3W Design Group - Media

My friend and podcasting partner Susie Watson has been advising us of late on the dangers of using too much jargon on our clients. Susie is a marketing/branding professional who we use as a sounding board for our pitches concerning new technology services. It’s not that Susie is a Luddite, but she is a hard sell when someone (like us) is trying to convince her to incorporate a new type of technology into her life.

Our company, 3W Design Group, is all about turning bleeding-edge knowledge into leading-edge advantage. We are early adopters in large part because Gregg lives, breathes and eats new technology. He finds out about a new Web application, shows me how to use it and we are off and running with possibilities. The problem is, as we excitedly tell our clients about our new discovery, it sounds to them as though we are at a Pentecostal Church service speaking in tongues. We know this happens because we have witnessed our listener’s eyes glaze over. This is where Susie comes in.

Gregg and I now have a policy that our pitches need to pass the “Susie test”. Through our interaction with her, we are learning to speak in plain English, in terms of “benefit to the client” of a new service. We practice this on each other, correcting client communications several times prior to sending them out. We eliminate as much jargon as possible. It is difficult to leave all technical jargon behind, but thanks to Susie we have found that we are trainable.

However, in those unguarded moments when it’s just the two of us, Gregg and I indulge each other in the joy of jargon, our own version of speaking in tongues. We share a bottle of wine and a side order of technology terminology - RSS, Wiki, aggregator, XML, web feed, Atom, open source. Those delicious words we dare not use to excess roll off our tongues in the privacy of our own home.

When all is said and done, we do realize that Susie is right. So we strive for clarity of purpose in recommending new technology to our clients. So hats off to you Susie for your diligent jargon watch.

Note: Susie and her writer husband Henry Godbout pack quite a one/two punch in the branding services profession. They have worked both with us and for us, and we highly recommend their collective work product. Contact them through Henry’s website or through us.