need an MBA in marketing.

As I see it, the consequences of treating art and copy as if they operate on separate planes include a radical downgrading of brand identity, trust and engagement. However you approach consumer outreach, know this: your message architecture is too important to be trusted to mechanical cobbling, committee-think or, God forbid, search engine optimization. It needs to be created, with an eye and an ear to where your core value lies as a brand.

In marketing circles, a topic almost always in the news is engagement strategy. As I see it, the theoretical underpinnings of such thinking are a clever chain of inductive reasoning—one part circular logic, one part sheer superstition. For starters, can the market research data purportedly behind the theory be replicated according to the scientific method?

Yet, I suppose there is a grain of truth buried deep in the mountains of white papers, blog posts and PowerPoints cropping up by the thousands each year. Trouble is, the more I read up on the topic, the more I’m reminded of a familiar phrase:

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So while awareness of and sensitivity to how people behave in social space is certainly a factor in the development of sound marketing / advertising, I don’t agree that social engagement is a departure from “communication-based” advertising. If you’re talking to people in any medium, you’re communicating with them. And if you’re getting better results, it’s more likely because of the quality of your work.

Besides, there’s another factor in this equation, which may be the one thing most disturbing to today’s trend-hopping ideologues: There’d be no social networking response to brands without the traditional brand narratives they’ve already established. People don’t dys or respect Brand X, they dys or respect Coca Cola.

Metering the metrics.
In trying to evaluate “what works,” I prefer a simpler measure: to address the audience with creative imagination. Whether your goal is promotion, sales, awareness, brand building or social buzz, the most engaging outreach to consumers is advertising that is itself a quality product. To see what I mean, have a look at how four brands are reaching out to consumers in digital space as of 3-9-13:

• Red Lobster
• Nike
• Hilton Hotels
• Tesla Motors

…in a way not very far removed from traditional advertising. Sure, some of the differences are structural rather than cosmetic, but not as many as the hype would lead you to believe.

Kitchen intrigue.
Red Lobster’s Chef’s Kitchen page uses hover-state technology that’s not new. But the landing pages each hover state clicks to draw consumers in with a freshness and immediacy they’ll expect to find in-restaurant. The interface is intuitive, inviting—and the experience delivers insight into the brand’s back story that is, in a word, engaging.

Net advantage.
At the latest version of Nike.com, the confluence of interactive options creates a symphony of involvement. For one thing, it’s visually stunning. But what makes you stay on the site is the feeling it was created just for you. Instant customization helps ease decision making. The product shots are fresh, action oriented and, while obviously posed, capture a feeling of spontaneity.

And in a site not dominated by video, everything feels like it’s happening in real time—to you. The special effect here is unity of intent. Everything is Nike: no sub-brand confusion and no compromise. It’s a site only for people into sports, or at least, “the magic of sports.”

Resorting to seduction.
A great example of “selling the sizzle,” Hilton.com focuses your attention on the resort experience. Sure, the site features a full array of merchandising. But it does so seductively, luring you with the value the hotels deliver. Here the call to action is a call to your senses, your instincts, your lust to escape.

Finally, the pioneering engineering firm Tesla Motors shows what happens when concept and design are integrated to perfection. This is not a site, I hasten to point out, that could have been conceived and built fire brigade-style with “tight timelines, guys.” In any case, this site makes the product so appealing you’ll have to stop yourself from reaching for a knife and fork.

OK, I’ll admit, I’m totally obsessed with technological innovation. All-electric cars? Delicious. Still, I defy anyone not to feel engaged by a site spinning a great story—with memorable characters, “side missions” and many tempting paths to [product] enlightenment.

So while each of these sites can and is supported by outreach into social space, for my part I can’t see how this level of engagement is possible on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter—not to mention the unsung army of sites catering to 1000s of niche populations.

As I see it, if we’ve evolved enough as an industry to recognize the primacy of audience engagement, we’re evolved enough to pursue engagement wherever we find it. Not because we need more ideological rigor, but because offering our customers thoughtful, creative, engaging human experiences is what actually gets results.

Considering how important marketing and advertising are to the American economy and, like it or not, American culture, you might expect it to be treated with great respect—at least by its practitioners. But judging from the persistence of tired, mechanical marketing gambits, you’d think the promotion of products and services in this country was merely a necessary evil, something to “get out of the way” as quickly as possible.

How else to explain the widespread deployment of campaign materials based on oft-repeated phrases dating back to the dawn of modern consumer society, as documented on 2-23-13:

• save up to (1,390,000,000 results)
• hurry while supplies last (130,000 results)
• limited time offer (11,500,000 results)
• like you’ve never seen it before (11,500,000 results)
• just got better (152,000,000 results)
• don’t take our word for it (12,300,000 results)
• sale-a-thon (9,700 results)
• back to school savings (1,320,000 results)

Each of these phrases, in its own way, is highly manipulative, intended to excite, incite, motivate and generally strike terror in the heart of consumers—that they might miss something spec-ta-cu-lar! Clearly, the main reason these phrases are repeated is that they can offer marketers a quick fix of success. After all, in the short term, consumers can be motivated by fear. The question is whether the short term gains are worth the resentment such tactics potentially instill, once Anxiety’s adrenaline rush fades.

Words matter? Since when?
On the other hand, in a marketing environment increasingly driven by data analysis do words still matter?

Well, yeah.

After all, what’s the point of worming your way into your customers’ psyches and matching your appeals to their stated or implied preferences, only to wreck the illusion of honest communication with an objectifying sales pitch? Think about it. If you were up close and personal with someone you were crazy about, you’d never think to whisper, “Act now, while supplies last.”

In fact, I harbor the heretical view that the more intimately you attempt to connect with your audience, the more sensitive you must be to nuances of language. Now, to be clear, I’m not talking about the presence or absence of Urban Dictionary-sanctioned diction. What I advocate is plain-spoken communication—minus the benefit grubbing (a must for the holidays), anxiety churning (you won’t want to miss) and outright bullying (Don’t wait, call today!).

Turning people into “consumers.”
Sadly, this dysfunctional mode of address appears to be hard-wired into the American marketing mentality. Worse, it stems from superstition—the unfounded belief that everyday people turn into a different species the moment they become consumers.

How absurd is that? No matter what you’re selling, consumers are human beings. They’re the people at the next table, the people in the produce aisle, the people who cut you off on the freeway, the parkway and the turnpike. Some of them are people you actually like.

Yet the habit of talking to people as if they were utterly devoid of feeling, experience or, OMG, intellect is so persistent I wonder how any business is done at all. Sure, at the end of the day, people buy because they just need stuff. But if that’s what you’re counting on, it’s hard to see why we need marketing at all.

Of course, none of this matters unless you truly believe data mining leads to an unassailable analysis of the human psyche—a conclusion the current state of artificial intelligence belies. Yet, if we’re to believe the blistering assessment of major brands made by consumers in social space, it’s hard to conclude the data-miners aren’t on to something.

But if there is a message from consumers hidden in the data, it needs to be teased out by creatives with the skill to actually interpret language. For that you’ll need people with more than just a way with words, a warm body and a good vocabulary they never get to use.

You’ll also need a creative team able to put themselves in the mindset of the people around them starting, ironically, with the people they meet in the mirror. Of course, such an approach will feel revolutionary to a wide majority of your colleagues. To sell it in, you may need a tagline—something like, oh, Reality Advertising.

In many sectors of American society any statement can be deemed True if it’s accompanied by statistics. So if I report that the Nielsen-Norman Group (NNG) has used eye-tracking studies to measure how much people read online, and concluded:

On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely

…chances are, you’ll take that as the final word on the subject.

Now, I don’t buy any of that. Sure, I’m willing to assume the NNG has used a methodology approved by some branch of science, and that the results are valid as obtained by that methodology.

But I don’t accept the underlying premise: that you can study human behavior the same way you study elephant behavior. For one thing, you’re asking people to participate in a behavioral study—guaranteeing self-consciousness will creep into the proceedings. It’s a distinction typically overlooked and should make more people skeptical about the veracity of such data.

Of course, that distinction itself assumes that the elephants in question are unaware that they’re being observed—an assumption challenged by documented evidence of elephant cognition.

Paradigm makeover.
We could go 1000 rounds on this topic but, for now, let’s throw the whole debate under the bus and start fresh—by asking a simple question:

If reading is the main obstacle to digital communication/marketing, why haven’t we abandoned the print model on which so much digital communication is based?

The answer, I suppose, might be cost. But now that digital video recording is available on millions of mobile devices, we should be able to create a standardized modest-production-value video format that would enable us to stage our brand narrative in a multimedia environment. From there, common sense templating should also offer savings enough to satisfy everyone who believes cost is, and should be,  the supreme arbiter of social, cultural and political evolution.

Reading’s new do.
In the scenario I envision, text would be available only in blocks of copy viewable in a separate window as needed. Everything else users encountered would be narrated, conveyed through a combination of video and slide show, with one- or two-line captions. Maybe the solution is a kind of stop action video that puts less stress on bandwidth and—in cases where a bit of detail is essential to clinching the deal—enables users to pause and open a text block, rolled out in animation and enhanced with a variety of visual effects.

Implied in this approach is a communication model adapted to the way we absorb information in aural and visual terms. You’d tell the same story, but roll it out at a different pace and, most likely, in a different order. Just as important, you’d have to think harder about what makes your brand memorable—and what you can reasonably expect users to take away from the presentation.

Beyond cosmetics.
What would a completely multimedia web presence look like? It would depend entirely on the pace you choose to unfold your brand narrative and the scale of the gesture you want to make. One thing it would definitely not be is static: No landing pages, gallery pages, or pseudo-active marquee slideshows. Users would enter a story already in progress and find their own access point.

Imagine an introductory video, encapsulating your brand narrative in a 30,000-foot view. Arrayed near it are resizable windows offering detailed views of products, customer service options, thought-leadership essays, all conveyed in video/animation with voiceover. Products rich in technical detail could include interactive graphs, charts and tables, and would allow signed-in users to create a private holding area where they could drag and drop content modules to consult on a later visit.

Copy would be confined to supers endowed with PowerPoint brevity—but devoid of PowerPoint tedium. And every text, heard or read, would have a distinct personality, as instantly identifiable as any voice stored in your speed-dial queue. In other words, you’d finally be able to tell Coke from Pepsi with the blindfold on

No question, many developmental stages stand between this embryonic idea and a usable prototype. How, for example, would a multimedia site process purchase orders? While I don’t have the answer, I do know I won’t miss the shopping cart motif one bit if a new multimedia standard comes to pass.

Of course, it doesn’t take much imagination to cough up a bed-pan full of reasons not to go in this direction. Left to their own devices, people with not much imagination will always opt for the status quo. But without imagination, the evolution of digital space will be frozen into its current faux-print model forever. Without imagination, marketers in 2113 will still be whining that “nobody reads” online—while perpetuating a communication model that began as a stop-gap measure in 1997.

Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young.

….go the lyrics to a recent pop song. Show me a picture that could convey that, let alone the 988 other words one could easily add to clarify the point. Funny thing is, there’s no need for more words. Your mind is only too ready to fill in the blanks. You might, on the other hand, need 988 or more still images just to cover the basics.

The point is, the division the mainstream makes between word and image is meaningless. Language is imagery. Words are a map of the external world, just as surely as images inevitably convey “data.” Take this image, for example:

…and tell me it doesn’t call up a nexus of sensory data in every quandrant of your brain. 

So while a picture may stand in for 1000 words, it’s only because, inherently, we think in words and pictures, together, simultaneously.

A prison of reductive dichotomies. 
On this point, I’m clearly in the minority. So ingrained is the unexamined assumption that images have a more powerful grip on our minds than words, you can even find people willing to say “words don’t exist.” Underlying this train of thought is the American penchant for all-or-nothing analysis. Today, as the addiction to electronic gadgetry continues to replace a coherent worldview with a disjointed “screenview,” there’s even more fodder for belief in reductive dichotomies:

Words: Intellectual, manipulative, restrictive, dry, unimaginative, confusing, evil
Pictures: Emotional, honest, open, bright, creative, clear, good.

Among the many problems with this train of thought is the equation of “words” with “language.” Whereas people may well have trouble remembering a random string of individual words, it’s clear from everyday conversation how well people remember entire verbal exchanges as exemplified by a common phrase:

Can you believe he said that?

In fact, conversations about previous conversations are the meat and potatoes of everyday social interaction. Even if each word isn’t remembered verbatim, you’ll find the sense, the contour and emotional impact of the conversation remains firmly etched in your mind. Now, was that conversation carried out in jpegs and mpegs? No. It was spoken in language, the most precious human technology of all.

Natural intelligence. Artificial boundaries. 
So as you evaluate copy for your promotional materials, know that your first task is to stop yourself from thinking about words and images as separate entities. More than two sides of the same coin, words and images are two facets of the vast array of data we process every second—without giving it a thought.

To put this into perspective, try a simple experiment:

• Switch off your phone and walk away from the screen. 
• Find a pencil and paper 
• Clear your mind and, just this once, live in the moment 
• Watch yourself every step of the way as you walk over to flip on a light switch
• Make a mental note of every sight, sound, odor, emotion and tactile sensation

When the light switch is on, grab the pencil and paper: write down every word   association, draw every image that popped into your head during the process, without editing or embarrassment.

What you’ll end up with is the sketchiest of sketchy maps of our human thought process. That is, if you don’t run out of paper first.

Vivid, memorable: real. 
Do this thought experiment once and you’ll realize there’s no point in approving copy that calls nothing more to mind than the image of a harried copywriter hunched over a Macbook Air in a dismal coffee shop. The mere fact that such copy might contain no factual errors, be legally sanctioned or certifiably inoffensive is not enough to recommend it.

Instead, the true measure of promotional copy is its ability to alter consumer perception of your product. By the same token, design imagery consisting of a series of visual clichés is not memorable enough to convey your brand message.

What’s to be done? The answer isn’t about selecting the stock art more thoughtfully or setting your copy team free of your outmoded ideas of grammar, style and conversational diction. The solution to the word/image dilemma is to conceive both as one unit from the start.

To do that, you’ll need to give project ownership to your creative team and leave them alone to find a fully integrated creative platform, in which the artificial boundaries between one aspect of the digital medium and another have been utterly erased. Scary? No. Merely a human form of communication of the caliber you take for granted—every time you say “I love you.”

Ask yourself what the impetus is for posting your information online. If it’s just to distribute the content of your product brochure, know that you could accomplish that with a one line link to a downloadable PDF. Since a properly formatted PDF can be scanned by search engines, your brochure content would even turn up in a targeted Google search.

So why bother building a Web site that does no more than repurpose the content and layout of an existing brochure? Maybe the answer has something to do with status. Today, “everybody” has a Web site.

Trouble is, many users already have a sophisticated understanding of—and a set of expectations for— Web site design and functionality. In such an environment a site consisting of page after page of uninterrupted text sends a clear signal: you simply don’t value your audience enough to create a viable user experience. In that context, posting a pixilated pamphlet is a sign of contempt.

And let it be said outright that “brochureware” site-design is utterly anathema to mobile devices. Inveterate smartphone users find such sites utterly useless because, even with the advent of more or less device-wide screens, they’re simply too inconvenient to navigate, scan and, ultimately, comprehend.

“Stale, flat and unprofitable…”
At a deeper level, a brochureware site sidesteps the essential nature of digital space, the very things that make it a separate medium:

• Dynamism
• Immediacy
• Relevance
• Participation
• Conversation

Web sites are, properly, action-zones and, as the medium evolves, digital space as a whole is on the cusp of becoming the first tangible instance of artificial intelligence. As such it makes no more sense to post a brochure online than it would to ask a fellow human being to read it aloud on a street corner, every hour on the hour.

Witnessing such a spectacle, most people would see it as a terrible waste of resources. And that’s exactly the sensation I get whenever I stumble across a site like the one on view at Aurasoftware.com or TheSDPGroup.com.

If you still think importing the content of your brochure is a workable option, you’ve missed a key point. Again, digital space is a different medium, not an “electronic printing press” whose main contribution is the elimination of paper and ink costs.

Selling stasis to stimulus junkies.
Beyond these arguably wonky gripes—after all, you’re free to create any kind of Web presence you please—the most tangible argument against brochureware is your audience. It’s changing rapidly, as attested by the gadgetization of American culture. The whole-hearted and, dare I say, obsessive embrace of slinky-thin tablets and wide-windowed phones points to an insatiable hunger for mental stimulation.

It’s a hunger, no less, intensified by the last three generations of dumbed-down global culture. Sure, it started in the US, but it has since spread to most of the rest of the world. In 2013 the process has reached a point where the very architecture of our minds is rebelling—quite out of our direct control. In the absence of true intellectual stimulation, today’s audience has nowhere to turn but the mental junk-food supplied by our increasingly seductive entertainment media.

Given the current state of the marketplace, if you choose to present yourself within a flat, one-dimensional interface, I can only click my tongue and wish you the best of luck. You’re piloting a thin raft on a roiling sea of vivid, instantaneous and constantly streaming entertainment—pinning your hopes on the magic beans sold you by a deluded SEO specialist.

Got all the right buzzwords on your brochureware site? Good for you. Trouble is, marketing never has been about words. Marketing is about experience, environment, rhythm, pacing and emotion. Everything, that is, you won’t find in a hyperlinked snooze fest like a brochureware Web site offering to build you an “affordable” brochureware Web site.

Ever since brands discovered the potential of social media marketing, the collective urge among marketing managers to develop a Facebook page has proven irresistible. The reasons plausibly cited range from savvy prognostication to desperate sales-mongering—but at this point, we’re well past the gee-whiz discovery phase and deep into an era of…well, let’s be generous and call it scientific inquiry.

In fact, given the exhaustive efforts of thousands over the last 5 years or so, I’m kind of non-plussed by the dark secret I discovered through random search—a maniacal Doppelgänger lurking in the shadows behind many a branded Web site: The Evil Facebook Twin. Spawned by sheer indolence and the folly of mechanical consistency, this monstrous construct sates its parasitical urges on thousands of unwitting brands each year.

Come on, pull on your hazmat suits; we’re going in for a closer look.

Doughy Boy or Pasty Demon?
At Pillsbury.com, the cheery, uncluttered design and the global headline “Let the Making Begin” allow users to investigate without undue promotional pressure. The site establishes a distinctive brand voice—a meaningful translation of its traditional advertising personality into digital terms: Warm, sensitive, welcoming.

With that in mind, a visit to the Pillsbury Facebook page is a shock to the system.

See for yourself: Boxy reprints of images from the Web site vie for attention with sponsored ads for unrelated brands. And as we scroll, scroll, scroll, the laundry list of offerings severely undercuts the main site’s carefully nurtured brand voice.

Now, to be clear, a major contributor to this disarray is Facebook’s functionalist nightmare of a user interface. But that’s a given. If you design for Facebook, you measure success on how well you can overcome the limitations imposed by its clumsy, additive structure.

Design headaches aside, Pillsbury’s Facebook page also violates the premise of social space. People enter social space to build community through participation. That’s what makes it social. Instead of opportunities for participation, however, Pillsbury delivers transparent product-hawking that confines users, for the most part, to passive “Like”-like commentary. What, after all, distinguishes the following…

Love holiday cookies as much as we do? Then try our new Holiday Cookie Card app: http://on.fb.me/VOVP6M. Make a virtual cookie, pick a festive background and share it with your friends!

…from stone-cold catalog copy?

By contrast, a truly social environment would allow users to upload their own variations on Pillsbury’s themes—as a matter of course. I mean, in a country brimming over with culinary talent, would it kill a major food brand to feature baking tips submitted by our “Top 10 Pastry Chefs“? That might give people a good reason to tune out last night’s drunk-dialed voicemails—and hang with the Dough Dawg.

Cuddly Bear or Unbearable Bore?
OK, I’m going to ask you to keep your visors down, long enough to explore the even more disturbing dichotomy between BearNaked.com and its changeling social look-alike. Here the mechanical transfer of “design assets” from the Web site come under the direct assault of consumer outrage.

Whereas the Web site maintains a freewheeling, loose-limbed look and feel, its Facebook twin is boxed in with a series of mismatched self-promotions, peppered further down with consumer complaints about the brand’s failure to endorse transparent labeling practices.

Astonishingly, the controversy swirls around the use of genetically modified ingredients, which is hardly compatible with the brand promise implied in the name “Bear Naked.” As a result, the positive equity Bear Naked has accrued in one sector of digital space is badly eroded by its presence in another.

Failure to recognize that “social” is the defining attribute of social media has led to serious damage. Whereas Pillsbury has merely made its Facebook presence irrelevant, Bear Naked’s evil Facebook twin is an actual liability—as it associates the company’s crisp, distinctive branded imagery with the wrong side of a populist political issue.

Grilled Chicken or Charred, Foul?
The more I explore this bizarre occult phenomenon, the more my knees tremble. For there, on the left, is the specter of Tyson.com and its three social offspring:

• Chicken Nuggets
• Any’tizer Snack Time
• Grilled and Ready

Together they represent an unnerving distortion of marketing principles evoking the fevered imagination of medieval Italian literature. Between the talking nuggets, impossibly perky branded personas and the amorphous tide of promotional palaver, you need industrial-strength schlock-absorbers to survive the assault.

What each of these examples illustrate for me is how much social space is a separate phenomenon with properties of its own. Far from arbitrarily jamming design elements into a Facebook timeline, brands need to create a true social environment—the cornerstone of which is providing opportunities for meaningful participation. Anything else is just evil. 

Anyone familiar with the process of Web site development recognizes its ground plan:

• Site map
• Wire frames
• Content outline

Although these are common tools of the trade, in my experience, their relative functions are poorly understood. As often happens in agency life, the confusion stems from a misapprehension of roles and responsibilities. But the terminology itself also contributes to the problem; it encourages us to see architecture and content as separate entities, instead of as two sides of the same coin.

For when it comes to communication, content is structure at a fundamental level. That is, not the content of callouts or sidebars, but the rolling out of the Web site’s major themes. As such, structural content must be developed side-by-side with the site map and wire frames—the needs of each balanced against the needs of the others.

To arrive at that balance, an information architect (IA), a user experience (UX) specialist (when these functions aren’t combined) and the copy lead must work collaboratively, using a simple social skill most people revel in: conversation. That’s “conversation,” mind you, not bullying, best-practice-evangelizing, stone walling or any other species of rank-pulling that has wrecked more projects than I can name.

I’m talking about conversation that respects the expertise of colleagues in different disciplines. It implies a team’s willingness to revise or recast until it arrives at a coherent structure flexible enough to accommodate the ebb and flow of the branded message. 

Density, intent and relative value.
The first step is for both the IA and the copy lead to sketch an outline for the site. They then meet to reconcile their visions of the structure, eliminating any page for which there is no meaningful content—whether because it delivers no value, duplicates material found elsewhere on the site, or repeats information your carefully targeted audience knows by heart.

Next, the copy lead and IA need to establish meaningful user paths. They need to understand: 

• The number of distinct audience segments
• The content that matters most to each segment
• The number of clicks needed to access that content

Based on their analysis they may need to adjust the site structure, but the extra effort is worth it. Users who stay with you online are users who can get what they need from your pages—and fast. 

Written, not “placed.”
As I see it, only after these issues are resolved are we ready to talk about user experience. Developing wire frames before this stage most often leads to three undesirable phenomena: design templates with too many or too few components, with overly elaborate functionality or with excessively formalized directional copy, including my all-time favorite: 

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE NOW.

What everyone needs to know, from the loftiest Account Supervisor to the most under-appreciated programmer, is that wire frame copy, once input, is impossible to erase. It doesn’t matter how often a copy deck is reviewed, revised, proofread and approved, some element of the original placeholder copy will find its way into the release. 

It also doesn’t matter if the placeholder copy is off strategy, graceless or makes no sense at all. Project for project, the only copy that’s completely impervious to revision is placeholder copy someone is simply too lazy to update.

Better that it never be input at all—especially considering it’s completely unnecessary. The function of a wire frame is to delineate structure and function, not surface features like headlines, links or button copy. For everyone’s sake, use “Lorem ipsum…” That’s what it’s there for.

Structured, not “penned.”
For the copy lead, the biggest hurdle is finding an effective way to right-size, streamline and otherwise apportion copy so it fulfills its only function: to create structures that channel your message and motivate your audience. By corollary, the function of Web copy is not to:

• Showcase literary talent
• Audition for Comedy Central
• Emulate a TV news anchor from 1962

That’s because effective Web copy rolls out both the brand narrative and the localized product story in a coherent, appealing and emotionally compelling way. To accomplish this, however, the copy lead needs three essential tools: an eraser, a pair of scissors and the patience of a saint—to to steer clients away from drowning their message in a viscous stew of “benny bullets.”

While the elements of the process I’ve outlined are simple, their implementation requires a shift from a top- down, assembly line approach to an organic development, an outgrowth of decisions arrived at by a real consensus. Best of all, it’s a process you can bring online anytime, even if your creative staff isn’t entirely composed of Smurfs. 

In the abstract worldview of market research, physicians may be “professionals,” “providers,” “practitioners,” “specialists,” or “key opinion leaders”—but never, apparently, human beings. I don’t know any other explanation for the stilted, mechanical way we speak to doctors online, or in any other medium for that matter.  

The Nexium professional site (as of 11-15-12) is a typical example. Crowded bar graphs vie for attention with an equally crowded sidebar navigation that I defy anyone to view without wincing.

It’s a design style—a term I’ll use for the sake of argument—based on the false assumption that “objective” is synonymous with “ugly,” “dry,” and “unreadable.”

To be charitable, I suppose this graphic approach is an attempt to avoid even the appearance of manipulation. In light of the stricter standards imposed by the FDA in the last decade, I can see why a pharmaceutical company might want to avoid any design element that could possibly be construed as “seductive.” But that’s no excuse for producing a site that could possibly be construed as “hideous.”

You are, after all, marketing to human beings, not Walmart mannequins. So even if you believe the medical profession, as a culture, demands a strictly data-driven discussion of pharmaceuticals, there’s no reason to assume a typical doctor has no aesthetic sense and, by the way, prefers to squint at text rather than read it.

Compounding the negative impact of the Nexium visual style, the meaningless tagline “We earn our stripes” undermines the credibility of the site since, far from delivering value, it’s an empty claim based on the product’s pill design. Drivel like that teaches users to ignore copy and dismiss your message.

Yet, similarly unappealing and unmotivating Web pages addressed to healthcare professionals are common. The approach taken by Spiriva results in a format that, while more readable, is only marginally more interesting, starting with the gray-on-gray color scheme.

The infantile illustration of people enjoying “quality of life moments” from inside a Spiriva inhaler only makes matters worse, even if it is a slight improvement over the munchkin-sized folk dancers on view at the Bayetta professional site.

Sadly, unmitigated kitschiness appears to be the universal language of professional pharma Web design. I can only suppose that, since legal and medical restrictions prohibit snappy, pun-laden headlines, a majority of brand managers demand snappy visual puns to take their place.

Underlying this, of course, is the ad industry’s own unexamined equation of audience engagement with creaky humor, terminally cute graphics and groan-inducing wordplay.

Stenciled emotions, templated engagement.
Even in cases where a professional site achieves a reasonable standard of human appeal, an unwavering sameness prevails. Why, I have to ask, do we believe that doctors are motivated by photos of other doctors—and in lab coats, no less? Is there research to suggest that people with the mental acuity to graduate from medical school can’t identify a professional Web site unless it features a picture of a dude in a lab coat?

Or is it actually a lack of faith in the collective communication skills of the brand, the agency and the attendant army of consultants who attach themselves to every project? After oceans of time and expense, apparently, most pharmaceutical brands feel their message won’t be clear without a photo of a model in a white jacket.

To be fair, the photos show some degree of variation. There’s the doctor with the look of concern, the doctor with the visionary gaze and the doctor with the bemused smirk of self-confidence. That the vast majority of doctors depicted are men should surprise no one in a country that’s at least two generations away from electing a woman to its highest office.

Stone Age cultural attitudes aside, the obligatory doctor shot is one more instance of opportunity lost. Because, in case it hasn’t dawned on you, that white coat doesn’t qualify as news. Having brought your audience to your site through the magic of search, your next logical step is to tell them something they don’t already know.

That is, of course, if your focus is communication. If, however, the impetus that drives your every marketing and creative decision is fealty to ideological abstractions about engagement strategy and Web design, you’ll arrive at today’s status quo: A dreary lot of stiff and static Web pages more likely to result in a diagnosis of osteo arthritis than in a prescription for success.

One of the most vexing questions faced by communicators in any discipline is how to decide what an audience can or cannot be assumed to know. To hear some marketers tell it, the only possible assumption is that most people know absolutely nothing about absolutely everything. Even, that is, about the very topics that define them as members of a target audience.

That leaves the nation’s beleaguered copywriters in a difficult position, though to be fair, it’s hard to conceive a situation in which the nation’s copywriters aren’t in a difficult position—as practitioners of a miserably underrated and undervalued profession.

In this instance, however, there’s a more specific measure of the problem at hand, in the tortuous dilemma posed by two conflicting anxieties harbored by our clients:

A. Am I saying enough?
B. Am I saying too much?

Both of which are governed by a larger anxiety:

I. Will They Get It?

Now, as any tour of duty at an ad agency will confirm, anxiety, not expertise, is the deciding factor 99% of the time. When it comes to messaging strategy and the copy that helps convey it, that anxiety pivots on:

• What information our target audience already has on a given topic
• What conclusions our target audience has drawn from that information

As I see it, a brand must have clear answers to these questions before any marketing plan or creative work can begin. In practice, however, this is the last thing the ever-growing number of “stakeholders” in a typical project can agree on.

Confused about confusion.
The result, no matter how much information the creative brief contains about audience demographics, is a general appeal to the so-called Lowest Common Denominator (LCD). Dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that the LCD audience is defined by:

• People who “don’t get” the brand category
• People who “don’t get” advertising
• People who “don’t get” Internet navigation
• People who “don’t get” written communication
• People who “don’t get” visual imagery
• People who “don’t get” desktop computers, laptops, tablets or smart phones

In other words, those who envision their target audience as members of the LCD see it as a subspecies of humanity—people so underexposed to modern American life that the events of the last 15 years have had absolutely no impact on their lives.

The pervasiveness of this point of view is evidenced by the presence of LCD copy (and accompanying LCD visual components) on most Web pages. It’s copy rife with meaningless adjectives like “incredible” or copy stenciled on with conformist zeal and held up as the model for what works.

Is there, for example, a technology brand with the courage to walk away from predictable talk of innovation, a bank that can go for a week without touting its “great rates,” or a candy manufacturer who can resist the temptation to “make the holidays sweeter?”

Nested anxieties.
My question is, even if we believe the LCD audience actually exists, why would we endeavor to reach such people with advertising, much less digital advertising?

I mean, seriously, you want to create a banner campaign for people you believe don’t know how to turn on their computers and can’t follow a simple line of logic about a topic they’re already interested in? Like the large swath of undecided voters in the recent presidential election, that level of confusion would require a completely different communication strategy—most likely involving coloring books.

The irony, of course, is that this boilerplate copy actually stands in the way of making the sale. Consumers tire of typical matryoshka doll-messaging that can take up to 5 clicks to reach something substantive—like a clear description of what they’re actually buying.

On the face of it, such self-defeating behavior would seem incomprehensible, if it weren’t for a deeper anxiety at work behind the scenes: A brand’s realization that its product claims are flimsy, deceptive or blatantly untrue. In that context, candy-coating your promotional copy with meaningless clichés is an essential part of avoiding litigation—especially in an era when the sociopathic behavior of American corporations has been richly documented on the evening news.