Writing Descriptions of Really Similar Products

A couple weeks ago, we met our new representative from Transaction Printer Group, or TPG. For the uninitiated, manufacturer representatives are people who get paid to fly all over the earth and talk about how awesome their existing products are, and how awesome their new products will be. They also buy us lunch the first time we meet them. I really dig on the lunch.

Anyway, TPG guy let us know they had two totally amazing printers available, the A798 and A799. They’re both incredibly similar, down to coming in the same body. One’s super fast, can print in two colors, and I think it’ll even do your taxes. The second one is half as fast, only prints one color, and is more budget oriented. And it was up to me to write two unique product descriptions to make them both sound worth buying.

Generally, I’ve found the best method to approach this situation is to write about the lower end model first. Then it sounds awesome, but the better product sounds AMAZING. It helps me to focus on the strengths of both products as opposed to only seeing the differences between the two.

Unfortunately, I was still pretty out of it after a business excursion and decided to put the fancy printer up first. There’s a post it on my desk now to let me know to never do that again.

Oh Snap I’m Writing all Over the Internets

I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to cover my dealings in other arenas – lab management, phone support, general gibberish. And so this blog will be the third or maybe tenth iteration of my attempt to share with you, the internet viewing public, my trials and tribulations regarding work life and the weird stuff I encounter and may even be proud of.

To give some better insight, I’m the Product Manager for posguys.com, an online point of sale retailer. If you’re really in the know, you could call me a Product Manager for a value-added reseller, or VAR. The value I add to the company is a tremendous amount of cheeky one-liners and incredibly obtuse references, both in conversation and in product listing. I also end up learning about every new product in development for major manufacturers, and how they can make your business run super efficiently. If you have questions about what scanner will work best in a tire factory or what cash drawer goes best with a white wine, I’m your guy.

One of the most recent developments, and really most entertaining, at POSGuys is that I’ve been given greater artistic license when writing up product reviews and product spotlights. This means you end up seeing goofy stuff like our product development team using homing pigeons to determine what to list on the site. I had been using a similar writing tone when announcing products to the sales staff and was getting a positive reaction on all fronts.

Generally, technical specifications and ideal usage environments are kind of dry topics to cover, resulting in many people responding to my announcements with “too long; didn’t read.” By mixing it up when writing announcements, using a horrible mangling of the English language and vague pop culture references, I found people started responding to the side references as well comprehending the full specs I put into the announcements.

With that, hopefully this is the first of many posts covering the odd situations I encounter during my day-to-day, and maybe an outlet for some of that pent-up goofiness that courses through my veins.