Technology PR can sometimes resemble the fabled chaos of the Tower of Babel, with new languages sprouting from every corner and a fair amount of miscommunication. Engineers and IT departments seem to thrive on creating entirely new vocabularies to explain the features and functionality of their products. PR and marketing teams take out their decoder rings and translate it back into English, putting it into context so that the customer, reporter or analyst can comprehend it without an advanced programming degree.

Increasingly, companies are trying new tools to help better explain the value of their product or service. Many are developing graphics and images that evolve traditional Power Points to the next level. One company, used by several leading corporations as well as technology publications, Xplane, bills itself as the Visual Thinking Company.

Xplane takes complex information and translates it into visually interesting pictograms that define a problem and solution. Used primarily by technology companies, Xplanations (cute), are like cartoons for CIO's. They quickly point out the customer issue/problem and the solution to that problem.

I recently spoke to Dave Gray, founder and president of Xplane (www.xplane.com)

R.W. What makes a good Xplanation?

D.G. We focus specifically on things that are very difficult, if not impossible, to "dumb down", without losing critical information. We make sure that information comes across quickly and at a high level.

R.W. How do you begin a new project with a customer?
D.G. Depending on where they are in their process, our customers sometimes need assistance, not in describing their message, but in getting internal people aligned to a specific message. Every internal stakeholder may have a different agenda -- depending on their position, they may see the situation from a brand, product, sales or marketing perspective. These viewpoints are not necessarily in conflict -- they all have a common goal-- but sometimes these stakeholders need an outside perspective to help them come to a shared understanding -- and visualization can be very helpful to that. We try to bring a "customer voice" to the process. Nobody disagrees that the customer perspective is key to success, and this gives everyone a common starting point.

If the internal stakeholders are well aligned, we try to get a good understanding of the audience and the business objective and go from there.

R.W. What qualifies your team to translate complicated technical information?

D.G. We've been working for 10 years or so with technology companies who have a business-to-business sales focus -- from startups and middle market companies to larger companies such as Sprint and HP. They all have something in common --complex information that needs to be brought across very quickly to multiple stakeholders.

R.W. Once a customer signs up for an Xplanation, who works on the project?

D.G. We usually have two people focused on a project. The account executive is the primary point of contact for the business aspect of the relationship, and a business analyst who manages the consultative business and creative thinking that leads to our deliverable.

R.W. What are the keys to a successful project?

D.G. 1) Understand your primary audience
2) Know what action you want them to take
3) Determine the business result that you can measure from this process -
i.e. a phone call from the customer, better understanding of your product from a reporter, etc.
4) Focus on the customer's perspective

R. W. What's next?

D. G. We are working with some of our Fortune 1000 level customers to develop what I would call learning environments, and here's why: When you are consistently rolling our new products -- or when you have multiple sales people calling on the same corporate customers -- you have an opportunity to make it easier for your customers to digest new information by presenting the information in a consistent way.

For example, we can tell a story where a "customer" character has issues and frustrations, which a "service rep" character can help to solve. As new products and services become available, these same characters can interact in new ways to demonstrate new kinds of value. Customers become more and more familiar with the characters, and therefore more "comfortable to buy".

Posted by Reid at April 25, 2002 08:21 PM