image credit: debaird™ on Flickr (see below for link)
There are plenty of cliché business words and phrases I hate (“optimize,” “low-hanging fruit,” “web 2.0,” “leverage,” and so on), but none as much as two words I’ve recently decided to ban from my vocabulary and my office: 1) “Quality” and 2) “Product”.
Why I hate “quality”
I owe my contempt for “quality” to Dr. Brian Till (author of The Truth About Creating Brands People Love). During a marketing and branding seminar I took with him, Till refused to accept “quality” as a satisfactory position description or brand equity.
His point: you can always be more specific.
I might say that a Volvo is a “quality” car, but what exactly makes it “quality”? Is it simply that the wheels don’t fall off?
Is its quality about style (nope—remember “Buy Volvos. They’re boxy but they’re good.“)?
Is quality about social status (again, no)?
Or about safety (ding!)?
Volvo is a “quality” car to someone who is looking for a “safe” car. It’s a different kind of quality from what BMW offers. Or Mini. Or Kia.
You can use the word “quality” to describe just about anything that you’re selling. The upshot: using the word “quality” does nothing to differentiate you from your competitors.
It’s not enough to remove the word “quality” from marketing copy. We must purge “quality” from strategic thinking, too.
Without the distraction of “quality” (or other similar abstractions like “value”), we place our focus on what’s important—making sure our brands are relevant, unique, and simple—and leave the decision about quality up to our customers.
Why I hate “product”
On the vet’s recommendation, my dog eats Science Diet dog food. The top of the bag boasts “RESEALABLE – Keeps product fresh!”
Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, but I don’t want to think that I’m feeding my little guy a “product.” I want to feel like I’m feeding him the best food money can buy (clearly that’s not Science Diet, but is it too much to ask to feel that way?).
Contrast “keeps product fresh” with “keeps your dog’s food fresh.” The first feels cold, detached. The second is warmer, acknowledging the relationship I have with my pet.
Referring to anything you create as a “product” immediately turns it into just another object. Marketing’s challenge is to relate what we’re selling to the deeply human wants and needs of our customers. We’re selling more than objects. We’re selling the feeling people get when they know that what they just bought will make their lives better.
I don’t mean that we need to make our marketing pitches overly emotional and sappy. Instead, I suggest we focus on what’s intrinsically human about whatever it is that we’re selling.
Take for example the latest iPhone 4S commercial about Siri. Apple doesn’t rattle off a list of features—instead they show you people interacting with the phone. They show you how to use it. They show you how it will make your life better.
Again, it’s not enough to strip the word “product” from marketing copy. A “product” is nothing more than an object to convert into money. Dog food, phones, toothpaste, colored blocks, shards of glass…it doesn’t matter.
Converting objects into money isn’t a human activity. It’s mechanistic—it has no regard for feelings or long-term consequences.
The fact is, most customers don’t see transactions as converting their money into objects. And they don’t often refer to the stuff we sell as products.
So why should we? Our job is to get into the minds of our customers—and part of that includes using the language they use.
Of course I’m making two important assumptions: 1) that you want to delight your customers, and 2) that what you’re selling really is something you care about.
If you only care that your customers buy from you, and not about what you sell or who buys it, then forget it. This article is of no use to you; in a sterile quest for dollars, you’ve missed the truly human component of doing business—the part with passion and feelings, and consequently the part that’s the most fun and the most rewarding.
No more “quality products”
The goal of removing “quality” and “product” thinking from my office is not to place undue semantic burden on our team (and admittedly, we don’t use these particular words that much, so it won’t be too tough).
Instead, I’m hoping to cause a moments of pause, moments in which we’re forced to find better, more specific, more human words to describe what we’re offering in our copy and in our strategy.
What do you think?
Image credit: debaird™ on Flickr. See original for creative commons copyright information.
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keywords: products, quality, semantics, Straight-up Snark, strategy
