"The Dumbwaiter Pitch"

I read the blog entry entitled "Forget Your Elevator Pitch — What's Your Dumbwaiter Pitch?" and, although I was at first intrigued, I'm not too sure I buy the rationale expounded by the writer, Umair Haque.

On one level, it seems right on the money - getting rid of the meaningless mumbo-jumbo that makes up much of corporate communications. But the more I read, the more I realized that the writer's one word approach to defining a brand seems to be flawed.
He states that Coca-Cola has chosen the wrong "Dumbwaiter pitch" by selecting a word that he believes to be inappropriate. He personally believes that Coke does not equal happiness but that "sugar-water" is a more accurate word. I would argue that there are many, many people who may equate an ice cold coke with happiness. Just because the writer seems to think the connection is "tenuous at best" he seems to think it is a poorly chosen word. For some - Coke may well be happiness made tangible. His obvious bias against the brand and his failure to adequately assess Coke's choice of "Happiness" to define itself, lessens the writer's credibility significantly. Furthermore, he's connection to obesity and the Coke brand is totally off topic.

He goes on to say that Apple's dumbwaiter pitch/word is "beauty". Maybe so. But we all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is by no means universal (much like one's source of happiness) and a very personal observation. Apple may say "expensive" to some, "style" or "media" to others - it's just too subjective. What's more, using the writer's own logic of breaking the product down to it's simplest form (as he did when calling Coca-Cola sugar-water) surely Apple's word could just as easily have been "circuits" or "boxes-of-wires"?

Let us give Mr. Haque the benefit of the doubt and allow him to label Apple with the handle "beauty". Wow! Doesn't that just get you so excited? No , it doesn't do it for me either. Not only does the single word lack sufficient punch but it can also be applied to many other products or businesses as well. Beauty? Come on - how many other folks could rightfully claim that one? Ferrari? Revlon? Tourism Vancouver?

Mr Haque says that he uses this technique to highlight how compelling a brand is when working with, among others, start-ups. I cannot speak with any real authority when I say that Apple didn't think of 'beauty' when they were a start-up , but I'm pretty sure they most certainly did not. A personality needs time to develop. It's easy to label Apple, Lego and Google today. These giants have well-entrenched personalities. What about the those pre-pubescent firms and pimply teenage companies who are finding developing their personalities. Could we really find a believable, compelling one word dumbwaiter pitch for all of them that really rings true? I'm skeptical. Surely clear expression of brand is what is needed. Clear definitions and values, not a one word coverall.

I do however agree with the author when he speaks about the lack of clarity in the elevator pitch (read corporate communications) The problem Mr Haque is addressing is not the fact that more words mean less clarity, but that many words which have no meaning have found their way into corporate communications. Communicators feel the need to express, in jargon-filled terms, the essence of their brand and they become so limited by its vagueness. They hide among the accepted catch-phrases and generalizations, couching ideas in generic syntax and style.

It seems as if in a world of tweets and dumbwaiter pitches we are using fewer and fewer words to describe ourselves and the result is that ultimately the differentiation we seek becomes impossible. Like the dumbwaiter itself our words loose the personal touch.

Instead of choosing fewer words we should choose them more carefully, take more risks and strive for uniqueness in a world were words like "beauty" are, unfortunately, commonplace.

Finally, as an illustration of the fundamental impotence of Mr. Haque's exercise I will attempt to create an dumbwaiter pitch for the concept of the dumbwaiter pitch: dumb.