The Dummy Explanation (Escape Your Bubble)
Write every message as if the reader knows nothing about you, your product, or your market.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 92%
A discipline for messaging that assumes zero prior knowledge and strips out all insider jargon, because the team lives inside a bubble the customer does not. Use it whenever producing external content: web copy, ads, product descriptions, positioning.
Origin
Coming from product into marketing, Herzberg realized how far an insider drifts from a normal buyer. Wiz engineers described the product as 'CNAPP' (cloud native application protection), but buyers were Googling 'cloud security solution.' She built a standing rule to write the 'dummy explanation' and never assume knowledge of Wiz, its product, or its market terms.
Core principles
- 01You live in your own bubble; the customer does not, and they learned what you published only recently.
- 02Living deep inside a technical domain makes you drift, sometimes by accident, from how the buyer actually talks.
- 03There's no reason to use complex terminology when plain words work; clarity must be black-and-white to survive scaling.
How to run it
- 1
Assume zero knowledge
Before publishing anything, strip every assumption of knowledge about your company, product, and market. Make it understandable to anybody.
Pro tip Use the words your buyers actually search, not your internal category name (e.g., 'cloud security solution,' not 'CNAPP').
- 2
Kill insider terms
Remove internal names and acronyms a stranger wouldn't know (e.g., 'the Wiz graph database'), because a common person has no reason to recognize them.
Watch out Security and technical fields default to initialisms; you assume the world knows them when it doesn't.
- 3
Fight bubble-fatigue on change
When the team wants to change a headline or color because they're 'sick of it,' remember you're the only one who's seen it repeatedly; the audience is just starting to grasp it.
Pro tip Make escaping the bubble a daily reminder, not a one-time audit; it's hard and easy to slip.
Watch out Changing messaging on your own boredom timeline pulls it out from under customers who are only now learning it.
In the wild
Ask Wiz engineers the product category and they'd say 'CNAPP.' But buyers weren't Googling that; they searched 'cloud security solution.' The internal term was invisible to the market.
→ Reframed messaging around buyer language, a driver of Wiz's brand becoming synonymous with cloud security.
Common mistakes
Talking in initials
Using domain acronyms and assuming the world knows what you mean, so your message never reaches or ranks with actual buyers.
Refreshing on your own boredom clock
Changing brand elements because the team is tired of them, when customers are only just internalizing them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and marketers in technical/deep-domain B2B who must reach non-expert buyers.
Not ideal for
Communication aimed purely at a technical peer audience where precise jargon is the shared language.
From the transcript
“cnap Cloud native application protection but if you go over and you like look at Google like people are not Googling that word they're Googling…”
“reminding ourselves that customers don't live in that bubble they're like people in the in the world”
“you the only one that is sick of it right your customers are just learning what you put there like 10 months ago”
From the episode
Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history
Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)