NEW! Write off: So many words, too little sense
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help the customer?” Too few companies could honestly answer “yes”.
It’s one of the great curiosities of business writing today that so many organisations seem obsessed with communicating at the expense of commonsense, comprehension and, in the worst cases, plain truth.
Everybody it seems wants us to listen. What so many aren’t able to do is make sense. Don’t believe me? Let me suggest some examples. Pharmaceutical giants (addicts of the small print exception). Finance companies (the same). Telecommunications companies and utilities. (I challenge anyone to fully understand the terms and conditions.) Computer companies (buzzwords, acronyms, self aggrandisement).
From annual reports to corporate literature, sales brochures to the web, the whole world’s disclosing in writing. It’s just that, too often, the writing itself puts you to sleep.
Corporates today want to explain nothing in 9000 words or more, talk down to you or resort to the techno-babble of acronyms that would sorely test the interpretive skills of Douglas Adams’ famous Babel fish. (A creature in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy that, once inserted into the ear, allows the wearer to understand and communicate, in any known language in the universe)
As communicators, we all know this goes on. Most everyone admits to it. And yet little of any significance changes.
Four reasons why.
1. It’s seen as risky, because it’s non-conformist. As one CEO told me once, “If we start talking like that, the analysts won’t know who to believe.”
2. It requires organisations to be more truthful, which far too many in the corporate world read as weak or naive.
3. Changing the way companies communicate requires a seismic shift in thinking for all concerned, not just the communicators – away from business as usual (how we like to work) to business as unusual (how our customers would like us to work).
4. And almost always, it generates issues internally that rapidly make their way to the “too hard” basket – because there’s a chain of implications in changing the way “we” communicate that runs right back into the very ways the business is wired.
Linguistic yoga
When changes are made, they seem so often to bend the language further out of shape.
Take simplified English. The idea was promising – write communications that people can easily understand. Nothing wrong with that. Jargon-freaks, technocrats and the legal establishment all needed a wake-up call in this area. And there can be so doubt that in some quarters at least things have improved.
But it was when simplified English became dogma that the problems arrived. Why? Because beneath the noble sentiment, simplified English has the potential to be an essentially flawed premise on a number of fronts - the most important of which is that English is a rich, multi-layered language, filled with unsaid implications and tones that colour both expression and meaning. Now in some cases, complex ideas, salient truths, can be explained monosyllablically. In others, they simply cannot – and to insist on trying to do so without exception is to belittle or trivialise vitally important nuances and understandings.
Thesaurus or not thesaurus is not the question. And word substitution is not the answer. The fact is that in English when you swap one word for another, or replace a word with a phrase, the meaning changes. Perhaps just by shades. But it does change. And in seeking to always pander to the lowest common literary denominator, simplified English proponents risk destroying the delicate tapestry of meaning.
In the most radical hands, written communication becomes little more than banter, and the substantial is at continual risk of being politely par-boiled into the twee. Commercial nursery stories for the literally inattentive.
The point that’s been missed here by the plainness zealots is that the take-up challenge has nothing to do with the obsessive pursuit of simplicity. It has everything to do with lucidity and speaking to your audiences with respect and understanding. Many members of the legal profession, to their credit, have done a fine job of making this adjustment, and whilst I personally could still quibble over the length, detail and font size of some of the contracts I read, I’m not a lawyer, so I will shut up.
Killing the meaning with politeness
Where I really take issue is when organisations use excuses such as simplified English and/or political correctness to actively deceive. On the surface, everything appears customer friendly, but beneath this afternoon-tea-exterior, real words with significant meanings have been transfused with new truth that bleeds the original meaning away. Take the word “accountable”. It used to mean “responsible for”. Today, particularly in parts of government, it often means little more than “what I get paid to do”. So “I am totally accountable for this” actually means “I don’t have any other jobs at the moment.”
Elsewhere in this delusional landscape, words that do have significance and emotional depth have been replaced with new phrases that purport to say nothing, and in fact say even less. Have you noticed for example that people never die in hospitals anymore? Instead, on the advice of some smart-ass management consultant no doubt, the patient’s condition is described as “less than optimal”!
Faced with this barrage of Alicesque stupidity, customers have quite rightly become cynical, disbelieving and impatient.
Flop goes the weasel
My friend Paul Anderson has a phrase for my other big bug-bear. Weasel words. Those trite, clichéd statements that litter far too much corporate literature. Example: “You can count on us to do our very best to meet your specific needs.” Yadda, yadda, yadda. These phrases are categorised this way because they’re ingratiating, hollow space fillers. Their credibility is zilch. But for too many communications managers, this furry salesman is a reassuring companion. It’s a way to say nothing whilst looking like you’re saying, well, something.
Paul likens weasel words to superfluous packaging. It looks good at a glance, seems necessary, even makes the reader feel good at first ... but information-seeking customers soon find themselves fighting through it to get at what they really want. Weasel words get in the way of the real words that carry meaning and colour. Credibility for consumers of these smug pieces – yip, nil. They’re like a bad fitting hairpiece. Obvious to everyone except the wearer.
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but so few will write the truth.
There are good reasons why organisations don’t say what they mean:
1. They don’t want to be held ‘accountable’ for doing so and/or they honestly think the customer can’t see through it. Well, to paraphrase David Ogilvy, that so called ignorant consumer is your husband, mother, child or aunt. And the chances that consumers have not woken up to being treated like schmucks are in “customer friendly terms” value neutral.
2. They don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Being too definite could end up being too restricting. Except that customers want definition. They want something to react to. And as the saying goes, you can’t please all of the people all of time, and if you have any sense, you won’t even try.
3. They want to be able to change their minds. Remaining “definition-neutral” allows companies to leave doorways open for quick retreats if necessary. Kind of says quite a lot about some organisation’s strategic abilities doesn’t it? When in doubt, straddle – except we all know what gets exposed when you stand this way, and they’d do a lot better putting them on the line!
4. They want to cover butt. Avoid any sort of possible repercussion no matter how obscure and unlikely. Partly that’s a due diligence issue. Partly too, the cynic in me says, it’s a billing issue. The more traditional corporate legal advisers seem to do very nicely out of transforming compelling, inspiring communication into a pastiche of language and clauses designed to leave audiences dazed, confused and requiring their professional help with interpretation.
5. They don’t know any better. Pity, because their customers do.
6. They’re not even aware it’s happening. Hopefully, they’re reading this.
All of this might be OK if customers felt charmed or soothed by this approach – but they don’t. They are left feeling “buyer beware” – and that makes them cautious and resentful.
The point is that there’s a real competitive opportunity here for those prepared to run with it. Think about that the next time you attack a piece of communications with the words “we just need to soften this a little”. Imagine if you didn’t. Imagine the competitive advantage you’d gain if customers didn’t read your stuff and think ‘what do they really mean’. Imagine if you credited your customers with the intelligence they know they have. Imagine if companies were prepared to wallop the weasel, and to write with colour and character and to brand what they had to sell vibrantly, directly, differently.
My call to action is this: say what you mean. Don’t play games. Don’t hide stuff in the small print. Don’t pick on the ignorant. Cultivate honest, open relationships by being open, clear, realistic, practical, honest and competitive in your writings and dealings. Be a truthful company. But mercilessly attack any customer who abuses that trust and adopt a total non-tolerance policy towards those who lie or deceive.
Is that such a truly cerebrally-impeded thought? I don’t think so.
Mark Di Somma, Pusher
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