We, Us, Our, and the Messages We Send When We Use these Terms

Years ago, but not so many that I can’t remember, a New Yorker cartoon taught me everything I needed to know about two important life activities: dating and marketing.

First, the cartoon (which, if you’re interested, you can purchase: http://www.allposters.com/-st/Money-New-Yorker-Cartoons-Posters_c163122_p4_.htm)

 

The principle is obvious, correct? The man in the cartoon can’t wait to talk about himself. He may be eager to connect, impress, convince … or possibly not. He may be nervous, excited, or just a fool. In any case, he is finished with the small talk and he wants to get on to the topic at hand. The topic with which he no doubt feels most comfortable, on which he is the uncontested authority. Himself!

If he is lucky, and this certainly happens, his date will be too eager to please, or possibly too involved in waiting for HER turn, to notice. But more likely, this date will end without the connection (adulation?) to which the man aspires. It's a familiar scenario; that's clearly why the cartoon strikes a chord.

This is not a posting about my personal life, although I often find that my personal and professional lives intersect in interesting ways. That’s because much of life is about presentation and persuasion, and ALL of marketing is about those two things.

Most of us have experienced the difference between listening endlessly to another’s voice, and being invited into a legitimate conversation. Good marketing is a conversation, and bad marketing is a litany of description of who we are and what we do. Nowhere have I better heard this kind of better marketing described than in a requirements-gathering session for a new website, in which a colleague expressed her hope thusly: “I want our customer to see himself.”

If You Must …
Understand that it is next to impossible to avoid an occasional lapse into the first person. Website navigation is the number one example. “About Us” is more or less a web navigation standard, after all.

Otherwise, if you are compelled to talk about yourself in marketing, consider these two examples that hopefully illustrate good and not-so-good practices.

I pulled this content off the web:

We Build Websites!
XXXXX is a web design firm devoted to your online success. We focus on your goals, exceeding your needs, and creating a quality product. We love working with your ideas and translating them into design. From concept to completion, we work to create the design, structure and the underlying technology of your site.

For this posting I searched intentionally on “We Build Websites,” because it happened to be the tagline of a company (no longer existent) with which I was associated some years ago, and I wanted to see what, if anything, had become of the line. When websites were new, this was arguably a powerful piece of positioning. Everyone wanted to get to the web; ergo, everybody wanted to work with people who built websites. (I nevertheless argued that a “so what” was needed. I lost.)

But now building websites is in and of itself a commodity service, and quality is a given. So what is compelling about this statement? What sense do I have that the people behind this statement are smart, knowledgeable, creative, interesting … and interested in me? True, the word “your” appears here. But how do I know if I’m the right kind of customer for this firm? There’s nothing here to relate to.

And, not to call out just one firm: I researched dozens of service firms, large and small, and the predisposition to talk in the first person dominated them.

Contrast “We Make Websites” with a great use of “We”: Datsun’s (Nissan Motor Company) brilliant campaign “We are Driven.” It’s breathtakingly multidimensional:

1.     It positions the people of the company. THEY are driven in their work.

2.     It signals credibility. THESE CARS are driven. People buy them.

These two things together build confidence. I feel that I want to consider the cars of a company that is driven to perform, and I know that I am in good company in considering and maybe choosing a car from this company. Because their cars are driven.

So, if you must use “we”, “us” and “our,” use them to talk about what you stand for, not about what you do. But if you really want your customer to see himself …

Then make your marketing stand on good positioning, which is solely about the value that you offer. Think: “Get Healthy and Fit in Our Gym” is three words too many. You want to be about healthy and fit, not about a gym.  

There are so many reasons:

1.     You may be short-changing yourself, especially if you have more than a gym to offer.

2.     If you don’t have it now, you may in the future.

And most important:

3.     You want the customer to think of your facility as his gym … not yours!

JetBlue is my favorite airline, and one of my absolute favorite marketers, because they so understand how to place the customer in the center of the travel experience. Over and over again I see their brand promise, and I frankly wish I were the one who had created it.

 

From a JetBlue press release: “You Above All is designed to shine a light on the airline's key competitive differences and to celebrate its crewmembers' long-standing efforts to provide a superior travel experience …”

This campaign began as a rallying cry for employees, and morphed into a public statement of JetBlue’s business principles. Travel isn’t easy these days. Who doesn’t want to be:

1.     Treated as the most important part of the journey.

2.     Soaring above everything—above all.

I certainly do.

Now, enough about “we,” “us,” and “our!