This week, I started a new engagement. I also instantly went from “rock star” to “nincompoop.” It happened within minutes not because I didn’t have the skills or capabilities to excel at the given assignment, but because the manager discarded everything I’d done in the past and naysaid anything I recommended. His vision, his opinion, and his need to be the man-in-charged trumped anything I had to offer.

No problem. I’ve played this card before.

It’s a short-term assignment. I’ll do what’s asked. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’ll write what I believe will most successfully and rapidly create awareness and adoption across the targeted audiences, applying the best practices I’ve honed at Intel, Dell, Microsoft, and other technology companies.

He’ll say it’s not “quite correct,” give me his point-of-view, and I’ll revise accordingly. When the assignment is done, he’ll puff up his chest, believing he’s delivered “one helluva” great messaging framework and associated communications.

Following my initial meeting with my new “temporary” manager, I stood in front of my full-length mirror, and critically examined the reflection. What had change from the day before? Had I grown less qualified? Did my knowledge evaporate like the dreams I had the night before?

Highly unlikely.

I’ve always been very successful at creating messaging because I tend to take a very unorthodox approach. More aptly, I leapfrog over the bureaucracy of kowtowing to internal stakeholders and simply focus on identifying customer pain points, and thoroughly understanding the benefits of the products or services being promoted, and key competitive advantages.

I then write and massage the messaging, critically examining whether I’d truly extracted the phrasing that both accurately describes the key customer benefits and successfully pits them against what the competition is touting. I write, allow the words to marinate, and then revise. Over-and-over again.

By the time I’m ready to present the messaging to the client, it’s crisp, compelling, and descriptive. More often than not, it’s close to being finalized after a tweak or two. Commonly, after presenting and hearing the client’s remarks it’s me who changes the wording, recognizing I didn’t quite capture the most salient points.

Going back to the grocery store

For several years, I wrote a series of articles on “Marketing from the Grocery Aisle.” They centered on how grocery stores cater to a wide swath of people from teenagers arriving on skateboards to busy professionals grabbing prepared meals. Regardless of the “demographic” walking down the aisle, the products on the shelf are methodically designed to attract attention and incite shoppers to toss them into their carts. Bold headlines, snappy copy, engaging design, appealing photography, and blatant branding not only “sell” the products at a glance, but differentiate them from competitors.

I refer to this magical blend of bravado and visual showmanship as “Pop Tarts marketing.” While it might not seem relevant for technical products, it’s the way our brains have been wired since we were toddlers, secured in shopping carts, reaching for boxes when pushed within reach of cereal, cookies, chips, and other tantalizing foods.

There’s a reason why the most successful websites use clear, familiar language, snazzy graphics, appealing (often branded) swaths of color, and headlines and subheads that create stickiness and simplify finding and navigating to additional content.

Consider the “Google” logo. Tinker Toy graphic design and levity.

The Google Cloud landing page sports similar branding with the logo at the top, and multi-colored line beneath the hero, which declares “Accelerate your transformation with Google Cloud.” It continues, sharing, “Build apps faster, make smart business decisions, and connect people anywhere.”

In recent years, Microsoft has bumped up the use of color, complementing the four red, green, yellow, and blue squares that accompanying their logo. They proudly declare on their Azure landing page, “Power your vision on Azure,” with the payoff of create apps using your favorite tools and run them anywhere with the newest technologies.

Creating messaging that accurately portray the key benefits and differentiators of a product, service or company which results in desirability and subsequent purchases isn’t easy. It requires removing your marketer’s hat and stepping into customers’ shoes and then reviewing, rewriting, validating, and repeating the same process repeatedly.

Not gonna’ lower my standards

Athletes are taught to never give up, even when they’re behind. Walt Disney once said, “Keep moving forward.” While it would be easy to simply slop out some mediocre messaging because it’ll probably be nixed by my new “temporary” manager, the integrity of my work would suffer. And the pride I have in my work would be compromised.