On the radio this morning I heard as good a reason as any for big business to get much better at communicating on a human level.
One of the presenters of BBC Radio Five Live's Breakfast show was interviewing a couple of young people. They had just returned from overseas trips where they had each spent time with a multinational company to see how business worked abroad. When one of the interviewees enthused about his time at B&Q in Shanghai, the presenter suggested he'd been brainwashed.
If we are to avoid a generation of young people believing that a positive impression of big business can only come about as a result of mind control, we need to make sure that the language of business is real, relatable and human. Bias is a difficult enemy to fight, but the answer isn't spin: it's honesty.
And some retraining for prime-time broadcasters wouldn't go amiss either.
Comments