Sometimes we can name products or services in confusing ways. It might make sense to you – internally – within your organisation, but will your customer understand it?
Here’s a bit of a rant about some confusing cheese – but with a lesson, if you’re responsible for naming your products or services.
Transcript
I’ve got a pretty simple question for you today. Are you confusing your customers? I’ve got a bit of a rant, and then I’ll follow that with the lesson learned. So let’s get into it.
G’day, I’m Jason Foss. Sometimes we do things that make perfect sense to us internally. But don’t make any sense to our customers who are looking in from the outside. One of my favourite sayings you’ve probably heard me say before is you can’t read the label of the jar that you’re in.
I didn’t invent that, unfortunately, I stole it. But it is so true. I saw an example in the supermarket the other day of these two cheeses. So let me just see if we can focus on those. I’ve got that one.
There we go, and that one there. Can you tell the difference? Now one of them is original, and one of them is classic. To my mind, original and classic a kind of interchangeable words, like what’s different between one and the other? And they both say sharp and crumbly on both packets. And both say, club cheddar vintage. On both packets, there’s nothing aside from the colour and the word classic or original.
There’s nothing to really differentiate them. I have no idea which one’s what. I’m sure somebody at Mersey Valley thought that was an outstanding idea. But does anybody really know what the differences between classic and original are?
It’s just it doesn’t make any sense. So think about this in terms of what you’re offering to your customers or your clients. Whilst somebody internally, at Mersey Valley thought this was really clear labelling.
It doesn’t make any sense to anybody else. Are you doing the same thing? Have you got labels on products, on services that sort of makes sense to you, but from the outside looking in people are going to go huh?
What does that mean? What’s the difference between these two things? So strive for clarity when you are labelling products or services or when you’re communicating generally, strive for clarity rather than trying to be clever because clarity will win every day. It’ll help your customer understand choice a versus choice b, and not this strange labelling they’ve got going on here.
Okay, that is my rent and my lesson for today. I’m Jason Foss. Thanks for watching.