Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Add some real value - or someone else will!

I can't remember who sent me this visual but I believe it sums up beautifully the situation in which many service providers find themselves - and often as a result of their own actions. Or inaction to be more precise.
It never ceases to astound just how many business web sites and other branded collateral is littered with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and inconsistencies such as font size, punctuation, spacing, capitalisation, multi-language spelling variations and text alignment.
And these quality issues should be picked up and rectified, particularly if the Brand promotes itself as "expert', "professional", world-class", "industry-leading" etc. Now don't get me wrong, errors will always occur, such is the nature of our endemic 'speed-to-market' environment and the fact that the creators are so close to it that little oversights are quite often missed. However, while accepting these factors, this does not excuse the fact that these taints on the Brand are not picked up and rectified quickly.
Maybe, in a world where spelling and grammatical bastardisations are acceptable thanks to the need for speed and the ever-pervasive "add to dictionary" function on all electronic devices, these errors aren't considered errors at all. Or perhaps my expectations of state-of-the-art, market-leading, subject matter experts with a reputation for quality, professionalism and integrity are simply unrealistic.
However, for as long as I can remember, marketing and communications specialists/experts/gurus/service providers have prided themselves on being the protectors of Brands, developers and custodians of a Brand's persona, its attitude reflected by how it is portrayed and, hopefully, enhanced.
So while marketers can not control all of the Brand touch points such as face-to-face customer service, store or office layout or phone-based customer interactions, they certainly can on all things promotional including web, brochureware and other collateral.
Want to keep your existing clients happy and continue to be recognised as a valued member of Team Client? Then you should probably take a little more time to review the work once it has gone live, particularly in the digital space where volume is increasing. After all, you'd hate to lose a client based on the fact that one of your competitors drew published mistakes to their attention!

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