Comments on: Too much talking and not enough listening

By: goodcopybadcopy » Blog Archive » Audience awareness – FAIL!!

goodcopybadcopy » Blog Archive » Audience awareness – FAIL!! — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:05:10 +0000

[...] Who they think they’re talking to: Talking to? Don’t you mean talking at? For more, see my previous post, Too much talking, and not enough listening). [...]

By: Clare Lynch

Clare Lynch — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:56:37 +0000

Aargh! Stakeholders is on my next list of words that should be banned.

Stakeholders = the people we have to pretend to care about.
Shareholders = the people we really care about.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:20:16 +0000

Very enjoyable. Have you had the call yet Clare?
I’m surprised that with links like ‘our customers’, ‘our staff’, ‘our suppliers’ that Tesco has chosen to distance itself from ‘the community’. Still, could be worse. Imagine ‘our stakeholders’.

By: Brad Shorr

Brad Shorr — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:15:07 +0000

Clare, Good idea – we should pitch the job. If they were any good, they would have found this post via brand monitoring and contacted you already.

By: Clare Lynch

Clare Lynch — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:01:10 +0000

Natalia, Brad, Dave, Lucy and Steve

Thanks all for your comments. What really surprises me is that if we can all see what’s wrong here, why can’t Tesco. You’d have thought that a corporation of that size would be able to afford to appoint a half-decent consultant to tell them where they’re going wrong. Maybe we should all join together and pitch for the job?

By: Stephen Carville

Stephen Carville — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:12:33 +0000

Sorry – what did you say? I wasn’t listening…

By: Lucy

Lucy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:37:12 +0000

This made me smile.

Thanks for the reminder that not everyone knows about the corporate website – it’s all too easy to forget that. Many retailers merge the two, giving the product/service the primary focus on the main domain (majorcompany.com) and having an ‘about the company’ section on that site, rather than splitting them into two (majorcompany.com and majorcompanycorporate.com). This does make it easier for the customer, though perhaps less friendly for the other corporate stakeholders (investors, job-seekers, media, analysts, etc).

And your point about using language that your reader understands is a good one. I suspect it is all too easy to go native, and to end up using the words that are used around you, which probably begin to seem like the obvious ones to use – perhaps an argument for having writers located well away from developers?

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:00:14 +0000

Yes, it does look as if they’re doing the very minimum to keep the competition commission happy. But it’s the self-congratulatory blurb that gets up my nose – I only occasionally go there for a tin of sardines! Do they really want to hear from me?

By: Brad Shorr

Brad Shorr — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:56:08 +0000

“Telling people how much you listen to them is not the same as listening to them.” Andrew and I are drawn to the same crux.

A client of mine wrote a book (I’m reviewing it on my blog this week) says, “Given the choice, customers would buy your products without knowing anything about you or your company.” I don’t care how highly they value listening; I just want them to listen to me now.

Some of the food companies actually do a fine job on this score. They put telephone numbers on the product label, so you can call in with questions. That came in handy last year when we were having some technical issues with turkey stuffing. Thank goodness we didn’t have to hunt for the corporate website – we’d still be waiting for dinner.

By: Natalia

Natalia — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:42:15 +0000

You have a lot of anti-spam stuff.

Anyway, Tesco is one of the myriad companies that *pretends* they want to hear from customers and care about their opinions, but don’t really. If they did, they’d certainly make it easier for people to communicate with them. And/or maybe they are just incompetent.