If you know me, you know that I love sports – especially professional basketball. I grew up when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird ruled the airwaves, and later Michael Jordan became something of a role model thanks to his work ethic and brilliant ability to provide exactly the stats (points, rebounds, steals, etc.) that his teams needed to win.
NBA basketball is still popular today, thanks to names like LeBron James and Steph Curry. For Americans, it’s easy to believe that the entire world thinks as much about these players as we do. It was a surprise, then, when I discovered that the initial rounds of the men’s basketball games in the Olympics this year are being played in a converted soccer stadium some three hours away from the busier venues in Paris.
As it turns out, men’s basketball is still considered a second tier sport in the world of Olympic competition, much less popular than events like track and field. In fact, a venue in Paris that would work perfectly for basketball games is instead being used for badminton (as reported by The Athletic). You read that correctly, badminton, the floaty cousin of tennis that looks a lot like a weird combination of ping pong and that current darling of 50+ athletes everywhere, pickleball. (Side note about pickleball: try watching high level pickleball sometime – it’s like an old Pong video game machine with the paddles stuck in one place).
It’s just another lesson for me about the fact that not everyone thinks the same way I do.
When you’re a fan of something like pro basketball, it’s easy to get caught up in the echo chamber and only see and hear things about pro basketball. Looks like that way of thinking doesn’t give enough credit to the millions of badminton fans around the globe. Maybe people like sports that they can aspire to play? That doesn’t explain the popularity of American football, but I digress.
At work, it’s easy to find ourselves in the same situation. We know what we are interested in, what we are passionate about, what we consider important, and then we project those same attributes on our employees, partners and worst of all, customers. This can cause big problems with highly technical products, for example. Experts who explain their technical product rarely make sense to non-experts.
“But technicians will be using them, and they’ll understand,” say the experts, defending their jargon and acronyms. That is absolutely true, of course, but rarely are the technicians the ones who are writing the checks to buy those highly technical products. Instead, that is often the responsibility of multidisciplinary teams who are tasked with deciding on products but not completely understanding those products (they simply don’t have time). That’s why it pays to target your communications at the CFO instead of the CTO.
The CTO can understand the product description if it is written for the CFO, but not always the other way around.
Why not just make your marketing, branding and support content so simple that everybody can understand it? What’s the downside of more people understanding what your product does? I don’t think there is one.
By assuming that everybody around the world prefers basketball to badminton, I’m leaving out a lot of important badminton fans – and that would be a mistake. Let Anchor help you to make easy-to- understand communication for your products and reap the benefits of a broader audience. Contact us today to learn how.
