Motorola's press release is a symptom of bigger problems
I was reading various news streams this morning, and came across this press release from Motorola titled, Motorola Announces its Convergence Ecosystem: Applications come to life in an IMS environment. I encourage everyone to go read it and come back to this page.
Ready? OK, pop quiz: answer the following three questions without going back and looking at the press release:
If you are an ordinary, mortal business person, you probably can't answer any of those questions. The problem isn't you; it's the press release. It has a Flesch reading ease score (excluding the boilerplate at the end) of 14. To put that in perspective, Reader's Digest has a readability score of about 65, The New York Times about 42, your average auto insurance policy about 10-15 (although the government has been trying to get those higher over the years), and the US Tax Code at about -6. So while the press release is more readable than the US Tax Code, it still has a way to go if it wants the New York Times to cover its announcement.
Oh, and all this assumes you are a native English speaker. The lower the readability score, the less likely it is that the document will be translated accurately and understandably into other languages. Said another way, Motorola can expect a lot of readers in Asia and Europe to be going, "Huh?" when they read the versions of this press release in their native languages.
I'm making light of this, but this illustrates a real and serious business problem. How do companies expect to convince prospects to buy their products if they can't understand them? The biggest problem with Motorola's press release is that it is fully buzzword-compliant, yet deigns to define only a few of them. I read it, and the words that come into my mind are from Shakespeare: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
I've written about Motorola's product and management challenges previously, but this press release says something deeper. It says that Motorola doesn't know how to communicate. And for a company that makes communications products, that's not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
Ready? OK, pop quiz: answer the following three questions without going back and looking at the press release:
- What is IMS?
- What industry is this aimed at?
- What benefits can customers expect from this Motorola offer?
If you are an ordinary, mortal business person, you probably can't answer any of those questions. The problem isn't you; it's the press release. It has a Flesch reading ease score (excluding the boilerplate at the end) of 14. To put that in perspective, Reader's Digest has a readability score of about 65, The New York Times about 42, your average auto insurance policy about 10-15 (although the government has been trying to get those higher over the years), and the US Tax Code at about -6. So while the press release is more readable than the US Tax Code, it still has a way to go if it wants the New York Times to cover its announcement.
Oh, and all this assumes you are a native English speaker. The lower the readability score, the less likely it is that the document will be translated accurately and understandably into other languages. Said another way, Motorola can expect a lot of readers in Asia and Europe to be going, "Huh?" when they read the versions of this press release in their native languages.
I'm making light of this, but this illustrates a real and serious business problem. How do companies expect to convince prospects to buy their products if they can't understand them? The biggest problem with Motorola's press release is that it is fully buzzword-compliant, yet deigns to define only a few of them. I read it, and the words that come into my mind are from Shakespeare: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
I've written about Motorola's product and management challenges previously, but this press release says something deeper. It says that Motorola doesn't know how to communicate. And for a company that makes communications products, that's not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.
Technorati Tags: Communication, Motorola, Press release, Flesch reading ease
posted by Carl Howe at
10:26 AM
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