Bad copy — the continuous threat
I know the spirit of where we are right now is not to take a baseball bat to bad ads.
But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since seeing it last week’s Economist.
Which at one level says: ‘job done’, right?
On another: oh so very much not.
More than anything, it left me with a series of questions:
- Who is XM Cyber?
- What are ‘Schwarz Digits’ when they’re at home?
- Why does ‘Innovations’ have a cap ‘I’ but ‘protect’ doesn’t?
- Is that piece of agricultural machinery actually meant to channel the spirit of Cerberus, in an almost infinitely threatening, 18-headed way?
- In a similar vein, is using the XM logo meant to suggest a sunny, optimistic future, or as it rather feels here, that some form of eclipse driven apocalypse has begin?
- And why is that pattern in the background? Unless the farm is actually in the Eden Project or some other geodesic dome?
The biggest one for me though:
- Why has the copy that almost helps — a little, not much — explain what on earth it is that XM Cyber does — been set at legal beagle size? And can I sue for having an astigmatic attack triggered by attempting to read that?
While I think some of the problems here could be solved by some — any! — art direction, the copy ones might be harder to unwind. A quick trip to XM Cyber’s website reveals this gem:
“From Endless Lists Without Context to an Actionable Remediation Plan
Move away from prioritizing CVEs based on generic severity and exploitability scores to proactively discovering, prioritizing, and remediating the exposures that actually compromise your business.”
Don’t know about you, but it’s not a day unless I’ve remediated some exposures.
So we know the brand talks like this. And yes, I understand that in some instances jargon, inside industry terminology, terms that show you know the client’s terrain, can and must be used. But heavens, this is where people are landing if they’ve managed to decipher your ad and thought, “maybe these are the chaps to fix my Continuous Threat Exposure Management”.
Slogan’s good though. Uses the pun to land the comprehensive nature of what XM Cyber does. That’s what they should be going off.
In the spirit of not just carping, here’s what a very quick, and not very good, rewrite could be:
Cyber protection. Always
What most businesses and public sector organisations don’t understand about cyber attacks is that they’re not one offs. Criminals are adept at finding all the weaknesses in your digital and cloud setups, then joining them together so you can find yourself under attack continuously.
XM Cyber uncovers all — and we mean all — the places your business is exposed digitally. Then thanks to our Continuous Threat Exposure Management platform, we work to keep you safe and grow your protection.
This approach keeps agricultural machinery manufacturer Horsch safe. Which means it helps to keeps crop safe. And ultimately the food on your plate safe.
That’s why protection always matters. See All Ways™
No doubt you can do better. XM Cyber should do better. We should all do better. The point is: you, me, customers, the information environment, should not settle for bad ads, and bad writing. That’s a Continuous Threat I want no more exposure too.
