The casualties of improvement

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Nothing that contentious about Newton's phrase, you wouldn't have thought, excepting the fact that all too many brands seem to find this impossible to acknowledge. More on this in a moment.

There often seems to be a sense of denial that anything that precedes an improvement - especially if this is an improvement over a brand / corporation / industry's own current offering - is inferior.

Take a look at this article on blood pressure (BP) management. The final paragraph is a masterstroke in undermining the advancement that's just been crowed about: 'Current practice is not wrong'. Yet the article has just talked about how current practice can lead to greater instance of stroke because fluctuations in BP are considered ok.

How can that be desirable? And how can both situations possibly be right? Either the current practice is, in fact, sub-optimal, or the new one is unproven. But to say that it is 'not wrong' fills me with worry.

To bring to bear another current gripe of mine, that of the bastard HMRC wanting to charge me for merely breathing it seems, perhaps I should state that my tax return for the last financial year was 'not wrong'. See whether the binary-minded crones from Maidstone, who have initials rather than real names, can struggle with that kind of language.

And now for that brand example: we do a lot of marketing for medical device manufacturers and they constantly - and understandably - strive to make better products. But the sheer amount of brain-ache caused by thinking of ways in which to say that a new product is better - but not that the old product is in any way worse - is beginning to rile me.

Yet what is so wrong in acknowledging advancement? Surely the inexorable march of technological and scientific progress is to be lauded?

I, for one, would find little solace in taking a drug via a device according to a treatment protocol that were all deemed 'not wrong'.

But: oh no. It would be 'damaging to the brand' to say that the new device in question is, in fact, 'simpler than our last model'. But then the brand (mis)managers in this case are also too chicken-shit to say that they're 'simpler than the competition's'.

So exactly WHOSE product are they simpler than? Or are they just 'simpler' than trying to insert the drug into your vein using a wooden spoon or a kango drill?

Thank [insert god here] for the common sense of Apple. The Mac Pro described on this page unashamedly says that it's 'nearly two times faster than the previous generation'.

Good. I like better. And faster. And I'm happy to dispense with the worse. Otherwise life gets too grey and cluttered with stuff in the not right/not wrong middle ground.