Write clearly Show all disciplines B2B Marketing Branding Content Marketing Customer Experience Design Design thinking Digital Internal Communications Killer Feature Process Strategy User Experience Show all authors Sarah Edwards Rick Harrison Arya Alatsas Ben Pawson What to consider when designing for on-screen reading In today’s information-rich world there are multiple things competing for the reader’s attention. This h... Sarah EdwardsJuly 31 Avoid the short cuts The cumulative effect of incremental change is much more significant than most people give ... Rick HarrisonDecember 4 Just quickly give me the key points. Everyone is busy. You know this from your own experience. Battling through multiple competi... Rick HarrisonNovember 5 Is your expertise getting in the way of customer engagement? They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Whether you claim that title or not what is undeniable is that after 10,000 hours on any... Rick HarrisonApril 19 Setting smart objectives (and why everyone should be tracking results) At Make it Clear, our purpose is to improve interactions between organisations and their audiences. We do this by solving business challe... Rick HarrisonApril 11 What does a strategist do? Having to explain what I do in my role as a strategist is a regular occurrence. It’s definitely a job title that fails the ‘mum test’.... Rick HarrisonApril 5 Killer Feature Killer Feature is a post dedicated to the small, sometimes subtle interactions that unknowingly make our days easier and may even bring a sm... Rick HarrisonApril 5 Customer experience: The devil is in the (neglected) detail If you’re ever looking for an example of how failing to put the user needs at the heart of technology based communication can cause unnece... Rick HarrisonMarch 12 Assessing the Customer Experience ‘maturity’ of organisations CX continues to dominate business media with a corresponding increase in the levels of awareness, knowledge and insight amongst individuals ... Rick HarrisonDecember 21 Beyond the win: accessing the long-term benefits of CX The profile of Customer Experience has risen rapidly over the past couple of years, it is now accepted business wisdom that good CX provides... Rick HarrisonNovember 22 Features vs. Benefits — and the power of benefit-led messaging It sounds like an easy distinction to make, feature or benefit. And it is simple. However, when it comes to describing products or services,... Rick HarrisonNovember 6 Can automation help deliver great CX? The future impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is currently a cause of significant debate. For most, the understanding of ... Arya AlatsasOctober 3 Targeting better customer experience? Apply some marksmanship principles Customer Experience is the key battleground for modern business, with ... Rick HarrisonAugust 30 CX — where does it start? Customer experience is widely believed to be the next battleground of business competition. Businesses that deliver the best CX will be the ... Rick HarrisonAugust 23 Mental models — customer education, expectation, & experience Experiences are created when the ‘mental model’ of your customers (how they believe something works and the ‘system model... Arya AlatsasAugust 11 Assessing customer experience is simple We do a lot of consultancy on customer experience across a range of intera... Rick HarrisonApril 5 Disagreeing with a billionaire visionary genius I heart Elon Musk. I really do. His focus, the things he has done, his approach, the things... Rick HarrisonMarch 30 Quality of information = quality of experience Experiences are judged by people in how well it met, failed or exceeded their expectations.... Rick HarrisonMarch 24 Overcoming the change paradox There is a central paradox that humanity seems to be stuck in, that most people are terrifi... Rick HarrisonMarch 21 Bad news: your may never get the praise your great experiences deserve Human beings are story tellers. Conditioned to identify and share stories that prevent risk... Rick HarrisonMarch 14 Hey user guides, where have you been? I remember the disappearance of user guides. It was like one of those alt-reality sci-fi stories. There was no great announcement, they just... Rick HarrisonMarch 7 What are customer touchpoints? A customer touchpoint is created every time your customer or audience interacts with your brand or service. ... Sarah EdwardsJanuary 13 The benefits of clear brand architecture Before introducing a new product or service offering, entering a new market or targeting a new segment of existing customers, it’s worth c... Rick HarrisonNovember 3 Brand naming process A great name can play an important role for a brand. While the brand name isn’t a substitute for the reputation that comes with a good ... Rick HarrisonNovember 3 Getting internal comms right: do what you do externally, internally In some ways this is a pretty simple theory; the answer to how you create great internal comms is to follow the process you use to create gr... Rick HarrisonOctober 20 Internal comms: beyond information to understanding Have you given your employees permission to be great? Have you given your team what they need to make your vision a reality? For a start the... Rick HarrisonOctober 12 Got a great marketing strategy? Have you told your team? Evolution has already happened to B2B marketing, the expectations of customers, their behav... Rick HarrisonOctober 6 Drive success by prioritising your internal audience How seriously do you take internal communications? Do you think about them the same way that you think about your ex... Rick HarrisonSeptember 30 Maximum effort: Why CMO’s should up the focus on internal comms You’ve identified a problem, you know the solution you’d like and now you just need you... Rick HarrisonSeptember 23 The full experience As UI and UX designers, it is easy to focus all of our efforts and attention on the user’s experience solely within the context of the app... Rick HarrisonSeptember 5 It really isn’t PowerPoint’s fault Presentations suck? Let’s be honest, your presentation software is not the problem. Rick HarrisonAugust 25 Patience and perseverance A recent survey of technology marketers found that the top three content marketing objectives are: Drive Sales and/or Leads; Engage Customer... Rick HarrisonAugust 17 Designers and Brexit – A call to arms Designers tend to be pretty liberal in their outlook and it’s fair to say that the majorit... Rick HarrisonJuly 21 Get some clarity around your B2B brand marketing What do you stand for? Well, not you so much you personally, your business. Do you know? Do the people who work for you? Most importantly do... Rick HarrisonJune 14 What does success look like? Sales figures, customer satisfaction, retweets, return on investment… the list of ways to measure the success of a project is endless. Wha... Rick HarrisonMay 11 IBM — Smart Ideas for Smarter Cities Let me just start with the fact that this piece was supposed to be about business to business marketing in technology, but after looking onl... Ben PawsonApril 17 Kerning my itch At 8:10 I’m making my way from London Bridge to Old Street and it’s a tedious undertak... Ben PawsonMarch 17 Curators of simplicity Designers constantly face the challenge to visually organise, edit and present complex amoun... Rick HarrisonDecember 3 Write clearly “I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” Blaise Pascal (1657) Rick HarrisonJuly 21 Show more Related work Design Ventura Website Client: Design Museum Disciplines: User interface design Website user experience and user Interface design for the Design Museum Brand refresh Client: Scrumqueens Disciplines: Brand clarification Refreshing the online home of women’s rugby with a new identity, campaign and website. M3 product launch Client: M3 Disciplines: Product launch A new brand and full suite of marketing comms for the innovative M3 products.
