I’d like to say that I was doing crucial research for a client, but I was actually doing research for an acquaintance on the benefits of light beer (some people will look for any way they can to indulge while trying to lose weight…), when I happened upon this excellent piece by Harvey Briggs of the ad agency, Lindsay, Stone & Briggs, called The Seven Sins of New Product Development. 

I’m not a product designer, but having worked with them, I’ve come to appreciate the challenges they face by being required to please all stakeholders without sacrificing a product’s integrity.  Often, they’re in a position where they feel their hands are tied.  In a perfect world, all product design stakeholders would take to heart advice such as what Briggs offers. 

Like the biblical seven deadly sins – the traditional “mortal sins,” or deal-breakers,” so to speak – these seven sins of new product design can cause a new product to fall into eternal damnation:

Pride – Not knowing your brand and its limitations

Envy – Copycat innovation

Anger – Blaming others for stupid mistakes

Sloth – The line extension trap

Greed – Biting off more than you can chew

Gluttony – Too many people feeding at the trough of new products

Lust – Not knowing when to stop

Learn how products can be delivered from these downfalls by reading the entire piece.   

Whether you’re a product designer, a marketer, or a consumer, you’ll appreciate Briggs’ Seven Sins of New Product Development.

Incidentally, how does the topic of light beer tie in with all of this?  Read the piece and find out! 

As someone who has been working with some usability and design folks on a project that addresses the subject of “feature creep,” maybe I’m just overly peevish about the subject of benefits vs. features.  Maybe. 

Nah…

So what’s feature creep? Though it sounds like something you might go dressed as on Halloween, actually, it’s even a little scarier. In a nutshell, feature creep, or creeping featurism, refers to when a product, after a series of new releases, upgrades, or incarnations, becomes saturated with features, many of which are never used, are redundant, or are even useless.

Many marketing folks still think that feature-touting is what sells a product, and ignore the part about showing the product’s overall usefulness or impact on its user’s well-being…its benefits.  So, often at the marketing group’s behest, new features are added with the belief that they’ll actually help sell the product.  Hence, creeping featurism.

And while some people will initially care more about whether a product has hot pink buttons than whether it actually works well, sooner or later, everyone wises up. (Yes, data shows that people do actually return and stop buying products when they become frustrated with the feature overload.) 

What keeps us buying a product is whether we perceive the product as having a positive impact on our lives…whether it will make us feel better, look better…do something better.  Despite what well-meaning design stakeholders may think, the evidence is in that ultimately, we consumers couldn’t care less whether a washing machine has 45 different settings, and we aren’t going to buy a car based on the fact that its passenger seat has six different softness choices.

So, what does all of this have to do with copywriting that sells a product? 

[Read more →]