A Letter to Your Customers

September 15, 2009

Letters of Note compiles famous and important letters from famous and important people. As you can imagine, some are staggering in their meaning – Ghandi’s letter to Hitler, for instance, or the letter Winston Churchill wrote for his wife in the event of his death.

But, above all, these letters all have one thing in common: they represent communication in its rawest form – words on paper, no sound, no video, no Flash; just the bare bones message of one person’s desires and thoughts.

The art of communication depends on words as much as it does design, technology or media mix. In fact, in this humble copywriter’s opinion, it needs words above anything else.

In marketing, each word is carefully chosen to influence and clarify. When you think about it, every message a business sends out to the public is simply a letter from company to customer. Every ad is an open letter to the viewers. Every Web site is a letter to someone who stumbles upon it.

Which means the decorum of letter writing should always be evident. Are you being clear? Are you presenting an argument for change, or are you simply making a joke? Are you being genuine, or is your message false?

If you were sending your advertisement to someone, would they want to continue correspondence? Are you offering anything worth responding to?

Maybe Hitler didn’t heed Ghandi’s request. But it certainly wasn’t for lack of clarity or influence.

By Corey

Filed Under The Process

Comments

2 Responses to “A Letter to Your Customers”

  1. m_scott_hay on September 18th, 2009 9:56 am

    Your best post yet. Informative. Even a little lyrical.

    Often, the copy provides a framework as well. Great design follows that framework. It doesn’t just flower up your words. Think more-Design less.

    More brands should think of their communications as authentic letters to the public, as opposed to just splashing shit in people’s faces. Maybe they should even go beyond that by making it an open letter by encouraging feedback from people?

    Great post, Corey.

  2. Corey on September 18th, 2009 10:11 am

    Thanks, sir.

    You’re absolutely right. The landscape of social marketing has given brands the go ahead to actually reach out for conversation with their customers.

    Answering the call of your customers is no different than responding to a pen pal. You may never meet them in real life, but the words you bounce back and forth are going to be full of impact.

    Not because they’re important, but because they’re genuine.

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