[Link to part 1] | [Link to part 2] | [Link to part 3]
I knew I’d think of something else after I thought this whole post series was complete. But this post will be brief.
Benefit statements are not only affected by the target customers, but are also affected by the “personality” of the company stating the benefits.
As we all know, different companies use different tones of voice in their communications. A benefit statement from Procter & Gamble will read differently than a benefit statement from Apple, for example.
With that in mind, let’s turn to the example that I used in the third post in this series-namely, that the benefit of a one-second response time for computer aided dispatch (CAD) systems is that it keeps people from dying.
Not all companies are going to be that blunt about this particular benefit.
To my knowledge, SCC, Printrak, or Motorola have never explicitly talked about avoiding death as a benefit or their computer aided dispatch systems. Perhaps there IS a CAD company that does this, though.
This is why the development of benefit statements is often a collaborative affair, in part to ensure that the benefit statements align with the character of the company issuing them. Imagine the reaction if P&G promoted one of its soap products with a high-tech advertisement loudly proclaiming “PURPLE!” like the recent Apple ad.
Procter & Gamble ads are usually a bit more restrained.
Well, at least they used to be.
To be frank, Procter & Gamble is better at explicitly stating benefits than Apple is. Saving $100 a year on your energy bill is a benefit; purple is not. But Apple is communicating an implicit “Apple owners are cooler than mere mortals” benefit. Cold vs. cool, I guess, as well as an entirely different definition of “identity” that doesn’t rely on individualization. (If thousands of people have purple iPhones, this fact cannot be used to individually identify them.)
So you not only have to know your customer, but you need to know yourself so that you can describe benefits that are important to your customer in a voice that is accurate to your company’s “personality.”
This is why Bredemarket uses an iterative process in developing communications for its clients. If you’re an identity product/service provider that needs help in communicating customer benefits in proposals, case studies, white papers, blog posts, and similar written output, Bredemarket can implement such an iterative process to help you develop that output. Contact me.
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