Blunder # 5

Source

Data sheet for a presentation software program.

Specimen

[On the front, the company stressed how easy its program was to learn and use. On the back, they emphasized the availability of their training classes.]

What's wrong with it?

Immediately upon seeing page 2, readers may think, "Training?  Do I need training?  How much?  I thought this thing was easy to learn!" 

By not qualifying the offer of training, the company has blown its credibility.  If training is needed, its ready availability is certainly an asset.  But the implication that it's needed, when the impression of easy learning has already been conveyed, may set the reader back.  

The underlying problem here (as frequently happens) is failure of the writer to imagine him/herself as the reader.  Once recognized, the blunder is easily averted. 

Rewrite

Widget Software is exceptionally easy to learn because of its logically organized menu system, extensive help screens and lucid, detailed documentation. 

However, some people prefer to learn from other people rather than from computers or books. Therefore, as part of our philosophy of total support, we are happy to provide readily available training classes.

Blunder #6

Source

A brochure soliciting money from bankers, venture capitalists and other professional investors for a small pharmaceutical company that was developing (among several other products) a treatment for male impotence.

Specimen

Widget Drugs estimates as many as 3 million men might be candidates for Widget impotence therapy. 

[This was the only market estimate in the brochure — indeed, in the entire packet of which the brochure was a part — and it was not elaborated upon in any way.]

What's wrong with it?

This tactic might — might — work for some consumer products, although we would never recommend it.  (We once heard a TV commercial boast that "XYZ Dog Food gives your dog more carbohydrate than pure meat!" — a claim with two possible meanings, both very credible but neither of them anything to boast about.)  But it will not work here.

Professional investors are not naive readers.  Because this is the only market estimate given, they will assume it is the strongest, most exciting market estimate that Widget Drugs can provide for any of its products.  In other words, they will consider this the upper limit of Widget's overall market potential.  In a minute we'll see what the "3 million" will become in their minds.

But first, there's another problem here.  These investors can easily see through crude attempts at deception, and will instantly drop an investment candidate at the first foul smell.  This single sentence will stop most of them cold.

The deception is the attempt to make an impressive claim — "as many as 3 million men" — when analysis reveals that there is almost nothing to claim at all. 

Why is that?  A common term among writers (and political commentators) is weasel words — which enable someone to 'weasel' out of meaning what they seem to be saying — and our specimen sentence is a veritable weasel's nest!

Let's repeat the specimen:

Widget Drugs estimates as many as 3 million men might be candidates for Widget impotence therapy.

First, this is Widget's own estimate, rather than a figure quoted from an independent source, and therefore automatically suspect.  Readers will take it for granted that the number has been inflated for that reason alone. 

Second, there is no mention of how the estimate was made.  Did Widget's president merely ask a few psychotherapists how many men feel insecure sometimes about this issue?  (That would be a way to maximize the number.)

Third, "as many as" is a weasel phrase virtually admitting that the actual figure is much lower.  "As many as 3 million" means "3 million or less" — or, realistically speaking, "substantially less than 3 million."

Fourth, that number of men "might" be candidates for the therapy.  Surely the actual number of candidates will be some small fraction of the number of men who might be candidates. 

Fifth, what is a candidate?  Not a customer, nor even a prospect, but only someone who might be a prospect! 

Sixth, the unstated premise of the specimen is that it is a statement about market potential, but in fact it is only a statement about potential market.  The two concepts, of course, are vastly different.  If you develop a formula for a new cola beverage, your potential market (worldwide) is several billion people.  But before equating that with your market potential, you may want to factor in your ability to compete with Coca-Cola? and Pepsi?.

The company makes no attempt to project any conversion rates of candidates into customers, customers into treatments, treatments into revenue, or revenue into profit.  Without such conversions, the implied market potential estimate of "as many as 3 million candidates" hangs in the air... and itself rests on nothing but air to start with.

To sum up: in a single sentence of 16 words, the company has used six weasel devices — more than one weasel for every three words.  If readers reduce the estimate by 50% for each weasel — a generous response, since this passage is more likely to make them trash the piece entirely — the "3 million men" shrink to a mere 47,000.

Rewrite

The passage cannot be rewritten on the basis of the information given, and perhaps not on the basis of the information in the company's hands at the time the brochure was prepared.  But a market potential estimate of some kind, however rough it may be, is a necessity. Investors will not put their money into a venture unless they have some indication of what they will get out if it.  Why should they?

As it is, the brochure is a total waste.  It is a waste of the time and money involved in writing, printing and distributing it, but more important, it is a waste of the opportunity to solicit certain investors who, having seen this brochure, cross Widget Drugs off their list of companies to consider. 

So what should the company do?  First, it should get some facts, such as the results of independently performed statistical studies on the incidence of male impotence.  Second, it should derive estimates of market potential and profit from those facts, however tenuous the derivation might be.  Third, it should present the estimates, with their derivations, in a straightforward manner, avoiding weasels and citing the sources for all data. 

The brochure itself can merely state the estimates themselves, but it must refer the reader to the complete analysis which should always accompany the brochure.

Epilog

The epilog is fascinating. The epilog is pertinent. The epilog is your literature. What monsters may lurk unsuspected in its depths, eating away at your profits while you go about your business — as much business as you are able to haul in, anyway — blissfully unaware?

Remember, each of the specimens we have shared with you here came from real marketing literature distributed to prospects and customers by real companies like yours.

It's food for thought, isn't it?

And perhaps for action, too.