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Welcome to Trendy Words, the podcast about words and phrases that are popular in business and marketing, but are often misleading, meaningless, or outright bullshit. We talk about these words and what we could be writing or saying instead that is more effective.
00:01.34
Andrew Monro
Welcome to trendy words, the podcast about the meaningless, misleading and nonsense words we use in business marketing and what we can do about them. My name is Andrew, copywriter and voted most likely to tangent off topic during a meeting.
00:15.75
Andrew Monro
Our word for this episode is passionate and I'm joined today by my guest, Anna Gunning. Hi, Anna.
00:22.63
Anna Gunning
Hi Andrew.
00:23.69
Andrew Monro
How's things?
00:24.53
Anna Gunning
Very well, thank you. How about you?
00:26.05
Andrew Monro
Yeah, too bad. It's a little bit warm still here in Birmingham.
00:29.79
Anna Gunning
It is, but the sun is out and I'll take it.
00:31.88
Andrew Monro
Yes, indeed. I've known Anna now, I think I've known you now for few years. want to say about eight, five, six, I think it might be closer to eight.
00:39.60
Anna Gunning
five or six years.
00:42.71
Anna Gunning
Oh my God, eight years, that time has gone.
00:43.72
Andrew Monro
It might be. Yes, it does indeed. um And ah I blame Anna as one of the reasons why I now live in Birmingham. for originally even suggesting the idea.
00:52.34
Anna Gunning
I will take that.
00:55.10
Andrew Monro
um But for those of you, those that maybe don't know you as well, would you like to share a bit about who you are and what you do?
01:02.84
Anna Gunning
Yes. So i am the director of Gunning Marketing, which is a B2B copywriting and content strategy agency, which was founded 10 years ago. I work with scale up, mid and enterprise level businesses that need an authoritative and technically capable writer.
01:17.11
Anna Gunning
to deliver clear content and specialist domains are things like technology, industry, energy, property and construction, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, professional services, that sort of thing.
01:30.09
Anna Gunning
So very B2B focused. And the type of content that I do is things around value propositions and tone of voice, content strategies, web copy, thought leadership copy, all sorts of marketing collateral, and then also annual and ESG reports.
01:48.48
Andrew Monro
Cool. I'll just say that's a lot of stuff. And I realize it's like, you've pretty much done just about everything there is to do in like the world of like B2B copywriting.
01:59.24
Andrew Monro
And you've been doing it for, i think probably about twice as long as the rest of us.
02:03.63
Anna Gunning
and So it's probably about 20 years I calculated in total in B2B copywriting.
02:06.52
Andrew Monro
Yes.
02:08.07
Anna Gunning
And I'd say I'm very passionate about B2B copywriting and seg us into the discussion about why I don't like the word passionate.
02:11.21
Andrew Monro
yes
02:17.57
Andrew Monro
So Anna, why is passionate a bit of a weak word to be using in your marketing?
02:24.18
Anna Gunning
Um, so passion isn't bad and I don't want this to come off as like a polemic against passion. Um, because people are genuinely passionate about what they do. like I'm passionate about b two b copywriting. It's great. And it's port important. And I like working with happy, enthusiastic people who are motivated to do great things in whatever their domain is.
02:43.46
Anna Gunning
The reason why I don't like it in marketing is because people will often use it as a default USP or differentiator when they're talking about themselves or their business. And being passionate about what you do doesn't actually make you stand out from competitors in any way because they're presumably passionate as well.
03:02.47
Anna Gunning
So just by dint of having passion doesn't necessarily make you a better partner within whatever B2B supply chain you're part of. And that's why when I talk to clients about why prospective customer should choose them and they say we're really passionate or what makes us different, we're really passionate.
03:20.70
Anna Gunning
um It's something that I like to push against because i don't think that's quite enough to go on when you're trying to craft some compelling marketing messaging that's really going to resonate with the people that you're speaking to.
03:32.46
Andrew Monro
It's one of those words where when you stop to think about what the opposite would be, it really seems silly. like no one no one No business is going to say, it's like we're actually an incredibly poorly motivated and lazy company.
03:46.10
Andrew Monro
um
03:46.79
Anna Gunning
Exactly. That doesn't make, even if it's true, that doesn't go on the website or in the brochure.
03:51.12
Andrew Monro
Yeah. Yeah. that That's not a differentiator. So there, when the opposite is not in any way meaningful, saying things like passionate equally don't actually mean anything because we have to assume that no one's in business, uh, under duress.
04:09.64
Andrew Monro
I'll go with that.
04:10.83
Anna Gunning
Yeah, I suppose the thing about it is that when you think about it, just the way that you'd think about any other type of marketing message that you're putting out there, it doesn't pass the sort of the so what test in terms of why people should care about it. Why should your audience care that you're passionate about what you do, ah which is the sort of so what thing that I often go through. And I know lots of ah other copywriters often go through when they're working with clients that the client will say something.
04:36.82
Anna Gunning
And you will say, so what, in order to get behind what the meaning and the value of that statement is. So when somebody says, oh, we're really passionate and that's really core to why people should choose us.
04:49.69
Anna Gunning
And I sort of think, oh, that doesn't quite pass the so what test. What, what do then we go into? Does it being passionate passionate mean that you're making something that's higher quality? um because you care about it more.
05:00.95
Anna Gunning
And then we can sort of dig into where that higher quality might be coming from. Or does it mean you offer a really great service because you're really passionate? Okay, let's dig into some of the specifics around that. um it It can be a ah jumping off point for finding out what the so what is and why the audience cares.
05:18.82
Anna Gunning
But on the surface level, there isn't really any reason why the audience should care that you're passionate. The same way that you often find out find in press releases. where people will say, we are delighted to announce.
05:30.42
Anna Gunning
And you start with congratulations.
05:31.44
Andrew Monro
Yeah.
05:31.73
Anna Gunning
I'm glad you're delighted. Will other people be delighted that somebody else has been announced as new, the new chief marketing officer, like other than the chief marketing officer, I'm not sure.
05:35.41
Andrew Monro
know yeah
05:40.00
Andrew Monro
so Yeah, that your your friends your friends and family and your closest associates who may be invested in your internal position care, but the rest of us and your cut more importantly, like your customer when you're posting on a public forum, what do they get out of knowing being like, oh, you're passionate, being like, oh, yes, it's like you're great that you're in it. But like, what does it matter to me if so and so is now in a new position?
06:05.79
Andrew Monro
And they're really enthusiastic about that. Does that mean I'm going to get better customer service?
06:10.41
Anna Gunning
Yes, exactly. So it's sort of digging through to what the benefit to the target audience is. and And so like this isn't to say so like labor illusion bias and input bias, those are behavioral biases that do exist and can be leveraged in marketing. So that's there's and there's a whole slew of studies that back that up. And that's the idea that when you put blood, sweat and tears or effort into something,
06:35.45
Anna Gunning
there's more value to you as a result of it. So for example, people feel more positively towards flat pack furniture because they put the effort in to build it that necessarily then something of comparable quality that they're just buying pre-built already.
06:44.76
Andrew Monro
Right.
06:50.47
Andrew Monro
Hmm.
06:51.23
Anna Gunning
So you you place higher value on something and the more input that goes into this. And there's there's been studies that have been done on this, you know, in marketing messages, you know, it took us 840 hours to design this product and people then put more value associated with it because the inputs are perceived in of themselves to be valuable and passion does feed into inputs. um But that is true, but passion itself is not the only input.
07:21.14
Anna Gunning
that sort of that comes around the inputs and where the so that's where the so what sort of thing keeps coming in that, you know, that the input of the passion is important. But what does that mean? Does that translate again to how many hours that were spent refining a design or the type of technology that you've invested in?
07:39.32
Anna Gunning
um Because that's really important to give that great customer service or that first call resolution or whatever it is. um so so it's it's a balance that you have to take because as i said love working with passionate people and everybody should be passionate about what it is that they're doing what it is that they're marketing but it's just thinking about the right way to frame that and incidentally if you're interested in labor illusion bias or input bias um uh phil agnew has a really good episode of it on his nudge podcast which you could put link to it in the show notes if you want um that gives a lot of
08:00.17
Andrew Monro
Yeah.
08:08.73
Andrew Monro
I could absolutely could.
08:11.69
Anna Gunning
summaries of all the different studies that are are really fascinating to listen to.
08:15.37
Andrew Monro
Right. That is actually what my next question was, because I don't think I've ever heard the phrase labor illusion bias before. it I think that one might actually be a new thing that I have learned today.
08:25.75
Anna Gunning
well, good. Every day is a school day.
08:26.84
Andrew Monro
um Yeah. um Yeah. it It sounds a little bit like ah a variation on like the same sort of psychology that underpits sort of sunken cost fallacies of where like you, you're, you feel more committed to it because you've already put, as you said, time, effort, blood, sweat, and tears into what it is that you've done.
08:45.80
Andrew Monro
Although that I feel like it's a more negatively framed way of view.
08:47.54
Anna Gunning
Yeah, that's a more negatively framed way of doing it.
08:48.58
Andrew Monro
Hmm.
08:49.90
Anna Gunning
I think the way that it's used successfully in marketing is to show value into the creation of something. Like I put 800 hours into designing this, or there's X many hundreds of components that we've machined to perfection to make this widget and because it it goes to that perception of quality. If you've spent so much time an effort on something, on making something, then the assumption is that it is of higher quality.
09:22.79
Andrew Monro
Right. Have you ever actually seen like when using the passionate in that kind of way, has it ever actually worked against it where like, does it, has it, does it ever set expectations for a client that can be then let down by saying, oh, we're super passionate. And then so when that doesn't line up with the actual customer experience, does that, have you ever seen that, uh, see blowback from that kind of thing?
09:48.78
Anna Gunning
I haven't seen blowback. I suppose it would go to any other sort of differentiator that you put forward in your marketing. So if speed, you know, we have a 24 hour lead time on producing our widgets because you have a just in time supply chain or whatever it is, and then, and you don't deliver within the 24 hours and you're not delivering the experience to back up the marketing and passion, I suppose, would be the same if you're interacting with people who don't seem like they want to be there.
09:59.18
Andrew Monro
Hmm.
10:18.06
Anna Gunning
that is problematic and can affect retention and your ability to get onward business from word of mouth and recommendations and things like that. and But I don't think that it's more likely to cause blowback than other differentiators or marketing messages necessarily that are put forward.
10:36.21
Andrew Monro
It just doesn't ultimately mean anything when you have to go back and ask the customer later, did you find the experience terribly passionate?
10:42.90
Anna Gunning
it
10:43.01
Andrew Monro
And then they're going to be like, but yeah yeah, I i don't think, I don't think, yes.
10:47.21
Anna Gunning
And you phrase it like that and it it doesn't come off quite so well.
10:49.57
Andrew Monro
Yeah, yeah. I don't, it doesn't come out so well. Yeah. And I feel like ah my the client would probably think I was crazy for doing that. Yeah. Yeah,
10:58.64
Anna Gunning
Yeah, i probably i probably wouldn't i wouldn't have that in the the NPS follow-up survey as the um as a a metric that you're going against, which goes into the so what test.
11:03.46
Andrew Monro
yes. Yeah, yeah.
11:12.41
Anna Gunning
So what is the thing that does then demonstrate that the passion has come through in the customer experience. Is it something like first call resolution?
11:23.99
Anna Gunning
Is it hitting that 24 hour lead time? You know if you're in software development, is there something around the Dora metrics that, that frame that, you know, is it your MPS score in terms of people being able to recommend you? Those are all ways that your passion can manifest itself in the, in the customer experience or in the product that you offer or the service that you offer.
11:45.86
Anna Gunning
that can then be reflective of what is behind that passion.
11:56.68
Andrew Monro
Oh, no, stop it there.
11:58.25
Anna Gunning
Cool.
00:01.41
Andrew Monro
So how would you go about bringing up the so what test in a and a corporate meeting? So rather than, because I imagine it doesn't work really well when you have to talk to a group of people and say, it's like, why should I care?
00:16.73
Andrew Monro
And that comes off a little bit harsh.
00:18.54
Anna Gunning
Yeah, but so we're so professional and supportive.
00:18.93
Andrew Monro
Yeah.
00:21.20
Anna Gunning
You know, if the job isn't to poo poo the clients in any way, shape or form, it's part of the job of us as copywriters to ask the right questions and to frame the conversation in a way that we get the inputs that they need.
00:35.79
Anna Gunning
And I would say it's framing it around showing rather than telling. So saying we're passionate, that's the telling. How can we show it? um And when you rely, it's like anything else, when you rely on the telling rather than the showing, that's where you get the generic positioning and the generic messaging.
00:53.27
Anna Gunning
So it's talking to them about, so rather than saying you're passionate, how can we show that? um is that, for example, could we do videos of solution architects talking about migrating monolithic applications to cloud or plant managers talking about how using their sensors and IoT and simulation modeling is helping optimize throughput and having showing that passion through your people talking enthusiastically and authoritatively about a subject that is of value to your target audience.
01:25.17
Anna Gunning
um Because then you're getting into the specifics that show the passion, show the expertise in a way that adds value to the customer's purchasing process. um Is it with social proof and case studies and testimonials? So sort of the proof of the passion is is in the pudding.
01:40.68
Anna Gunning
um If passion is the input, like we were talking about before, what statistics realistically reflect the output? Is it that first call resolution, the time to market being speeded up, the reliability, the staff retention, the repeat orders?
01:55.28
Anna Gunning
how we can How can we break it down to show how that passion is actually sort of meaningful in something that's going to be something of value to the customers.
02:04.85
Andrew Monro
yeah
02:05.12
Anna Gunning
um Yeah.
02:07.17
Andrew Monro
Yeah, how that sort of translates, like I think the an example that I could think of is, well, maybe not so much now because I think they outsourced a lot to AI, but ah I think for the longest time, Octopus Energy talked about ah their passion in terms of how they often went above and beyond in terms of customer service.
02:26.94
Anna Gunning
Mm-hmm.
02:27.54
Andrew Monro
um And they had the awards and customer service feedback to back that up. And that would be, I feel like a ah good example that everyone would be familiar with of feeling.
02:36.21
Anna Gunning
Yeah, I mean, Octopus also ran adverts that were recordings from customer service calls with clips of the actual customers saying, wow, I've never talked to an energy company that resolved something so easily.
02:48.94
Anna Gunning
And I say, thank you so much. You were so very helpful. You know, that's the that's going even further and putting your your actual voice of customer front and center and in in an audio format that, again, yeah, shows that passion.
02:51.51
Andrew Monro
Mm-hmm.
03:04.01
Andrew Monro
Yeah. And it's, yeah, just, it follows on that, that point of thing, like you're, you're passionate. This is what it really means.
03:12.96
Anna Gunning
Yes. And I suppose often say that you often get value from working with a copywriter or other types of branding or ah marketing consultants um as a company, because it's really hard to read the label from inside the bottle.
03:13.52
Andrew Monro
Yeah.
03:25.89
Anna Gunning
Like you feel the passion and that's really important to you.
03:26.00
Andrew Monro
Mm-hmm.
03:28.28
Anna Gunning
And that's wonderful because passionate stakeholders are much more likely to engage with the marketing strategy development process and have interesting inputs and all of that great stuff. um But saying you're passionate is reading from inside the bottle and we need to get them to have that external,
03:40.15
Andrew Monro
Mm-hmm.
03:43.14
Anna Gunning
view and that's what they're paying us and using our expertise to do. So our job as copywriters and content strategists and marketing consultants is to ask the right questions and bring our expertise on how to shape the stories and messaging in a way that will then resonate with the target audience to help them turn that around. So if i just sort to give some you know hypothetical yet concrete examples,
04:07.70
Anna Gunning
If I ask a client what differentiates Acme Limited from its competitors and they say, well, we're really passionate. Okay, let's dig into that. There's lots of ways to steer that and get them to think in a way that I need them to so I can sort of get the nuggets out.
04:22.87
Anna Gunning
that we need to really make the marketing fly. So it's sort of, okay, what elements of the business are you really passionate about? Is it customer service? Is it research and development? Is it design, health and safety, QA, engineering, operations, aftercare, like thinking about the whole 360 of the business? Where do you think the passion, where are you really passionate about?
04:43.54
Anna Gunning
And then you can start to dig into why those individual elements are so exciting. Another question that I would ask would be something like, what aspects of Acme um make customers say, wow, that's really brilliant?
04:58.86
Anna Gunning
Because that then is a reflection of how that that passion is manifested in a really positive way. Or what elements of the product or service have you been investing in over the past 18 months? Because directing that investment somewhere isn't indication that that's a an area that the business is presumably passionate about.
05:16.83
Anna Gunning
Or why do you win contracts over your competitors? Why do competitors say that they choose you? um Or even things like what are mistakes you see customers make when working with companies like you?
05:28.11
Anna Gunning
And how do you help them overcome those mistakes? That can also help turn it to a much more sort of top of funnel um approach that looks at the looks at things from more of the customer's perspective.
05:42.00
Anna Gunning
And then like we were talking about with Octopus, what are examples of the best customer feedback you've received? What do people like most about working with you? These are all different sort of slightly different angles to dig into where the source of that passion is so that, like we said before, you can get to the the output and the thing that's really going to speak that customer's language or align with their challenges, pain points and goals, as opposed to the passion, which is reading it from inside the bottle.
06:07.70
Andrew Monro
And I'd suppose that there's a good bit of advice for... any business leader that isn't sure or isn't confident about, they want to talk about their passion, but they're not really sure how that shows up.
06:20.32
Andrew Monro
Start with talking to your customer, ask them, where do you find there are there really sort of positive and uplifting and, ah outstanding moments in their experience of working with you.
06:33.18
Andrew Monro
um
06:34.23
Anna Gunning
Or talking with your staff and your colleagues, you know, sales, the frontline salespeople or customer service people, they'll have a lot of really good insight into the language customers use, the questions customers ask when they first get in touch and at different points of the decision making process that they get in touch with you about when they have an issue or, you know, what they're saying when the issue is resolved.
06:57.62
Anna Gunning
or even your social media people that are doing the social media listening and have the sort of finger on the pulse of what's what's being published online. There's all sorts of, without having to feel like you're putting yourself out there and going directly to customers, there's a lot of insight within the organization of people that are having direct customer facing contact that can help give you that insight.
07:15.89
Andrew Monro
and
07:18.78
Andrew Monro
Yeah. And it's also, I feel is like that also makes the whole process much more authoritative of being able to say, it's not just we're passionate because we say so.
07:30.65
Andrew Monro
we are It's much more powerful if you can get your customer to say they are passionate and here is why.
07:38.84
Anna Gunning
It is one of those things that if you get it in a testimonial, there's no problem with. That's a wonderful way thing to have in a testimonial that's published. It's more just using it. I would say the reason why I brought up the words and it's something that I push back against with clients is because it's not something to say about yourself that there's There's something that you can dig into more that will be much more effective from a marketing perspective um if you don't let yourself rely on passion alone.
08:07.32
Andrew Monro
Yeah, it's the the same thing we've got when we use the word trust in marketing, being it's just like we are trusted or we are trustworthy, are terribly meaningless because it's only meaningful if somebody else says that about you, rather than being able to say that we said it about ourselves. Because there's no other way of, from I guess from a really logical standpoint, you can't independently verify whether that statement is true or not if you are only saying it about yourself.
08:35.97
Anna Gunning
Yeah. And I'll say it's just, it goes into some of those that, you know, it's, again, it's very easy for chat GPT to write a whole paragraph for you around how passionate you are, but in the same way that there's a lot of noise out there in the competitive landscape for a lot of the clients that I work with, um potentially big contracts on the line, there's not necessarily a lot in sort of technology or approach that necessarily is differentiating.
08:46.80
Andrew Monro
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
09:05.58
Anna Gunning
um digging in to like going beyond the generic and really digging into how that passion manifests helps you be more specific in your marketing and therefore helps you stand out more effectively against lots of people saying very similar things.
09:22.71
Andrew Monro
Yeah. And it might also introduce you to things that you may not have been aware were things that the client was really excited about or found to be just a really positive experience.
09:35.10
Andrew Monro
um And that's always, I feel like a difficult one with business people where they think they know where it is that they're excelling.
09:35.30
Anna Gunning
Mm-hmm.
09:40.72
Andrew Monro
And then you could talk to the customer and find it being like, actually the things that like the CEO thinks are really important, the customer barely notices. But over here, ah there's this yeah this one area like with like ah so many times when I've worked with IT t clients, it's and the speed of the help desk, which I feel is just like chronically overlooked and underloved aspect of working with IT clients is that the help desk is ah where so much of the client, it makes or breaks the experience for the client. And it's rarely ever the center of a talk about market positioning.
10:18.41
Anna Gunning
Yeah, so I think that's one of the, if you're with marketing, like it depends on the project. So some copywriting projects don't necessarily need a full scale analysis of, you know, all of your, like loads of customer interviews or a full review of the customer journey and the customer experience. um Others do. And so it's identifying based on the goals of the project that you have,
10:46.28
Anna Gunning
the angle that you need to go for, the depth of research that you need to do, and also the way that that passion framing is going to be most relevant. And that's just going back to marketing 101. Like, what is the goal of the project? Who are your target audiences?
11:00.84
Anna Gunning
You know, what value are you you looking to extract? What key messages do you want to make sure you want to communicate? What's the call to action at the end of it? When you have all of those basic sort of copywriting brief things set out, you then have a framework for directing the specificity in the way that's going to best contribute to the campaign goals.
11:22.28
Andrew Monro
Yeah. And it just generally makes it so much city which easier being able to start from that point rather than having to start from colon thinking about but like, oh, how are we going to differentiate ourselves? Especially because if you're the problem, I think, with like the inside the label, the situation that you described is that.
11:41.80
Andrew Monro
so much of the life inside the label is very similar across companies so it's very normal to come up with the same kinds of ideas because it often feels the same in terms of a lived experience when you're an employee or a manager inside of an organization
11:57.42
Anna Gunning
But that's also where copywriters can have fun. So even if, like you said, there's not much difference in approach, like you haven't got a proprietary technology or some a process to work with that's like, you can put the stake in the ground that this is very different from the competition.
12:13.85
Anna Gunning
um And your differentiator is just, you have great people doing great things, which happens a lot of the time. um The way that you say it, which is where the copywriter comes in, can be very differentiating.
12:26.21
Anna Gunning
The tone of voice that you use, the framing that you use, the headline message that you use, that all has an influence in helping the campaign work and helping the client stand out to the customer.
12:41.88
Anna Gunning
um So there's a lot of tools in our copywriter arsenal in that regard that that we can leverage so that you're not, you know everybody, we're not, were not everybody's not just enabling digital transformation or something like that.
12:55.52
Anna Gunning
and
12:55.84
Andrew Monro
Yeah.
12:56.31
Anna Gunning
That you can like, yes, you are, but show don't tell.
13:01.28
Andrew Monro
It's almost a bit like, yeah, you are sure you are doing that, but that's almost not the point. It's it's the the literal thing that you were doing, but it's not really the, hasn't doesn't really in any way describe the experience that you deliver.
13:16.11
Andrew Monro
and And it doesn't really touch upon any part about like why someone would want to work with you over why someone would want to work with a competitor.
13:25.00
Anna Gunning
Which goes back to what you were talking about earlier in terms of framing that in a different way. So how can you show rather than tell the passion? And is that through, you know, is that through videos? Is that through having your the human side come out and like your people showing their authority and their expertise and their passion?
13:44.92
Anna Gunning
Is it through the case studies, the testimonials, the statistics, the proof points? You know, that's... That's how you stand out. are Those are tools that you can use to stand out in that sort of situation when everybody's passionate, everybody's enabling digital transformation, everybody has fast turnaround times, you know, that sort of thing.
14:07.83
Andrew Monro
Anna, if somebody wanted to get to know you more or to reach you, how would they find you on the internet?
14:12.56
Anna Gunning
Mm-hmm.
14:15.41
Anna Gunning
I am on LinkedIn um at Anna um i'm Gunning. I'm at gunningmarketing.co.uk and Anna at gunningmarketing.co.uk is my email address.
14:25.61
Andrew Monro
Cool. Thanks very much, Anna.
14:27.41
Anna Gunning
Thanks, Andrew.
14:28.80
Andrew Monro
And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I would really appreciate a like, subscribe, a comment, anything to let me know that you are having fun out there.
14:40.79
Andrew Monro
um If you want to send me any direct feedback, you can find me on LinkedIn at A.G. Monroe, or you can send me an email if you're particularly motivated at Andrew at Andrew Monroe.com.
14:54.52
Andrew Monro
Thanks very much. See you in the next episode.