Discursive Communication Strategies for Introducing Innovative Products: The Content, Cohesion, and Coherence of Product Launch Presentations
Keywords
new product launch, product launch presentation, business communication, innovation communication, discourse analysis, Steve Jobs
In the information age, discourse plays an increasingly important role in promoting innovative products. But how language works in the innovation process remains underexplored. This study explores the discursive com- munication strategies used to introduce innovation by analyzing the content, cohesion, and coherence of product launch presentations by Steve Jobs. It reveals that such discursive communication strategies improve the audience’s understanding, recognition, and acceptance of innovative products. This study contributes to both business communication studies in general and research on innovation communication in product launches in particular.
Key Takeaways
-
highlighted the important role of CEOs’ language
in helping firms to communicate successfully with customers during inno-
vative product launch presentations. We found that Jobs’s product launch
presentations are well-structured in terms of content, cohesion, and coher-
ence. Our content analysis revealed that the presentations highlighted the
firm’s product innovations. Our analysis of cohesion revealed that the pre-
sentations properly employed reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction,
and lexical cohesion to reinforce the functionality and superiority of the
innovative products. And our coherence analysis revealed that the presenta-
tions used logical connectors to promote the audience’s understanding of
the new products. These analyses, then, have enabled us to examine the
textual and linguistic meanings underlying the special context of introdu-
cing and promoting innovations and thereby not only present features of this
special type of innovation discourse but also enrich our understanding of the
important role of language in innovation communication.
The discourse-based methodological repertoire in innovation communication.
Finally, our study contributes to the discourse-based methodological reper-
toire in business communication research, especially communication stud-
ies on innovative product launches. While organizational studies
traditionally focus on the use of interview, documentary, and observational
data, there has been increasing interest in the use of discourse-based
research methods (e.g., Gylfe et al., 2016; Niebuhr, Brem, et al., 2016;
Niebuhr, Voße, et al., 2016; Niebuhr et al., 2017; Vaara & Whittington,
2012; Wenzel & Koch, 2018). But few studies on innovation communica-
tion use such research methods. In this study, we employed this discourse-based method to provide precise and detailed insights into the discursive communication strategies through which the speeches of a top manager, Jobs, contributed to the
successful launches of innovative products. Our discourse analysis of his
product launch presentations thus has provided a more specific and nuanced
understanding of how discursive communication strategies are created and
realized in new product launches. It also demonstrates that a unique advan-
tage of such analysis is that it makes aspects of communicative phenomena
“accessible to investigation that would most likely pass unnoticed” when
employing more traditional methodological approaches, such as text-based
analyses of interviews and documents (Wenzel & Koch, 2018, p. 660).
Overall, this study extends the use of discourse-based methodological
approaches in innovation communication research. -
Practical Implications
- This study provides critical implications for firms’ business communication practices in the process of launching innovative products.
- First, firms should consciously prioritize establishing the legitimacy of their innovative product for customers—especially for early adopters—as soon as possible because if innovative product legitimacy is absent, early adopters might not serve as an effective signal of the success of these products.
- Second, it is important for top managers—especially CEOs—to pay attention to the key role of language in their product launch presentations. Consequently, firms need to design and implement effective and efficient communication strategies for introducing innovative products.
- Finally, speakers who are in charge of presenting a firm’s product innovations should cultivate excellent communicative competence be- cause good launch presentations can enhance customers’ understanding, recognition, and acceptance of innovative products, thereby serving an important role in the new products’ overall success. Thus, speakers need to invest enough time in preparing product launch presentations to both refine the content and strengthen the cohesion and coherence of their speeches.
- This study provides critical implications for firms’ business communication practices in the process of launching innovative products.
Future View
- Future research might use multimodal analysis to explore the interplay between speech and body movements in order to gain a more systematic, nuanced understanding of CEOs’ communication strategies in their new product launch presentations.
Conclusion
- By analyzing the content, cohesion, and coherence of Jobs’s product launch presentations, we have explored in this study the discursive communication strategies that can be effectively used to introduce innovative products. We demonstrated that such discursive business communication strategies improve the audience’s understanding, recognition, and acceptance of inno vative products. Overall, our study contributes to research on discourse based business communication in innovative product launches. We believe that this study will prompt more research on discursive business commu nication strategies, and we call for researchers to employ discourse-based methods in business communication research in general and in innovation communication research in particular
Interesting Sentences
Internal and external communication is imperative to the produc-
tion and promotion of innovative products (Andrews, 1986; Bruhn &
Ahlers, 2017).
top managers’ use of appropriate discourse-
based communication strategies can show customers the legitimacy of their
innovative product in product launch presentations, thereby contributing
to successful product launches
product launch presentations that are well-structured in terms of content, cohesion, and coherence highlight the firm’s product innovations.
To introduce innovative
products in his launch presentations, Jobs employed three primary discur-
sive communication strategies: content strategy, cohesion strategy, and
coherence strategy.
The structure of Jobs’s typical 90-minute
product announcement includes the beginning, the body, and the end. In
particular, the body provides some brief background information, the name
of the product, its main features, a live demo, price offerings, and the
shipping schedule. Major sections are carefully structured and organized
in a clear and logical way to produce complete and impressive product
launch presentations. In terms of his cohesion strategy, Jobs employs ref-
erence, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction, and lexical cohesion to reinforce
the functionality and superiority of product innovations. As for his coher-
ence strategy, he uses several typical logical connectors—mainly addi-
tional, adversative, causal, and temporal connectors—to promote the
audience’s understanding of the new products.
Second, such discursive strategies contribute to the success of a product
launch by promoting effective communication between the speaker and the
audience and strengthening the latter’s understanding and acceptance of the
new product. The well-structured content strategy allows the audience to
easily absorb the relevant information about the innovative products. Both
cohesion and coherence strategies enhance the audience’s understanding
and acceptance of the innovation by strengthening the clarity and concise-
ness of the discourse.
effectively using causal connectors, he not only wards off any doubts about the innovation, but he breaks down the engineering feats of the phone, enabling the
audience to better understand the new technology.
careful to explain the details only when he
believed that the explanation could be easily understood and could contrib-
ute to how the audience perceived the innovative product
he explained it because he believed that
answering the question would not undermine the corporate image and
would let the technical achievement of the innovation surface. In addition
to satisfying the audience’s curiosity, this discourse technique constitutes a
good opportunity to demonstrate the technical and design talent of Apple’s
engineering team.
Both substitution and ellipsis play fundamental roles in making presen-
tations concise and compact. For instance, in Example 6a, Jobs avoids
repeating what he has previously mentioned and instead uses short sen-
tences and phrases to highlight the main features of the iPhone 4
Use of connectors
- Casual connectors
- Adversative connectors
- Summary Point Summary pattern of additional connectors
- Additional connector
Techniques
- Reiteration; reinforces superior function of product, creating natural association in the audience with positive aspects of the product.
- Lexical cohesion; allows speakers to justify and stress superiority of innovative products, in doing so strengthening the audience’s impression of its competitiveness.
- 5 subcategories of cohesion; reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjuction and lexical cohesion
- Use of adjective added after feature descriptions, used to summarise subdivisions under a feature of the product.
- Short and impressive product names; name of the product is best revealed after the background information of the product is given
- Discussion of major features
- Briefing audience with specific contextual background information used as a primary feature of good presentations, functions well in promoting innovation. Lets the speaker add personal charisma and humour, also prepares audience for the new product and indirectly alludes to faults of existing products - in doing so highlighting the advantages of the product being presented.
Subheadings
Coherence of Product Launch Presentations