CopyDiva

Many companies spend big bucks to flesh out their brand personality, hoping to infuse the final results across the board in all of their communications. But, does that really happen? Many times, brand personality gets lost when translated into online content — web content, blog posts, online help and customer support communications — because it is just so hard for the wide group of people charged with writing these communications to try and write with one voice.

What’s a corporation to do? On the one hand, it’s good to present consistent-sounding communications to people — it makes them feel more comfortable, reduces their anxiety when dealing with you. On the flip side, I admit that “corporate-speak” is kind of creepy and reinforces anxiety from a site visitor, customer, prospect, angry customer, etc, that really no human beings work there.

My opinion: when there are too many rules about what you can say, and how you can say it, you really sound like you’re saying nothing. I see this all the time when companies have extensive style guides (think more than 4-5 pages for writing style guides) and rules about what’s allowed. Unless someone is a really fantastic copywriter, you’re left with the icky corporate-speak that reduces readability and makes your company sound fake.

Most people find writing to be torture activity (go ahead, ask your colleagues that are not writers). Introducing too many rules just makes people freeze up and lose their will to make a coherent sentence.

How to sound real, not fake
Remember, online content of all kinds needs personality in order to make it compelling enough to read. Reading on-screen is tiring and people are willing to read less and less. So, save the corporate-speak for the board room and use real language to talk to your customers, prospects and other readers.

Some general rules to follow when writing anything you want someone outside your company to read:

1. Speak the language of your audience: Use words they understand and are comfortable with.
2. Use a tone that instills confidence and familiarity: Even more important than #1, the more your tone fits, the more likely the reader will connect with it. For example, a communication to customers about security would most likely have a more formal or respectful tone than, say, a customer support communication, where a friendly tone might work better to reduce anxiety.
3. Toss most style guide rules aside (for now): Follow rules for spelling, trademark use, stuff like that. Leave the rest behind, take a deep breadth and try to understand how a reader might feel before reading your communication — happy? confused? frustrated? interested? Work your tone to fit. After your get the tone right, go back and see if you can manage to squeeze in any of the style guide requirements.

Last night, the Colorado BMA meeting brought in Kate Maddox, Senior Reporter at B2B Magazine. Kate discussed the results of B2B’s latest report on selecting an agency. There was nothing particularly surprising about her presentation in terms of why companies do an agency search (new direction, consolidation, not happy with their current agency). However, it was clear from the case studies presented that many times, companies expect a pretty decent degree of spec work in order to be sure that an agency “understands” the company.

I’m not sure why I find this surprising. One of the attendees, who worked at the local branch of a national agency, said that approximately half of the jobs they get include spec work up-front.

I’ve never been asked to produce on-spec, even when working in conjunction with one of the larger national agencies based here in Colorado. As a small shop, I would be hard pressed to even jump at an opportunity like that simply because of the risk — it would be hard to justify working on spec when I’ve got a paying client already needing my time and skill.

Since trying Wordie.org, my interest has waned — or maybe it is just what’s available in the application. I now have four word lists, that, occassionally, when bored, I add to. But there’s something missing. The interaction elements just aren’t set up right for me. I do like that you can do word clouds of your lists to see how often some words end up in other lists.

I came across a few other new word-type online experiments — oneword and onecaption. The idea behind these is to use your instant association with a word (or a photograph) and write what comes to mind. On oneword, what people seem to do is write some random sentences about the word — the site concept didn’t really appeal to me. Onecaption, seemed like a better idea, but it isn’t that compelling — the same picture has been up for days, and the list of captions that people create are in random order. It would be interesting to perhaps vote on them, or have the ability to comment, or something. I thought it could be useful as an activity to stimulate creativity, but there would need to be a new picture or image to write about every day.

I’m not facing a prison sentence for my promotional ideas. Or maybe it’s the #1 reason I don’t work for the government — I am not paranoid enough:

The Boston authorities, I am guessing, are giving the finger right back to the alien above from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, courtesy of the two poor hapless guys hired to place the “bomb-looking devices.” Does this mean we’re on Orange Alert? Green? Oh please…