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Here is an anecdote from several years ago that cuts to the chase about targeting content to the customer. I’ve been busy for the last few years doing my MBA (Journalism & Media Studies) but there you go… I used to actually do work in the industry.

Working for Gulf Agency Company, Dubai

The tale is a short one. For a number of months in early 2007 I was doing work for Gulf Agency Company’s Corporate Academy in Dubai through a holding company they have in Brisbane called Frontier Learning Technologies (FLT). A friend who develops their online training modules brought me onboard to help with functional graphic design and copywriting of their monthly Academy newsletter (email and web). At AUD$35 per hour I was hardly going to get rich but it was an interesting opportunity.

Gulf Agency Company (GAC) is a shipping and logistics firm based in Dubai which primarily operates through the Middle East and Asia. They turn over profits of US$2+ billion so it’s a large matrix corporate structure with complex cultural influences. However, GAC was founded and is run by Swedes. As such, all GAC business and communications are conducted in the English language (as in British English not American English).

The Previous Newsletter Designer & Copywriter

The previous copywriter had been Zeba, who I believe may have been operating out of India. The problem with Zeba was the newsletter had garish bright colours that looked less than corporate in the eyes of Western business people… and the English language had that untrained quality where plurals seem to mix it up a little more frequently than any Western educated person would tolerate.

My Job was to make it ‘Western Corporate’

So I took the job. Great. I brought the newsletter back to a more corporate look and polished the articles to a professional quality you would aspire to in the West. I’m a pretty good copywriter (and currently improving my qualifications in that area if you’re interested).

After several iterations of the newsletter we noticed a problem. The statistics for people opening, reading and sharing the newsletter started to dramatically drop – by the second month it was one fifth less than when I started. Not only that but I cost TWICE as much as Zeba, and that was even working for a lowly AUD$35 per hour.

The General Manager sent me an email and asked me to consider halving my hourly rate. I declined and left (as you do when confronted with competition from India).

What Happened after I Left that Job

Several months later I looked at the newsletters that had returned to the bright blue and garish red banners and sidebars. The bad English was as pronounced as ever. But the statistics were not only back to the original level – they had slightly increased. How could that be so?

The lesson to take away is straight forward. Who reads that newsletter? Mostly Middle Eastern and Asian people with English as a second, third or fourth language. They prefer the bad syntax. And they prefer the garish colours on the headers and the sidebars.

So no matter what anybody tells you about quality or look and feel on the web – it is entirely about the audience. Design for effectiveness not anal retentiveness. Break the rules when you must.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 12:14 pm and is filed under business, design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.