The real world is about colours, textures and forms, not words. As a copywriter, it pains me to say it but it’s true.

Of course, print, digital and film media – pictures and words – are essential to communicating ideas. But no integrated approach to branded communication is complete without taking care of the physical and seeing how the branding occupies a real space in the real world.

How will your product and its packaging look and feel in the hands of a customer? What are the instant and instinctive animal responses to your logo? What label do people give to your product labelling? These are vital questions when every delicate detail could be decisive.

Which is why Sandberg Trygg’s Art Directors and Final Art people spend an awful lot of time fiddling about with boxes, playing with colours, and doodling squiggly lines. Honestly, it’s like a kindergarten sometimes … OK, I admit I’m jealous. It must be nice not to stare into a screen for inspiration and only be able to “build” something by tapping buttons.

Anyway, here’s a showcase of our design work, functional communication that end-customers have held, squeezed and eventually bought.

More and more people are turning to social media to find relevant business information. Research studies on how we use social media professionally are now also starting to turn up.

One such study is the 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study, at business.com. This study was carried out among 2393 North American professionals within B2B. This is to date the largest study of its kind.

Among the participants 69.1 per cent prefer to attend webinars or listen to podcasts. 62.2 per cent visits sites and forums that feature user ratings and reviews for business products. Almost as many, 62.1 per cent, visit company or product profile pages on social media sites.

Many also choose to visit company blogs (55.1 per cent), conduct searches on social media sites (54.5 per cent) and participate in online business communities or forums (51.1 per cent).

NDC Suite from Kollmorgen is a collection of tools for building control systems for driverless forklifts. It includes software and hardware, and services ranging from design to upgrades. As part of the work to support sales visits, Sandberg Trygg has produced a brochure and website that describe the NDC Suite. The aim is to get more forklift manufacturers buying control systems from Kollmorgen instead of using systems developed in-house.

During the 1960s our predecessors Anderson & Lembke produced a publication called ”Technical advertising texts – how and why?”. It was meant as internal training material for copywriters.

The publication is of course dated in many ways (few would call an art director a layout man today). But on the whole, it contains thoughts and writing tips that as just as relevant today as they were then.  Here are some of them and if you are interested you can download the whole publication as a pdf. (Only available in Swedish. The ten points below are a summary of the contents)

“Ten things to think about before you start”

1. Most of what we have previously taught you about the art of writing does not apply to technical advertising texts. You have to learn to condense large amounts of complicated information into a few, simple words. You have to go through every line you write and weed out all the unnecessary words.

2. Readers read fast. They don’t take the time to read a long unclear sentence. It’s easier to turn the page than look for facts in a stodgy text.  Say it clearly, say it simply and say it fast.

3. It is two totally different things to write a text about an ice cream and a contractor’s machine. There is no impulse buying when you sell producer goods.

A businessman that invests in expensive equipment is tied to it for a long time. If the equipment does not correspond to the promises you give him, he can not throw it away or put it in the freezer and forget about it. His existence as a businessman is dependent on the efficiency of his equipment.

It is possible to hypnotise a buyer by shouting loud and long enough. But as soon as he has bought his equipment, the brainwashing ends. And one of two things happens. Either the goods work as they should and everything is fine, or you have promised too much and you can just as well cross that customer off your list. And not just him but also many of his colleagues – word travels fast in the world of business.

4. Too many superlatives, too broad generalisations and far too much emphasis on secondary product features can have a negative effect. Just one incompetent, exaggerated or naive statement is all that is needed to blow away his interest and get him to turn the page.

If you promise too much, you set a trap for yourself. The text is not credible, and at the same time creates dissatisfaction with customers. Sooner or later they will work out that the promises aren’t real. This can lead to discontent with products that actually work faultlessly. And just one dissatisfied customer can make all your customers in a sales district start buying from the competitors.

5. Write simply and to the point. Keep to the spoken word as much as you can without the text getting too familiar. Eloquence and the style of essays and fiction are not suitable when you want to sell producer goods.

6. Write directly to your buyers.  Not everyone who reads the publication is a buyer (less than 25% for nearly every product in most trade journals). Of course, it is fun if others also read the ad. But still always write only to those who are buying or who can influence the buying process. Forget all other readers.

7. The B2B advertising manager nearly always has a limited budget. He must therefore make sure that he primarily does advertising that helps sell the company’s products. Such advertising is also often the best corporate advertising. Corporate advertising of the conventional type is seldom a profitable investment taking into consideration how narrow and clearly defined the markets are for the majority of producer goods.

If a company wants to give to charity, it should be done in a more suitable way than through the advertising budget. If you want to use advertising to help recruit qualified personnel or try and influence the company’s share price, then you should have a separate budget for this. The advertising budget is normally administered by the sales department and then it should be used for producing sales results.

8. Do advertising for the company’s products and services, not for the product name or technical quirks. It may be necessary to work up a product name. Do it by clearly associating it with specific product advantages. The company may have made interesting technical progress. This may be incredibly interesting but it does not belong in advertising if it does not offer the customer a direct benefit.

9. Avoid meaningless, boring and tiresome ”advertising language”. Words like biggest, best, unsurpassed, revolutionising – and quality, operational safety and operational economy  – are so worn out that they are completely ineffective. Avoid comparisons that are not comparisons. Build on facts and common sense.

10. Speak to one reader at a time. He’s sitting at his desk in a quiet room. There’s no reason to shout. He’s a professional in a business where they use the product you want to sell, and he probably knows more about how to use the product than you do. Far too much B2B advertising is written as if it were a ceremonial speech. It’s easy to fall into that trap. You think of the 18 000 civil engineers that read technical journals or the 50 000 leading people within business that read financial journals. And suddenly you are standing on the podium looking out at an auditorium of 100 000 people – then you begin your speech. You use solemn phrases, you make dignified gestures, you formulate, generalise. You get drunk on your own knowledge and the result is just words, words, words …

To the reader sitting alone at his desk using some of his limited time to look for useful facts, you come across as plain silly. Writing B2B advertising should be like writing a personal letter, a business letter to a business acquaintance. The advertising reaches thousands of readers but it reaches them one at a time. They read it during a time when they are expected to do something of value for the company, every minute, every hour. Or they read it as ”homework” in the evenings, which they would really prefer to spend with their families or friends. There is only one reason for reading B2B advertising – the advertising must give the reader something of value for his work. The reader wants facts, served as clearly and simply as possible.

The reader is in a hurry. He skims and jumps in the same way as you read an evening paper. As soon as the copywriter starts to generalise, use cliches or gets lost in discussions that only interest the advertiser, he gives his reader a chance to give up. The same effect is achieved when the text contains unsubstantiated statements. You have to keep in mind that the reader does not know the author personally. Not even the company brand
is any guarantee for credibility of the text. Advertising is always regarded as biased and that’s a fact. Which is why it is vital to give clear, convincing evidence in the text that the statements made are true.

Speak calmly, clearly and as simply as possible to the reader. Explain the benefits that the product can offer. Avoid superlatives. Avoid generalisations. Give specific facts. Don’t write fiction, hold lectures, don’t boast or sound like a high-flying salesman. Write simply, understandably and genuinely for one reader at a time. End by asking him to test the correctness of what you say. Offer him more information. But never urge him to buy.

As communicators, we have two choices. We can either try to alter our audience’s perception in a direction that better suits our purposes, or we can strive to reinforce an existing perception. That may sound cynical but it’s merely a reflection of human nature. We do it all the time. After all, why else would we want to look and be our best on a first date or at a job interview?

Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was a master of the art. Determined to create a progressive, secular state following the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, he faced formidable obstacles. For example, tradition dictated that women should wear veils. This flew in the face of Atatürk’s vision for Turkey, but what could he do? He could try to impose a ban, but this would only antagonise the country’s religious community, possibly provoking unrest. Being a lateral thinker, Atatürk devised a much more elegant solution: he simply made it compulsory for prostitutes to veil themselves! That way, he ensured the popularity of the garment would plummet.

This is the first in a series of short articles on perception.

Cancer. A word that inspires so much fear. Although not as much today as fifty years ago. Then only one out of four cancer victims survived. Today as many as 60 per cent are cured.  A dramatic improvement that we owe to the dedication of many great men and women.

As February 4th is World Cancer Day we would like to pay tribute to one of these pioneers – Lars Leksell – who in the early 1950s decided to take on one the most feared types of cancer – the brain tumour.

To reduce the staggering mortality rate for patients undergoing brain surgery he devised the stereotactic frame with its 3-dimensional coordinate system. The frame makes it easier to target a tumour and therefore treat it with greater precision.  He also developed the Gamma knife, which enables so-called non-invasive brain surgery – a procedure that requires no incisions in the patient’s skull.

The Gamma knife accurately aims many narrow beams of high-intensity radiation to converge on one spot. Each individual beam is relatively low energy, so the radiation has little effect on intervening brain tissue. The method is gentler, more effective and cost-efficient than traditional open surgery.

The technology is still at the core of modern radio surgery, but refined and developed by companies like our client Elekta – the company that was founded by Lars Leksell. Radio surgery today means a significant lower dosage and sub-millimetre precision. Patients get safer treatment and more healthy surrounding tissue is spared. To date half a million patients have been treated using this technology.

Read more about radio surgery and Elekta on their new homepage.

Eight out of ten b2b buyers find their suppliers instead of the other way around. This is the conclusion of a 2009 report from MarketingSherpa – an American research firm specializing in finding out what works, and what doesn’t work, in marketing.

Which is exactly why you should ask yourself the following questions: How easy/hard is it for prospects to find my company and my offering? What happens when they google my company name? Or services, products, business areas and key words that I want to be associated with?

But don’t stop there. What other ways are there for prospects – who might never have heard of me – to find out about me? As we continue to develop the way we search for information and form our opinions, social media is becoming increasingly important. In a recent poll 94% of business bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging.

Which makes sense. An interesting blog increases traffic, which generates a higher search engine ranking. In addition, the content – even if it is niched – is broader than an informative corporate website. A blog features current events and more specialised subjects. The tone of voice, and thereby the language, is freer. All of this makes a blog ideal for long tail searches.

But even more importantly, a blog – and all other social media – enables dialog. Others can comment on your content and link to it. And you can post clever comments in already established and relevant forums creating an interest in your offering. Suddenly there’s a buzz. Word-of-mouth, digital style, makes you more visible and your offer easier for prospects to find. Spread the word

With all due respect to friends and clients at SKF, the question is not quite as ridiculous as you might think. At least not for this layman. Some background. SKF has provided bearings for over a century, in the process learning just about everything there is to know about how objects rotate – and just as importantly, why they suddenly stop. And guess what they discovered? The vast majority of mechanical breakdowns can be attributed to a malfunctioning rotating part. Who’s the greatest expert on those parts? SKF. And who’s the world’s leading supplier of them? Right again.

No, dear reader, as you’ve already guessed, I wouldn’t dream of blaming SKF. My aim was simply to share with you what an extraordinary company it is. But had the headline been ’SKF is fantastic,’ you would never have made it this far. After all, nothing bores a reader more than bluster and blarney.

At the recent 9th European Peritoneal Dialysis (EuroPD) conference in Strasbourg, France, Sandberg Trygg helped Gambro present the latest and strengthened scientific evidence for their peritoneal dialysis offering.

“The attendees are specialist doctors, leading experts in their field. Of course, the hard scientific basis for Gambro’s market communication is what’s most important to them”, explains Simon Copley, the copywriter on the project. “We turned that to our advantage. And made the science the real star of the film and the brochures at the Gambro booth.”

Click on the booth to start the film.

New fresh appearance. New punchy texts. And a new structure that makes it easier to discover everything that Crepido Systems has to offer. If you’re looking for a sharp IT consultant company, or are simply curious, we recommend a visit to: www.crepido.com