Guy Kawasaki on The Art of Branding

Guy Kawasaki, Apple's former "Chief Evangelist", started a weblog just a few weeks ago. So far it's a pretty interesting one. Now he wrote a nice piece on the Art of Branding - with 8 very valid, very wise points !

My favorite:

4. Apply the opposite test.
How many times have you read a product description like this? “Our software is scalable, secure, easy-to-use, and fast?” Companies use these adjectives as if no other company claims its product is scalable, secure, easy-to-use, and fast. See if your competition uses the antonyms of the adjectives that you use to describe your product. If it doesn't, your description is useless. For example, I've never seen a company say that its product was limited, full of leaks, hard-to-use, and slow.

Sounds so simple and logical, doesn't it ? Why is it then that I keep having these endless, fruitless discussions with some clients about this when working on this press release or that ad copy ?

Wrong clients, you say ? Maybe... ;-)