One Not-So-Weird Positioning Trick
And Oatgurt, the goat milk-free alternative
Hello Gobbledeers,
I hope you enjoyed the time away from reading Gobbledy last week. I know the whole staff was sad not to share Gartner graphics with you.
Speaking of - I love (love!) that readers are now sending me Gartner graphics. Don’t stop! They’re amazing. In a bad way!
Dept. of “Huh?”
For this week’s Gobbledy - New Yorker contest:
If anyone can explain the headline and subhead below, you win. Bad answers only, please.
Underdog hero of the common man?
Falsity? Snobbery?
(I know that has nothing to do with what we normally do here, but it was possibly the only time with the New Yorker where I’ve thought to myself, “What the hell are you talking about?” So I thought I’d share. You’re welcome. Or I’m sorry).
I Present to You the Delivery Orientation Penis
Oh, it’s a key. My bad.
Oatgurt
Longtime Gobbledy reader SW sent me an email she received for an Oatly product called Oatgurt, which included the subject line, “Wow, No Cow!” I loved the subject line, but I believe she sent it to me because “oatgurt” sounds disgusting, though I don’t know why oatgurt sounds disgusting but yogurt doesn’t sound disgusting (to me).
Goatgurt also sounds kinda gross, though it really should be the name of this product:
Somehow a yurt doesn’t sound disgusting, except that it doesn’t have indoor plumbing.
I feel like I got off-track.
Let’s re-focus.
I was doing a little investigating of Oatgurt and learned it’s what Oatly calls their oat-based yogurt. And while searching for that, I found this truly delightful bit of copywriting where they describe the product. Take a look:
How good is that?
I’m bringing it up here because one of the themes of Gobbledy is that software companies have an opportunity to differentiate themselves through great messaging and copywriting and that almost none actually bother to differentiate themselves through great messaging and copywriting.
If the fine people at Oatly can make Oatgurt (vomit) sound enticing through clever copy (that actually tells you the benefits of the product), then it seems like if you’d just let someone do the same thing for your Distributed Order Management System, people would actually want to learn more about your Distributed Order Management System, rather than seeing their eyes glaze over like they just stopped in one of the 17 illegal weed stores within 3 blocks of my apartment and ingested an entire container of quasi-illegally obtained gummies.
Some Software Is for Humans, Some Is for People
You may remember wayyyyyyyy back 2 weeks ago we went through a bunch of examples of companies saying they’re “human” or “for humans” and then having a good laugh about how silly that sounded. Ha ha ha (you may have said to yourself.). Who else would it be for, if not for humans? Duh! Ho ho ho (you may have said to yourself if you are Santa Claus.)
So then maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked by this bit of nonsense:
Yes, it’s “designed for people.”
If you aren’t familiar with Navan, don’t worry - it’s not just you! They were previously the travel management company TripActions, and they changed their name because they, uh, let’s see - their name made sense, and now it doesn’t, so I have to assume they were trying to “create a category” or something. Let’s see…
Holy crap, I’m right!
I found the delightful gobbledy-filled screed from Navan’s CEO explaining why in God’s name the homepage mentions “business software designed for people.”
We are leading the charge in the third generation of business software and introducing a new category: Business Software Designed for People.
BSDfP.
If you’re filled with self-loathing, it’s absolutely worth reading the whole thing, but also, please don’t.
I do want to give credit where it’s due - one great positioning trick is to mention your own company in the same breath as a much, much, much bigger company so that people equate the two, and they do that brilliantly. In that long blah blah blah about the new category they’re creating (that I told you not to read) it mentions Salesforce 11 times.
It also says some stuff like:
“Salesforce made the bold claim that software was dead; in reality, Salesforce has essentially become "the cloud SAP." This is due to a number of factors, including: decaying usability, ever increasing fees, a fragmented product roadmap, a convoluted acquisition strategy, and sky high integration costs. Does that sound familiar?”
Uh, no.
And also, if you’re publishing under the CEO’s name, please proofread your stuff. Misplaced modifiers are not designed for people:
“We are seeing this across many industries, including the Travel and Expense industry, which is one of the biggest line items for most companies…”
The “Travel and Expense industry” isn’t one of the biggest line items, “travel and expense” is one of the biggest line items.
(Nitpicking finished.)
That’s what we’ve got this week.
I’ve presented about gobbledy and messaging at a few events recently, and I know that your company would also enjoy having me speak at one of their events.** Good news - I’m available! (I mean, not all the time. But if you tell me when you have an event where you want to hear someone talk about gobbledy, I bet we can make it work). You can shoot me an email at jared@sagelett.com. Or as always, if you want to talk about your website or positioning or what you should name your yak milk yogurt alternative, here’s my Calendly link.
**Not legally binding.
This is one of my most favorite newsletters, mostly because it's designed for people.
Boy, do I want to to unlock the potential of my application department strategy.