Infernal Comms: the Write the Talk blog

Groupon: get a grip

There's news today that Groupon is being investigated by the OFT over its advertising practices, among other things. One suspects that the story will run and run, so some positive PR would help along the way.

Sadly, Groupon fell into a common trap and wheeled out someone to spout unhelpful gibberish:

"Groupon constantly strives for business practices that are in the best interest of consumers. We are constantly evolving business process to ensure customers receive the best possible experience at the highest standards."

Forgive me for intruding, but that's not going to help. The only people at whom that message can be directed are Groupon customers. You could make an argument for shareholders being the target audience, given the calamitous drop in the share price recently, but they're as interested as anybody in public sentiment towards the company.

So, in the circumstances, consultancy guff is not what's needed. "Constantly striving" sounds more like the effect of a severe bout of constipation than a genuine commitment to getting better. The only redeeming feature of "constantly evolving business process" is that it's an all-in-one winning line in Bullsh*t Bingo. As for "the best possible experience at the highest standards", repetition doesn't make misplaced hyperbole any more effective.

There are 32 words of emptiness, a banal vacuum where there should be a nugget of confidence and humility. It would have been much better to say something like:

We're always working on doing things better, but sometimes we might make a mistake. We'll work with the OFT to see if there's a problem, and we'll make sure our customers get the service they expect.

It might not be perfect, but it only took two minutes to sound like a real person instead of a spokesbot. In their position, I think Groupon could have done with taking a moment before jumping at the PR version of Buy it Now.

Writing a Personal Bio

For many, it's one of the most difficult things to write. Whether it's a few sentences for a social networking site, or a few paragraphs for a conference programme, writing a personal bio is the equivalent of being discovered in flagrante by your grandmother or remembering too late that, as a family film choice, Shakespeare in Love has too many booby moments.

Of course, it's actually worse than that. Because the big psychological issue is the fact that people will read what you write.

The fundamental question is this: "How can I write something about me without making it look like I'm a conceited buffoon, full of my own marvellousness and lacking in all self-knowledge and humility?"

Well, the first defence that people erect is that mysterious companion, the Third Person. Writing your bio as if someone else has penned it comes across as less boastful, doesn't it?

Sorry, it doesn't. In fact it probably does the opposite. Only the most famous and detached-from-reality get to have their bios written for them, so a third person approach makes it look like you're pretending it's an independent write-up. Falseness is no basis for a relationship.

Neither is lack of personality. Third person or not, stilted lists of achievements peppered with impressive, but unsubstantiated, adjectives will not make you any friends. Boastful and boring at the same time? This is going really well.

A good bio is easier than it sounds. Here are some tips:

• Always write in the first person. "I help businesses sound like they're run by human beings." It's direct, and you can say what you want to say and sound like you mean it;
• Write what you would say in conversation. Read it loud, and if it makes you sound like a candidate on The Apprentice, it's not working;
• Remember, the bio is not about you; it's about who's reading it. It's about convincing someone that you're worth knowing/following/listening to. And you'll achieve that by being yourself. People like people, not cardboard cut-outs or ham actors or success cyborgs. Think about the people you've helped, the fun you have, the things you're still learning about;
• It's good to allow some emotion in, so long as it's not passion ...;
• If you're really stuck, pretend you're writing a bio for your best friend, where that best friend is you. That way, you won't be afraid to include their best bits;
• Get some other people to do it, preferably people who know you well or represent the audience your bio will have. "What would you lot say about me?" can be a revealing question. Leave the sycophants and acolytes out though: this is no time to be believing the hype.

Above all, forget the notion that the bio is a statement of your magnificence. It's not. It's your Mini Me: a little self-sketch, with enough left in to attract the kind of people you like, but not so much detail that all curiosity is extinguished.

With a little practice you'll actually enjoy doing them. Really.

Summarising for communicators: operation not cremation

Someone's gone to the trouble of producing a report on their terrifically important project or research. It's full of valuable findings (they might even call them learnings, but we'll forgive them that crime), and the importance of the work is refelected in the size of the report: dozens of pages of text or even hundreds of Powerpoint slides.

The trouble is, no-one will read it.

So, we need to summarise. There are several ways to do this, most of them not very helpful. Here are some tips:

Who is the summary for?

If you don't know the answer, you can't summarise. Know who needs to be reading what you're producing and you'll already be most of the way there.

How do I know what to leave out?

It's easy to fall into the public interest trap. Let's be kind and say that everything in the document is interesting to someone (we know that's probably not true, but cut me some slack). That's not the same as saying that everything is in the public interest - or in this case, important to everyone. If you're trying to capture everything that could be interesting, you'll fail. You might as well photocopy the thing.

The question you should ask is: what do I want people to know? Answer this and you'll know what to look for.

Telling the story vs. spotlighting the drama

Any good communication should have a story. We need to know how things fit together and relate to each other. But stories need events, turning points, memorable sequences. A summary needs to bring out the big points, so find them first and then tie them together into a story. That way you'll be sure to include the meaty bits that your readership will remember. And have the confidence to signpost what's important; novelists do it, and so do script-writers. You should too.

Recycling

Reuse is as important in communication as it is in everything else. Look for the points that you want to repeat in future pieces, and make it easy for people to repeat them for you. Short sentences and phrases can be used again and again to get your message across. Paragraphs have much less impact.

 

Summarising isn't cremation, if you'll forgive the analogy. It's not about keeping everything in a smaller form. Think of it as transplant surgery: finding the most important parts for the people who need them, skillfully and quickly.

A business lesson from modern classical music

At the weekend Alex Ross penned an article asking why most modern classical music is disliked. There's a lesson for business in this debate.

Ross points out that film, art, theatre, pop and writing all have their lauded avant garde exponents and yet the mainstream resistance to their equivalents in music remains. There's a problem here though. If the modern novel was based on Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, not many people would be reading new fiction. It's not that music audiences are clinging to the past, it's that many modern composers can't resonate with a broader audience.

Blaming that audience is missing the point.

There is snobbery in this, as there is in almost all art. Everyone's fighting for the cultural high ground, and sophistication can be attractive in that lofty, rarified environment. But sophistication for its own sake is a minority sport. It's really important for prompting change and new thinking but the skill, the art if you like, is in the combination with the familiar to make something exciting. Make the leap to something new too great and people won't bother. Most of us have more pressing things to deal with.

Modern art, punk, and the most successful strands of modern theatre and film certainly broke with tradition, but they did it in a way that made the form more accessible. The most common criticism of recent art and the initial punk explosion was that anyone could do that. And? Change needs participation, not just ideas.

It seems to me that modern classical music has become a battle between two schools: broadly, music needs tunes vs tunes are yesterday's music. Setting up conflict is not a recipe for success: it encourages entrenched views, the taking of sides. Embracing what's gone before and finding common ground for the future is the way to get people involved.

Culture change in business is very much the same. Making an enemy of the past and those who identify with it is problematic. Creating something new that is still recognisable to everyone is where the future lies. Surprise people, yes, but don't maroon them.

So, new ideas must be encouraged, and groundbreaking creativity shows us what is possible. But without followers, leadership is a lonely and rather redundant activity. And only a poor leader would point the finger of blame at the crowds left behind.

Find the real voices in your organisation

The way your business uses language is too important to be left up to the people in the top jobs.

Climbing the human pyramid of power doesn't depend on being able to excite and astonish in words; in fact the opposite is often true. Many conform to perform and encourage their people to do the same.

A business that writes like it thinks is a business that understands relationships. Without relationships a business is dead.

So if you don't have the bottle or the skills to write it like it is, find the people in your organisation who can. Track down the individuals with the authentic voices, who can talk the dialect of your business rather than the management Esperanto that no-one would dare use in public.

Get them to help convey news and ideas in ways that people will understand, appreciate and remember. You just might find that it catches on and everyone feels able to write like a human being. Pretending to be something you're not is an energy-sapping way to live a life after all.

All you need to do is support the pioneers, then sit back and take the credit.

It's restructure time, but no cuts

I admit this isn't the most regularly updated blog. Other projects take priority, I get a life, I even fall out of love with the idea of blogging.

But I keep coming back to it. Why? Because I really believe in this fight we're waging, the fight against consultancy-speak, banality, and the impersonal. So it's time for another push, and this time perhaps a bit more structure.

I've been doing some training recently, and I'm going to share some of that with you. It's about being persuasive and making the impact you want to have on your readers. So over the next few weeks there'll be a series of posts that will add up to a guide for any writing that you do. It'll be great to hear what you think.

If there's anything else you want to hear about, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do. As we're being told so often at the moment, we're all in this together. And I'm going to do my bit.

How big is your audience?

Almost everything you write is for many people to read (if only in your dreams). You may have an email distribution list of 10,000 addresses or be hoping for 50,000 website hits; either way you will be imagining a healthy audience. Let's assume I'm reading an article you've written that contains the following statement:

 “Many of you recognise the need for quality writing in your business.”

This may well be true of the group you are communicating with, but that's not the point. What you have done is put me, the reader, in a crowd which is being addressed by the literary equivalent of a megaphone. You've made me feel like a punter at Hyde Park Corner, listening to you warble on about your favourite topic. So if it's OK with you, I'm going to walk on; you've obviously got a big enough audience already.

If I hang around, I may consider the point you are trying to make: that some of the readers of your piece don't recognise the need for quality writing. Are you trying to make me feel uncomfortable, an outsider in a self-satisfied group of know-it-alls? Well, it's working, and I'm really going this time.

The alternative is simple: talk to one imaginary reader and do it directly and personally. Let your voice be inside her head, speaking to her privately. Not only will it be more effective but you will find your writing becomes more focused. You're showing that you are more interested in your reader than you are in listening to your own voice:

 “You recognise the need for quality writing in your business.”

That's got my attention now. Whether or not you're right, you are talking to me and me alone. In return I'm going to give you the opportunity to finish what you want to tell me.

One thing to remember: if you have trouble getting a clear mental picture of your reader for a particular piece of writing, then face up to the possibility that you have too many segments of your market in mind. Pick one – your writing will benefit, and the message will resonate much more with your reader.

That is exactly the effect you want to have: better the relevant words that make some people listen, than the general words that make everybody walk away.

Happy Slapping: when the language doesn't fit the crime

Another day; another assault on an innocent person for the benefit of a YouTube posting. This time, the incident led to the death of grandfather Ekram Haque in front of his 3 year old grand-daughter. The appropriateness of the sentence for the teenagers convicted of this man's manslaughter is a debate for another place. What I'm interested in here is the terminology.

Happy slapping appeared as a term soon after phones gained video technology. Slap your mate while someone's filming it, then have a laugh at their expense as you share the resulting clip. The only happy people were the perpetrators and it was their moniker that stuck; the victims most probably called it something else but those descriptions never got a look in.

Controlling the language around an activity or a behaviour allows people to influence how that activity is seen and makes counter-arguments much more difficult to land. Happy slapping is just a bit of horseplay, isn't it? Only a killjoy would try and put a stop to it. Video mugging would be an altogether more difficult sell.

File-sharing, legal highs, joy-riding: all are the creations of people who want to lay a veneer of inoffensiveness on something that does not deserve it.

So if you can influence the vocabulary of what you do, your competitors and detractors will struggle to make an impression.

When we is for weasels: a Raoul Moat story

There are times when either your message or your audience's state of mind is not what you would want it to be. Perhaps you're announcing job cuts or apologising for a mistake. In an extreme case you might be attempting to build a dialogue with someone who has threatened to kill your employees, as Detective Chief Superintendent Neil Adamson had to do in the recent case of alleged murderer Raoul Moat.

DCS Adamson made a personal appeal to Moat towards the end of the manhunt, and he did that with repeated use of the word "I": "I can assure you," he said. "I'd like you to know ...".

When you want people to listen to you and believe what you are saying, there is no place for the weasel "we". 

Taking personal responsibility for what you are saying and doing helps your audience pay attention to you and your message. They may not like it, but they're listening.

Using a phrase like "we've done what we can to minimise the impact on staff" only sends a signal that you are diffusing responsibility for what's happening so that no-one gets the blame.

Use the mighty "I" and you will at least be seen as a leader. It's not easy, but then it's not meant to be.

30 years of hurt: why Plain English isn't enough

The Plain English Campaign is 30 today. I dread to think how much turgid corporate prose they've had to wade through in that time. They've done a great job, and those of us helping organisations with language need all the allies we can find, but there's a problem.

Sure, there's a lot of rubbish still being written in the name of customer and employee communication, and no-one would expect the PEC to put everything right even in 30 years. It's the target, the aspiration that is troubling: plain english.

While the good fight is being fought against over-complication and obscure vocabulary there's a greater good we can all aim for. Why shouldn't the language of business be rich, entertaining and memorable? Clear is good; dull is not.

So, no apologies from me for coming back to a theme I've covered before. While some can only hope to be plain, do what you can to stick out from the crowd - use language that's alive.