A special Not that. This!
Become enamored by some unique product documentation. How the hell could that happen, you might ask. I'll tell you right here.
Wherein I am so enamored by an insert that it gets its own Not that. This! treatment. And I've thrown in the first of a new feature, A Just Because Photo, as a bonus. Woo-hoo. Read on...
I should have known something was different about it, but I had ignored the first fold and gone hunting for the meat of the thing, those internal pages with the skinny on how this thing works.
The product works just fine. But it was inside the dreaded documentation in which I discovered something remarkable. A revelation. Had I started with that first page, I would have discerned something different was in store, for I have never before had a product’s insert/operating instructions confront me with such a human touch. The title?
“Getting to know and love your Revolve3.4 Surge Protector”
What in the Sam Hill?
If this insert was a revolution’s leader, I’d be signing up. (although I’m kinda beat up and old for any jungle marches, please).
I am a documentation reader. When the question is asked from down the hall — “Why isn’t this thing flipping the strudel?” — my response is always, maddeningly, the same — “Did you read the documentation?”
Yeah, I’m a sexy beast, huh?
This is big. Not literally. There are, though, many big inserts, and unfolded the Revolver360's length could stretch with the best of them. But I've never come across something so worthy of the stretch.
This is bigger than the level of aggravation I feel at the waste of paper — nee the waste of a tree — and a galaxy-sized bigger than the enraging 3-point font often used to convey some of the most important information about a product. Important things that require a magnifying glass to see, things like, “don’t use this product if you intend to breathe between the hours of midnight and midnight,” or “you must be this tall to use this buttwhistle or you may burst into flames. Please call our technical support if this occurs.”
If this article was an actual insert, the remainder of this piece would look too tiny to appear here.
Inserts accompany anything that comes in any kind of packaging, including hair dryers, microphones, wireless speakers and, my most aggravation inducing, pharmaceuticals. They’re required, I know, especially the drugs and meds, and keeping the font tiny equates to providing lots of important information on the smallest area of paper possible.
If the product is available in countries besides the U.S., which then requires clear cutting of forests to create a football field-sized paper tableau, it then also provides a clever method of enabling its product’s users to learn Tagalog, Esperanto, and other foreign languages at his or her or them’s own pace in the comfort of his or her or them’s own home.
And let’s not forget how great it is that industries can employ hundreds of the world’s most boring origami specialists, apparently. No swans here, certainly.
Like other targets of my wrath, which includes the U.S. Postal Service (a future Not that. This! essay), inserts have frazzled my logic, design, and customer service sensibilities for years. There are so many ‘wrongs’ — font too small, too long, diagrams or illustrations requiring a magnifying glass to decipher…and just the very existence of the damn thing. There are products with instructions of adequate size, for example, furniture and furnishing accessories, with diagrams that make sense but, upon product assembly completion, confront the assembler with an inside out and upside down set of shelves, undeniable proof of the assembler’s inability to follow directions no matter the diagram’s jumbo size.
But I digress, slightly.
Let me state here: there are a few elements of the Revolver 360 surge protector that can get the end user, better said as the ‘mis-user,’ in trouble, even though the product’s highest level of danger (my word choice, not the maker’s) is plugging it into the wall. This is directly related to the kind of situation noted in the above digression, to wit, there will always be those among us who just can’t get it right. And cautions about doing goofy things are in the Revolver 360’s insert, because they must be, because goofballs, including moi, abound out here.
Ah, but the content style, the choice to compose an insert that addresses me like a person with a sense of humor and, no, it can’t be but it does, entertain me?!? Too cool.
Examples:
On the first inside fold is a polite “Thank you for buying a 360 Revolve3.4 Surge Protector.” Not Shakespeare or Kerouac, but nice. Then the ‘what wonderful madness is this?’ begins: “We truly hope it gives you peace of mind with your electronics and [that] the four rotating outlets relieve frustrations from fitting large plugs thus allowing more time for important stuff like writing your mother. Doesn’t need to be long or poetic…maybe start with a text.” (the bold is from me; I didn’t want you to miss it)
Over the next 10 panels, genuinely smile-evoking text graces every 2”x4” page:
Under the heading Consider Yourself Warned: “Please follow these cautionary statements. If you don’t your Revolve3.4 might break, your warranty will be void, and you will be very unhappy with yourself…
“If you’re feeling all handy and want to alter or repair your Revolve3.4…Don’t.”
From the Quick Setup panel: “NOTE: We know you’re tough, but take ‘er easy on the mounting screw. Over tightening = sadness. Now you can plug things in and out without worrying about pulling the Revolve3.4 out of the wall. Not to mention it’s less likely to be stolen by your neighbor Larry.”
It’s a product insert. It’s damn clever stuff.
I bought the product because I needed what it offers. I’ve got no relationship to the company and nobody’s givin’ me anything to talk about the product. I simply felt that such a ‘we really want you to be okay when you use it and not be bored with yet another OMG I can’t stand this insert’ insert deserved some writin’ about.
I did contact the company to say, “Hey, I’m gonna do this thing about your thing…” and their executive vice president, Brandon Eshelman, said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Yeah, cool!” I also wanted to talk with the company’s copywriter, but Brandon responded that wasn’t currently possible because, “…our copywriter is out with Wilson Phillips right now.” I’m not kidding.
Intriguing, certainly, but regardless, I say well done, nameless-for-now copywriter, well done.
So, attention all companies and product manufacturers, about your insert…
Not that.
360 Electrical, manufacturer of the Revolve3.4…This!
And in conclusion, A Just Because Picture
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MWH