Find the comfort zone

The last three weeks I've had the opportunity to work on a great project. A major government contractor in the homeland security field asked me to rewrite their corporate fact sheet. That might not seem like a big project, and my final product will probably be around 400 words (plus a diagram). But it's actually a very big project and priced accordingly -- several thousand dollars -- about as much as a full-blown brochure or technical article.

"Language that stays completely inside the comfort zone will be ignored."

The implications are obvious -- and were thankfully not lost on the senior VP of marketing, my client. Rewrite the fact sheet and you rewrite the corporate positioning. You give words to executives who in a few seconds can clearly and succinctly cut through the acronyms and the jargon and the generic language everybody else uses.

Digression: There's a great book that's been recently published, Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, with vivid examples of exactly what scares this marketing VP. Here's a gem: "Technological innovation, globalization, complex regulation and increased accountability at the senior management and board level have all combined to significantly change the landscape of risk management today."

I suspect the reason companies make their language generic is the same reason some people wear suits. They feel comfortable if they look like everyone else -- and like they have always looked. But being comfortable misses the point (just like customers will probably miss a company if it doesn't stand out).

Language that stays completely inside the comfort zone will be ignored. Language that goes too far outside the comfort zone will be dismissed. The challenge is to go just far enough -- challenge the reader, but not too much.
When the client read my first draft she said, "It hit me like a two-by-four. But the more I read it the more I loved it. This is what we do!" Now her challenge is to get buy-in from her colleagues. If you haven't done a good fact sheet, you probably won't get that kind of reaction.

The challenges of a fact sheet are both formidable and subtle. Not many clients will pay thousands of dollars for four or five hundred words. And most clients won't take the risks of testing the comfort zone of their senior executives, or the process of getting consensus. It's easier just to walk away with something so watered down it just doesn't matter. But think of the upside -- a single page that in less than 30 seconds tells people why you are really someone they should do business with. That's rare.