I have a theory. I believe that the difference between good and bad writing can be quantified and that it is possible to assign a money value to that difference.

Let’s an example. A company produces a piece of marketing collateral but it is badly written. The company spends £20,000 getting it designed, printed and distributed. Because half the people who receive it either don’t understand what they are reading properly or give up trying to read it because it is hard going, half the company’s investment in getting that collateral produced is wasted and half the potential sales that might have been generated are lost.

Considering this and the powerful multiplying effect of widespread distribution on the web or in print, you would expect copy writing for this kind of material to have a much higher budget and priority than it does and you would expect the profession of writing for business to be as important and distinct as, say, graphic design or branding. It clearly does not (which is, incidentally, why I believe that the opportunity for Articulate is so big).

Jakob Nielsen has some interesting comments about website readability which show how comprehension and retention increase dramatically as a result of careful writing and editing. However, I haven’t seen anything similar for general business prose. If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions about finding this kind of metric, I’d love to hear from you.

Wearing my Articulate hat, I think this is an important issue and I am thinking about commissioning some research and analysis in this area.

Like a masochistic fool I designed and built the website for Articulate Marketing when I should have got someone else to do it for me or used an open-source CMS like Joomla.

However the fun bit of the process was reviewing websites belonging to professional services firms that I admire. Here’s a partial list with my observations.

• Wolff Olins. I liked the big, bold photography and the clear mission statement on the home page. However, I felt there was too much vertical scrolling, too much wasted space and little sense of the company being populated by human beings (it’s a big firm but we don’t see the people on the site).
• McKinsey. Unlike most sites, they manage to use the width of the page properly. I like this a lot because many sites have a weird vertical letterbox which has little relationship to the aspect ratio of most people’s screens. Again the use of photography is good if slightly gratuitous. However, there seemed to be too many menus and they felt a little confusing. It needs a little more information architecture as seen from the visitors perspective because it still feels a little solipsistic right now.
• Norman Neilsen Group. My guru, Jakob Neilsen, works here. The site is a little bit hand-crafted - things jump around from page to page, for example - but it is a tidy site with a good two tier navigation structure and it loads very quickly. I like this site a lot. It lacks a search tool and it is ever so slightly dry and text-heavy. They have great pictures of their people but one or two pictures on the home page wouldn’t go amiss, perhaps the founders or something.
• Xplane (not to be confused with Austin Meyer’s X-plane - the one-man flight simulator guru). This site takes you neatly to their case studies page. They obviously reckon that this is the best way to explain what they do. I think they’ve missed a trick here because what they do is create graphical representations of business processes and it is surprising that the first thing you see on their site ISN’T one of their own diagrams explaining what they do. However, the case studies are well presented with good logos, microcontent descriptions and they do a good job also of identifying which types of companies they like to work with (i.e. BIG ones). The design is just a little fussy and objects a placed on the page slightly randomly but I respect their sidebar and menu system. It’s like NNGroup but with more graphics and case studies.

Other sites I like: www.griffintechnology.com, www.kk.org, www.davidlinley.com.

What I picked out from these sites that I tried to incorporate into Articulate is:

• Use the whole width of the page.
• Make a site that reformats if you change the size of the text or the shape of the window.
• Have really simple menus - avoid drop-down, Windows-style menus if possible.
• Use big font sizes and fewer words.
• Pictures are good if they help make the point and don’t slow the download.
• Should make the ‘contact us’ or call to action very prominent and easy to find. This is why I put our phone number and email address on the top right hand of every page.
• Good use of case studies, with microcontent and logos is very powerful and persuasive. We have good clients such as Microsoft and the British Government so making them visible builds credibility.
• It’s vital to see the website from the customer’s perspective not the company’s. Outside-in, not inside-out.
• We should eat our own dog food. In other words, Articulate is a writing business. The site should be well-written and properly edited like all our work.

I think the result isn’t bad for a new site but I’d welcome constructive feedback.

I got this press release a while ago but I’ve been saving it up. It is a classic example of over-egging a press release. It begins

Billerica, MA: November 3rd 2005: Once again demonstrating the company’s commitment to maintaining and maximizing the value of customer investments while building on its technology leadership, Radstone Embedded Computing today unveiled its strategic roadmap.

What does this tell us about Radstone Embedded Computing?

• They’re committed to helping customers get the most out of their products
• They think they are a technical leader in their field
• They want to stay that way
• They’ve released a roadmap, presumably about future technology or products. Although this isn’t stated explicitly, it can be inferred from the rest of the paragraph.

Are there any companies out there who DON’T want to help their customers get the most out of their investments as well as build and maintain leadership in their field. No, of course not.

So the gist of this press release is “Radstone Embedded Computing has released a strategic roadmap.” So why don’t they say that?

It’s good practice with email newsletters to write a strong subject line and put a brief summary of the matter in the body text with a link to the full text which is stored on a website. The same is true for press releases sent by email, although almost no-one does it.

I was reminded of this when I received the following press release from Cambridge Consultants (a cool reseach company):

In order to fill the large gap in the market for cost and performance sensitive ASIC processors, Cambridge Consultants has developed XAP4, a brand new 16-bit RISC microprocessor IP core. XAP4 is aimed at ASIC designers who currently use larger and more expensive 32-bit processor cores and where an advanced 16-bit core would offer both optimal performance and a reduction in cost.

To see the full story please see
http://www.cambridgeconsultants.com/news_en159.shtml

The subject matter is quite technical but the principle is clear and would work for most kinds of press releases. The brevity of the summary forces them to concentrate on the key points (”optimal performance and a reduction in cost” to my mind) without any waffle.

From my perspective as a reader it is an efficient use of my time. I can scan this in a couple of seconds and decide if it is going to be useful to me. If it is, the call to action is very clear and I can go to the website.

This approach also has the merit of making it easier to track the READERSHIP of the email rather than the DISTRIBUTION. You can send out a million press releases but if no-one reads them, you might as well not have bothered. However, Cambridge Consultants can track the number of people clicking through to the webpage and see what percentage of recipients are actually following up on the story. Once on the landing page they could also have contact details and other PR collateral.

Data-driven PR. Now that would be a first!

Technology product names are a rich vein of terrible writing.

For example, what are the following products from one well-known manufacturer: dv8000z, PSC 2350, vp6300? One is a printer, one is a laptop computer and one is a projector. How can you tell? How can you differentiate one product in a given range from another? The answer is, quite simply, that you can’t. Come on, HP, you can do better than that.

Even if you go to HP’s product ranges, can you (without looking at a website) tell the difference between a Pressario, a ProLiant and a PhotoSmart? One is a range of laptops, the next a range of servers and the last is a range of printers. To a Martian with a degree in English these names would be interchangeable. A Pressario printer: “sounds good” he’d murmur. A PhotoSmart projector: “good for PowerPoint.”

HP’s only good name, the iPaq came from Compaq where the name made more sense. I’d be interested to know if iPaq predated iPod or vice versa.

(As an aside, I once had an HP PR person tell me with awe in his voice that the new iPaq was made from plastics that were almost as good as a BMW dashboard. As if this was the best thing about the product. I remember when the HP name was synonymous with good engineering and incredible industrial design. My HP200LX palmtop from the mid-nineties is still working fine, was incredibly powerful and advanced for its day and is made from plastics that are better than a BMW dashboard. It shows that the naming problem goes back a few years, though.)

Good product names take effort and the positioning around them takes good writing. The car industry has done this very well for a long time. For example, BMW’s 3-Series is divided into levels that relate to engine size: 325, 330 etc. Contrast this with HP’s top-of-the-line workstation (itself a category description that belies the underlying product), the xw9300. What does it mean?

Part of the problem is the marketing and, in my opinion, the copywriting underneath the product names. Contrast BMW’s “The ultimate driving machine” with HP’s headline description of this ultra-powerful workstation:

Intelligently engineered in close collaboration with hardware and software partners, the HP xw9300 Workstation delivers the ultimate 64-bit personal workstation performance and visualization for compute intensive environments.

Even a prosaic, descriptive name is better than alphabet soup. Product names are the result of overlaps between company brand, range descriptions and individual line item names. Each of these requires careful writing, as well as branding and marketing input, to get right.

You would have thought that after developing these astonishingly sophisticated devices that would have astounded Edison and Einstein coming up with a good name would be the easy part.

Here’s an email I received this evening:

Hello,

As we have just entered into a new year, we wanted to contact you on behalf of COMPANY to see if there is anything you would like to ask us or know more about.

Please feel free to email me with any COMPANY queries you may have and keep my details on file for any future features you may be planning.

Simple.  Friendly.  Useful.  Well written.  To the point.  Unobtrusive.  Well done!

There was a great article in the Economist this week about the rise and rise of the PR industry. According to the magazine, “PR is an increasingly vital marketing tool - especially as traditional forms of advertising struggle to catch consumers’ attention.”

I particularly like the graph showing PR spending in the US - growing from about $2bn in 1999 to over $5bn in 2009 - which has the title: “The wages of spin.”

A useful quote (although stating the bleeding obvious) comes from Richard Edelman, CEO of the eponymous Edelman PR firm: “the most credible form of communication now comes from ‘a person like yourself’.”

I’m interested in a comment by by Pam Talbot, Edelman’s chief in America, “Companies can try to serve up a tight, straight message through the media by issuing a one-way press release but that’s as flawed right now as a 15 or 30-second TV ad.” Although my experience of Edelman is of a series of tight, straight, one-way press releases.

I wonder what the two-way equivalents might be. Perhaps a PR-sponsored product blog? Case studies are useful ways of capturing some kind of two-way relationship between a company and its customers. Evangelism of the Guy Kawasaki form is another kind of PR.

Luckily the article has not completely fallen for the PR industry’s spin of itself. Two telling quotes: that the industry is suffering from “consultant envy,” and “some jounralists regard PR people as a nuisance, or worse.”

For me, I guess I’m a poacher and a gamekeeper. As a journalist, am in stuck in a love-hate relationship with PR companies. I need them for some stories and from time to time, they find me good case studies and facilitate interviews with people I need to talk to. Other times they lose me money and waste my time (you know who you are, etc.). With my B2B corporate writer hat on (see www.articulatemarketing.com), I am sort of in the PR industry, at least in its broadest definition. Consequently, the most important thing for me is to apply what I know as a journalist to what I do as a corporate write to avoid making the mistakes I see other companies make.

There’s an interesting post on Amy Garhan’s Contentious.com about whether the day has come for companies to stop using press releases altogether.

She says (in another post):

I think the press release as it’s evolved over previous decades has outlived its limited usefulness and now usually represents more of a hindrance than a help to communication.

Instead, she suggests posting a blog entry or a website page that can be searched. A personalised email to an editor or journalist can include a link to this information.

Instinctively, I tend to agree. However, one possible objection is that a blog entry or web page can be revised. One thing about a press release (however much we dislike the whole idea of spin that it implies) is that it is a stake in the ground. On a given day, the issuer said something definitive. This sets the issue a higher standard of accuracy and accountability.

I’m definitely against press releases that are so bland or so badly written that they say nothing. I’m mostly against press releases that have no time hook or news value.

I think that blogs have a greater degree of informality and individuality that encourage more of a company’s ‘personality’ to emerge and the technology allows easier searching, linking and feedback but I’m not ready to retire the press release yet. I’d rather see if they can be made better first.

I had a comment on today’s entry about a hundred monkeys. It reminded me that the PDF that contained loads of really good tips about coming up with names was, in fact, from a company called Igor. This advice was immensely helpful to me and I’m glad they got in touch and pointed me in the right direction!

When I was trying to come up with a name for my copywriting and marketing agency (now called Articulate) I spent a lot of time perusing the internet on the subject of naming. One of the sites I came across was a hundred monkeys.

I really like their attitude. Their home page is really tidy, quick to load and well-signposted. I particularly like the headline “things to do” and the fact that they have a contact us link top and centre on the page. This is good web karma.

What is especially fabulous about them is the fact that they differentiate themselves from their competition in a really smart way. What they say is, essentially, this: you can tell who is a good naming company by the way they name themselves. They then proceed to list several dozen competitors, with links to the home pages, so that the reader can judge for themselves. I think this is a ballsy strategy that shows great confidence and for the kinds of companies that are going to be excited by the monkeys’ approach to naming it clearly differentiates them.

My only complaint was that I found it really hard to actually talk to any of them and while I had some money to spend on naming consultancy and they were really one of only two or three companies I shortlisted, I just couldn’t get any of them on the phone and the few emails I got were slightly surreal, non-specific and from different people. I suppose this ties up to the point that branding must be underpinned by service delivery to be effective.

It reminds me of an old joke that I have used on the Articulate website: “if you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them would write ‘hey, hey we’re the monkees.’”