Nina Vultaggio’s Righting Blog

United Law Group was featured on 3/18/09 on the OC Metro Minute.

Remember the yuppies of the ’80s, the baby boomers who were hungry for money and status? Well, many of their kids are now “yeppies,” or “Young Experimental Perfection Seekers,” says Kate Fox, a British researcher who has studied them. The 20 somethings don’t aspire to a job in finance and a BMW in the driveway. If anything, they quit their jobs to go backpacking, are slow to commit to relationships and are idealistic, but confused. Fox describes “yeppies” as “life shopping” or jumping from one thing to another, whether it’s a careers or lifestyles or partners. They are in search  of an ideal existence. It may be that they have extremely high expectations (fueled in part by the media). But many also have something that makes “life shopping” a lot easier: the financial backing of their “yuppie” parents.

Reprinted from Parade

Yeppies are NOT a marketers dream. These folks make my job a living nightmare. They’re idealistic yet completely self-absorbed. They don’t make a decision unless given permission by their yeppie counter parts. They despise the very corporate hands that feeds their parents’ yuppie bank accounts (the same bank account that indulges their selfish tendencies). And they flip from fad to fashion refusing to be ‘defined’ by the material world.

At the root is a belief that they are somehow being ‘altruistic’ by not pursing ‘things.’ The reality is that they’ve had no need to this point. Why are they a marketer’s nightmare? They lack predictability. Boomers want success. Xers want power and freedom. Gen Y searches for meaning and a return to tradition and values. This GenY offshoot defies definition choosing rather to fly with the wind. Of COURSE they have an iPod but they’d NEVER buy a Beamer. They’ll have the same payment for a uber cute Mini Cooper with every gadget known to man but own a BMW? That’d be selling out. Until their yoga instructor returns from her sabbatical in a shiny new X5.

I’m an old dog learning new tricks. Marketing to Gen Y via mediums such as text, Twitter and everything in b’tween takes a willingness to step outside my verbivore’s box and use the ‘nu lingo’ with courage. For years I’ve helped companies shape marketing speak tailored to their buying audience … high brow for the Great Generation, conservative for the Silent Generation, free and unfettered for the Boomers, and funky for Gen Xers. Enter Gen Y … as this new generation comes of marketing age (i.e., gets real jobs and disposable income) they’ve flown onto my radar. The question I’ve been asking myself is how to condense a billboard message for a generation trained to have ADD? These folks reduced blogging to twitting and emails to text. Computers are passe for them … the connect to the internet with a device that fits in their hand. They’re savvy and they’ve seen it all. There’s a saying that if you can’t be them, join them. I say if you can’t understand them, join them. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m texting, twitting, and tubing (YouTubing) Gen Y style — or at least attempting to! I’ll let you know how it turns out.

The Internet changed the face of communication forever. While a mere decade ago most relied on traditional print media for most communications, emails, social networking, blogging and the like are the pervasive form of communication today.

As with any massive transformation, participants must evolve or perish. Writers who want to add any value to Web 2.0 or 3.0 need to divest themselves of the beliefs of old and embrace the attitudes of this brave new world.

For a number of reasons the professional writer has a different set of criteria to address when writing for the Internet. Decreased attention spans, competition for attention and the technical aspects of reading from a monitor are forcing formerly verbose and sesquipedalian types to go brief or get brushed aside.

How do you do that? Cut the fat. Remove excess words. It’s like kissing your great aunt … keep it brief and it’ll be painless. Go long and you’re stuck for a suffocating, rose-scented embrace.

Get to the point. Be clear and concise. You have nine seconds or less to hook your reader’s attention before they click away.  Be exciting, not self-indulgent. Give me the facts, just the facts and do it with style!

Welcome to the world of Righting!

Before you publish or post check your document’s readability. The more mainstream your message, the more important this step. Readability is what separates effective marketing from a self-serving soapbox. The first makes us buy, the second sends us running in the other direction. It’s the core of Righting.

Not sure how to do this? Here are seven simple rules to keep in mind:
1. Keep words to three syllables or less.
2. Keep sentences to 20 words or less.
3. Keep paragraphs to 5 sentences or less.
4. Define all acronyms before you use them.
5. A picture is worth a thousand words.
6. Do NOT use NOT in a sentence; it confuses everything.
7. Break complex sentences into two, three or more sentences.

Simple speech sells. Keep it clear. You show your expertise more by making yourself understood by the masses. And remember, writers pontificate … righters sell.

The average office worker spends about thirty hours a week looking at a computer screen. That’s 3/4 of their work time staring at a monitor. Interestingly, despite the fact that computers have simplified the dissemination of information, they are a less effective medium for reading information than paper. Why? The flicker of light behind each monitor and the resolution issues.

What’s this mean to you? Reading from a screen is 25% slower than paper. That means your writing better be clear and concise or you’ll lose your audience …

For too many years truth in advertising was an oxymoron. Not so today. Hyperbole, rhetoric, and unsubstantiated claims don’t fly when the truth - or a platform to expose a lie - is just a keystroke away. Having been involved in technology marketing for years I know all about the temptation to promote vaporware just to make a buck … Me: “So what are the features of TechnoWizzo 1.0?” DevSpeak: “Features? Uh, well let’s see … it pretty much does everything the customers want …” DevSpeak 2: “Yeah, everything … what he said.” Being that fiction was never my strong suit I it was at that point that I’d gently suggest to ZYX company that they might want another writer as I was busy promoting tangi-ware. Even if a few people buy, the market can spot fluffy prose from a mile away. As a writer it does nothing for your career to be linked to a company that’s going backwards as soon as their paying customers realize that the smoke and mirrors aren’t part of the package. And for all you marketers out there, heed well the old adage: UNDERpromise and OVERdeliver. Until next time …

Our world is full of noise … Marketing clutter driving us to distraction. It forces itself on all of us whether we turn on the television, listen to the radio or simply shop in a store. My kids play catch the ticket as we walk the aisles of the supermarket jumping from one floor ad to the next. Heaven forbid that we waste one inch of available ad space. As a marketer I love it. I’m constantly absorbing the jargon. I applaud attention grabbing creativity. As a mother … It’s the beginning of my end. Here’s a conversation.

My son: “Mom, we have to buy Woderwheaties.”

Me: “Why?”

My son: “They make you strong.”

Me: “How do you know?”

My son: “It says so right here.”

In print conveniently bigger than the list of artificial ingredients, colors and sugar it says it has iron and calcium for strong bones. Now that he can read all these words my son is convinced that if its written it must be true. Trying to teach an eight-year-old about marketing is a daunting task. And a scary one.

Why scary? Because now he’s using it on me as evidenced by the note I got this morning …

“Dear Mom, Friends help us learn to be nice to each other. Pizza has sauce which is made from tomatoes. Can we invite my friend over and order pizza for dinner? It’s healthy for my body and my mind.”

Marketing … you gotta love it!

I get a lot of questions from clients about the value of “Buzz Marketing”. For those of you wearing DEET, Buzz Marketing is a type of viral marketing that involves dropping hints about an upcoming event to key people so as to orchestrate a buzz in the market independent of your traditional outreach strategy. While some criticize these efforts as deceitful or subversive in nature, the truth is they are guerilla tactics at their finest. After all, we all want to create a buzz around our products. So how do you do it legitimately? There are really two ways (anything else is a variation on the theme) … The first is through traditional PR. The upside is the potential to reach millions in one fell swoop. The downside - and reality for most small companies - is that unless you are a major player you’re on the short end of bad odds. The second is using new media. Chat rooms, personal blogs, IM, and other message boards even the playing field. Used properly these can yield big results regardless of the depth of your pocketbook. The key to success is to develop a long term plan, build a following and only deliver high-value content. This will drive your users back time and again and will get you recommended faster than you can say MySpace.

No, it’s not a new radio station. Nor is it a new variation on wiffle ball. It is the answer to your positioning problems. Let me explain … Marketers are famous for creating buzz words to explain buzz words. Sit in on virtually any marketing meeting these days and you’ll hear WIIFM bantied about. What’s it mean? What’s In It For Me? Not my question. Theirs. What’s In It For Me is marketing speak for getting into the mind of your target audience and understanding benefits from their point of view. Trust me when I tell you that they don’t care about the bits, bytes or bots in your software application. They want to know how it makes their life easier. Can they do more in less time? Can they buy a sports car with the money it saves them? Will they land their dream job? To drill down to this level you’ll need a white board, your most creative associates and enough beverages and snacks to sustain the team for a few hours. Remember, happy minds are creative minds. First list all of the features you can think of. Don’t limit yourself. Don’t filter. Just list. Next make a list of the advantages these features offer. Finally, consider both lists and drill down to the real benefits. Don’t be filter anything at this point, just list everything that comes to mind. Once you’ve done that, divide the benefits into categories and prioritize them from most compelling to least. I there’s disagreement, set it aside and revisit the statement after you’ve reviewed a few others. Now you’re thinking like a marketer.