In business to business, context of message can be a flabbergasting advantage.

     I hear a lot of agency people talk about "getting into the shoes" of the target and I couldn't possibly agree more. It's good, and the language is nice, but it generally doesn't go far enough.

     Going far enough is more of a Zen state where, instead of becoming the other person, you imagine the other person has morphed into you. It sounds absolutely like the same thing but there's a difference. In the latter case, you are really going to take care not to use condescending language, not to be stupidly obvious, not to waste even a smidgeon of the person's time, not to be cute, and, for God's sake, not to use some sort of dopey language that sounds like you've never met the engineer, the chef, the cfo, the electrical contractor, the nuclear physicist, or whomever it is you're trying to influence.

     If you can't "gestalt" yourself into an intuitive understanding of what that person wants under the circumstances, based on research and your own gut observations of human beings, don't go there. In the end, it's really not your brand anyway. Your brand exists only if and when your customer adopts it, totally, as his or her own. So, morph well; speak well. Your target is you.

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Creative direction and writing: Jay Fields