Clarity Trumps Persuasion: Branding Waffle vs. Clear Value Proposition Statement
Excerpted from the book Making Websites Win by Karl Blank.
Some products or services—particularly those that are complex—can be hard to describe. When such products are sold using a traditional brand-marketing approach, the results are often disastrous. The visitors don’t buy because they don’t understand what they’ll get.
Examples
• Unclear branding waffle: “Music, Meet Home.”
• Copy that wins: “The world’s leading speaker system: Play any song in any room from any phone.”
• Unclear branding waffle: “Introducing the oases of freshness: The Aquaris, the Tritona, the Anapos.”
• Copy that wins: “Choose your water filter jug: a slim one for the fridge, a large one for the table, or a watertight one for on the go.”
• Unclear branding waffle: “Express yourself. Impress yourself.”
• Copy that wins: “The ultimate suite of cloud-based tools for all your marketing communications.”
You get the idea. If you are asked to improve the website of a technical product that is currently being sold with a brand-marketing approach, here’s a useful tip: see if the product has a Wikipedia page.
The Wikipedia page is likely to contain valuable plain-language descriptions that are absent from the manufacturer’s landing page. Plain language almost always beats branding waffle.
A certain wise man has also often said that "clarity trumps persuasion".
