One of the benefits of having smart, sexy friends includes getting smart, sexy advice about your business.

Last night, I held an informal focus group to talk about messaging and design concepts for the new thingsthatarebrown.com, which we’ve been chipping away at all year. I purposely invited a few close friends, none of whom have internet jobs.

My point was to have them evaluate subtly different pieces of copy & design, to get a sense of what each statement / art direction made them think about thingsthatarebrown.

Here are a handful of options I presented for the “what is thingsthatarebrown” copy:

• thingsthatarebrown is a web design studio in Seattle
• thingsthatarebrown is a web design agency in Seattle
• thingsthatarebrown is a snappy little web design agency in Seattle
• thingsthatarebrown is a web design studio. We design content-driven, standards-compliant websites. We’re from Seattle.
• thingsthatarebrown designs useful, beautiful websites.
• thingsthatarebrown is a boutique web design studio. We’re from Seattle.

Come to find out, minor differences in phrasing had a huge impact on their perceptions. In the above list, for example, the word ’boutique’ made them want to throw up, as did the phrase ‘snappy little’. They loved it when we incorporated ‘we’ or ‘we’ve’. They didn’t care whether we called ourselves an agency or studio, but thought ‘studio’ made us sound more like ourselves. And so on.

I repeated this process for other areas of the site, like the intro pitch on the home page. As in the first example, subtle differences had a big impact.

Probably the biggest advantage of inviting non-internet folks was learning what items were jargon-y, and how people who aren’t familiar with the “industry standard” perceive our choices.

If you’re going through a rebrand or redesign, I encourage you to step away from your computer. Then, run your ideas by the intelligent ladies / gents you drink with on the weekends.