Guest post written by Keith Yazmir and Patrick Buckley
Cloud computing is revolutionizing the way companies do business, but at a cost: alienating CIOs and their support staff.
Too often, cloud marketing is designed solely to capture the attention of CEOs, CFOs and others who are divorced from the day-to-day concerns of IT staff. This messaging highlights the revolutionary nature of the cloud. It talks about paradigm shifts. It promises to redefine IT roles. The cloud has been positioned as radical change – tough to swallow if you work in IT.
As a research-driven communication strategy firm our work is predicated on a very simple idea: that it’s not what businesses say that matters, it’s what their audience hears. For us, developing truly resonant and persuasive messaging requires understanding how your audience views the world and constructing messages that fit within that worldview.
After examining the messaging used by many cloud innovators, it’s clear some are ignoring their audiences’ view of the truth about the cloud.
IT audiences are a conservative and risk adverse bunch. For them, large changes come with large risks. Change represents a loss of control and the potential for disaster. All of this informs the way they view the cloud and the way they hear cloud-related messaging.
We see this sort of disconnect between what brands say and what their audiences hear across numerous industry verticals. Brands introducing category-changing products consistently face the temptation to use messaging that reflects their own excitement without taking into account their customer’s fears. But given the ability of the IT staff to block cloud-related decisions, this approach is particularly dangerous in IT.
When it comes to messaging, instead of fundamental shifts, IT decision makers want positive – yet incremental – change. They want to hear how the cloud can improve the way they work today, not radically alter it. In short, they want evolution, not revolution.
For example, the preponderance of cloud-related messages targeting IT professionals – in advertising, public relations and the digital space – ask and in some cases command businesses to “move to” the cloud.
This phrasing may seem innocuous enough, but this is exactly the wrong way to talk to IT departments. For CTOs, CIOs and their staffs, moving to the cloud sounds like a paradigm shift. The language brings to (their) mind a total break from the known and understood. It asks them to abandon comfort and control in exchange for something most can’t even define.
- Page 1 / 2