Copy Unlimited blog » tone of voice

Keep it straight and simple

Kevin — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 06:00:45 +0000

Make sure your writing doesn’t hide your meaning

Just the other day, a client picked me up on something I’d written in a case study.

Productivity increased dramatically, though costs went up only marginally.

“Shouldn’t that be costs only went up marginally?” he said tentatively. He was sure, he said, that it sounded wrong.

He was right – it did sound wrong. But in fact, it was right.

Getting in touch with my inner pedant (it doesn’t take much searching) I explained that the adverb (only) should directly precede the word it modifies – in this case, another adverb (marginally).

There was a short pause on the line, as he took this in. And then brushed it aside.

“OK,” he said, ” I see your point, but can we change it to costs only went up marginally?”

And that’s what we did.

In this case, it didn’t make any difference. Wherever the word only went, the sense was unchanged. And more often than not, people put it in the ‘wrong’ place. But it sounds right, and that’s all that matters.

When it comes to copy, anything that slows the reader down, makes them stumble or read something twice should be avoided.

It all comes down to the golden rule of copy: write as you speak.

Client 1. Kevin 0.

More or less (or fewer)

That said, pedantry isn’t always misplaced. Often, paying attention to the little things makes a big difference. It’s all a question of balance.

Take less and fewer. In most cases, you can use them interchangeably without affecting the meaning.

(It’s worth noting that it’s always best to try to get it right. Somewhere out there, somebody will be put off by these small things, which they think are indicative of bigger ones – customer service, attention to detail, follow-up of enquiries etc.).

The rule is pretty easy to remember: less is always followed by a singular noun, fewer always by a plural. So less waste but fewer expenses.

Less units were sold than we expected is wrong, but it’s not a show-stopper. It can still be understood by your readers, as there’s no ambiguity.

Sometimes, however, it radically alters the meaning of the sentence.

Here’s an extract from an article from The Times talking about the positive effects of the recession. The journalist is quoting Nicholas Taleb, the author of the must-have-but-soon-forgotten business book of 2008, The Black Swan (the bold is my addition):

Taleb also looks forward to “less confident businessmen on cellphones in trains, airplane lounges and restaurants, less arrogant bankers and economists needing to prove they are not parasites by paying attention to the material world”.

So let’s see: is that businessmen who are less confident, or fewer businessmen who are just as confident as before? And the same goes for the bankers – less arrogant, or not as many of them?

There’s no way of knowing.

Cutting a dash

The same confusion can be caused by the humble hyphen. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter whether you use it or not. You can leave it out without affecting the meaning.

As I did just last week, when I put together a long piece on search engine optimisation. Each time I wrote the phrase, I cringed a little to myself. It should really be search-engine optimisation, but nobody writes it like that.

So hyphenless it remains, and the meaning is still clear.

But that’s not always the case. A client of mine a while back had a website that was peppered with the phrase risk free hosting.

He read it as a statement: hosting without risks. I read it as a command: Take a risk on free hosting! (no cost, no guarantees, you get what you pay for – and you pay nothing).

When I pointed this out, there was a sharp intake of breath. And the quick addition of a hyphen, so it became risk-free hosting.

The same problem cropped up with child health researcher, a phrase I saw in source material I was reading for a white paper. Immediately, I imagined a 10-year-old kid with a clipboard interviewing people about their medical problems.

In the white paper, I changed it to child-health researcher – somebody who specialised in the area of paediatric care, and whose age is largely irrelevant.

I encountered a similar problem with copresenter, in a US client’s copy aimed at the UK market. I saw somebody who didn’t like policemen (cop resenter). She saw somebody who shared the stage with a colleague (co-presenter).

We added a hyphen.

It’s not about you

The key consideration with all copy is how easily it can be read by your reader. And for that, you can either stick to the rules, break the rules or just bend the rules.

But here’s a rule you should never forget: simple copy works best.

As soon as you try to dress it up, you’re sending a message out. This is about me, you’re telling your readers. Just look how clever I am.

If in doubt, leave it out. And that especially applies to foreign, obscure or high-flown expressions. Here are just some of the toe-curlers I’ve seen recently in marketing copy:

Pyrrhic victory to mean a minor victory. A Pyrrhic victory is one where your losses are so heavy that even though you won, you’re virtually ruined. It’s a technical win, not a real one. So when a marketing agency boasts of a Pyrrhic victory, run for cover.
Beg the question, followed by a question. This doesn’t mean the same as raise the question or pose the question. It means to use circular logic (‘We don’t need a nuclear deterrent because we’ve never had to use it.’).
In extremis doesn’t mean in extreme circumstances, or when the going gets tough. This now-ubiquitous Latin expression means that you’re at death’s door, so you should probably have ‘extreme unction’ (where a priest anoints you with holy oil before you pop your clogs).

The message is clear. Pay attention to the little details, and strive for absolute clarity. Tell a simple story in simple language and put your ego in your pocket.

That way, you’ll win over the reader.

Every time.

Five ways to improve your writing

Kevin — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:00:41 +0000

Breaking the rules, talking to yourself and killing your darlings

“How do you write so clearly?” somebody asked me recently.

Clearly, me? Do I?

Well, yes, I suppose I do, but it’s not because I’ve got some secret that nobody else has access to. I didn’t climb a mountain and meet a copywriting sadhu.

I just follow some simple rules. Or, in some cases, break them.

1. Read it out loud

If there’s one tip you should remember of the five, this is it.

Often, when we write, the words remain lifeless on the page – and we wonder why.

Wonder no more.

Scriptwriters know all about this. Words, phrases, entire passages that they thought were flowing, sonorous and effective, suddenly fall apart when spoken out loud by actors.

What worked on the page simply doesn’t work when spoken.

Now it’s not that people all read out loud when they read. Or even silently, moving their lips – what linguists call ‘subvocalisation’.

But a lot of people hear voices in their head (nice ones, I mean).

So read it out loud. I promise you, you’ll be surprised. As soon as you start doing it, you’ll see what doesn’t make sense.

As a Telegraph journalist might have done when he wrote the following phrase a couple of months ago:

Mr Clegg will leave his own conference early to deputise for Mr Cameron, whose wife Samantha is due to give birth next month, at a United Nations meeting in New York.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I read that, I immediately had visions of of Sam Cam with her feet in stirrups in front of the UN General Assembly.

See what I mean? Read it aloud, and you’ll avoid problems of delivery.

2. Break it up

Most people skim, and pick up the sense of the copy. So make it easy for them.

Break up your text with headings, bullets, bold and underline. Summarise the main points in boxes. Repeat your message. Repeat your call to action.

Include.

Enough.

White.

Space.

…so that copy can ‘breathe’ and not overwhelm the reader.

Break up ideas into paragraphs. Break up the paragraphs into sentences, and vary the length of the sentences. Some short. Some much longer, just for variety, and so that it all flows better.

Writing has a rhythm. So learn to dance with it.

3. Break the rules

How many times have you heard that a sentence can’t finish with a preposition?

You know what? Yes, it can.

Would you say products in which we specialise or products we specialise in?

Now you know that the first version is probably more correct. And you’re right – it is.

But it sounds stilted, formal and pedantic. Are you any of those things? Do you think your target market would respond to somebody who was ?

Of course not.

So be yourself, and write how you talk. And if that means breaking ‘rules’ (never begin a sentence with and, never use contractions, don’t use informal words or slang, don’t split an infinitive) then go ahead.

Break. And watch the magic.

4. Kill your darlings

This is a phrase from classic writing guide The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.

Your darlings are those phrases you’ve laboured over lovingly. You’ve crafted them, tweaked them, reworked them, polished them. You’ve watched them grow and develop, and are justifiably proud of them.

You’ve obeyed rule number 1 (read them aloud) and you’re still pleased with them.

Just a little too pleased, in fact. Every time you read them, you smile to yourself. And that’s an early warning sign.

It could be a clever pun. Or a particularly long, obscure or high-flown word. Maybe it’s humorous alliteration or words that mirror each other. Perhaps it’s a clever-clever tagline, or a Latin-inspired name that hides its meaning to all but the most over-educated.

Kill it. Before it kills your business.

Simple language works best. Because it’s simple, direct, and doesn’t get in the way – like the best newsreaders, whose sober dress sense doesn’t detract from what they’re saying.

5. Plan, write. In that order.

Copy is not like a letter. You don’t sit down at a blank sheet of paper and pour your heart out as you would to your granny or your dear old Aunt Joan who’s sent you a fiver for your birthday.

Copy should be structured, focused and concise. It should have a clear aim, and tell a simple story.

And throwing words on the page won’t achieve that.

So plan first. You can use MindMaps or bullet points, or just scribbles on a piece of scrap paper.

If you don’t know how to begin, then start at the end. Why are you writing this? You want somebody to buy? To make an appointment? To call? To set up a demo?

Fine. That’s the end. Now work backwards. What’s the thing that will clinch that decision? Good. That’s your killer argument.

Now work back to the detail – not too much, but enough to build to the killer argument.

Now back a step to the intro paragraph. Now back a step to the headline.

And you’re done.

Plan it forward. Plan it backwards. But whatever you do, plan it.

Then write. It’s the only way it works.

Find out more:

Words of wisdom. Pleased with what you’ve written? Too pleased? Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style will help you kill those darlings.

Touch it, see it, taste it

Kevin — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 06:00:17 +0000

Getting hands-on, seeing the light and losing the attitude

Where’s the year going? It’s Copycam time again. Who would have thought it?

I’ve been snapping away with my trusty Nokia when cheeky marketing, bright ideas and clever copy tickle my fancy.

So what’s tickled?

Touchy feely

When I was in London recently, I dropped in on the new Apple store in Covent Garden.

I’ve been there before – or rather, I’ve been to what was there before before. The folks from Cupertino, you see, took over a restaurant and refitted it to create the world’s largest Apple store.

Before you start lamenting the loss of another eatery in the maw of a voracious multinational, let me tell you that as a restaurant, it was never that good.

I ate there once, and it was a classic West End tourist trap: overpriced, bad food, even worse service. And punishingly hot patio-heaters that made me feel like I was in a sauna.

Once was enough.

So out with the cheesy pizzas and glutinous pasta, and in with a big helping of Apple.

And what a feast: iPods, iPads, iTouches and Macs appetisingly laid out for punters to taste test.

Which I did. And I almost ended up buying a new Nano. And an iPhone 4. And an iPad.

And then I remembered my resolution not to snack between meals. But the takeaway wasn’t lost on me.

Lesson 1: let people try out your product or service. Nothing, but nothing, you say can conjure up the feeling of really letting them have a go. So let them have a go.

Switch and bait

How do you feel about low-energy light bulbs?

Yes, me too. I know I should like them, but I don’t. That deathly greenish glow they emit, combined with the odd shapes they come in, is enough to put me off.

In addition, you can’t dispose of them as you would with normal waste. Instead, the advice is to go to the local dump and put them in a special skip.

Except my local dump is four miles away, and I’d have to drive. So there’s my low-carbon footprint gone up in smoke.

Also, if you break them, the recommendation from the Department of the Environment is to vacate the room for 15 minutes.

So dangerous and difficult to dispose of? My politically incorrect attitude is looking more sensible by the minute.

And I’m obviously not alone. Now that the EU has banned 100w incandescent bulbs, they’ve become a sought-after item.

Which a lighting shop down the road from me has realised.

So an otherwise unprepossessing shop on a busy road with no parking has found a clever hook to attract customers. Who might just buy something else.

You pop in for a light bulb – and come away with a light bulb and a rather expensive Art Deco lamp.

Clever.

Lesson 2: find a difference. Shout it from the rooftops.

Hola boys

Time and time again, I have to tell people to lighten up. In their attitude to the written word, that is.

Yes, we’re serious businesspeople – all of us. And no, insurance-premium tax or IT support or web security isn’t a laughing matter.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to go all formal on people. After all, which would you respond more to in a meeting – a starchy, unsmiling, sanctimonious suit or an open-collar, first-name smiler?

As long as the smile was backed up by bright ideas, solid solutions and good service, it’s a no-brainer.

People do business with people, not businesses. And what’s more, with people they like.

Like those cheeky chappies at Nanna Mexico, an eatery in Cambridge that probably doesn’t have an apple in sight.

Big ass burritos. Don’t you just want one? A big burrito, I mean, not…well you get my drift.

You see this and you think good service, great food, lots of fun. And you haven’t even been inside the door, let alone sampled the fare.

So it’s already set itself apart from the Pizza Huts and Bella Italias of this world.

Now not everybody is a funky, happening, off-the-wall Mexican joint. So if you’re a City-based wealth-management company, you can’t talk about big ass portfolios, for example.

But you can take a leaf out of the Mexican book. Just look at the How’s my driving? question. How many times have you seen that before? Lots, I’ll bet.

But usually, it’s followed by a bland, anonymous email address – info@, contact@, reply@. I once even saw one that said noreply@, which was funny and tragic at the same time.

But luis@ makes me feel it’ll go to a real person. A real person who cares.

And that matters.

Lesson 3: lighten up, get personal and connect with customers (however big and important you are).

Find out more:

See the light. The EU’s characteristically inaccessible press release on low-energy light bulbs.
Buen apetito. If you’re heading up Cambridge way, why not grab a big ass burrito at Nanna Mexico? Tell Luis I sent you.
Forbidden fruit. Something’s bound to tickle your tastebuds at Apple’s new Covent Garden store.

Marketing manoeuvres from the mobile front line

Kevin — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 06:00:08 +0000

When big brands go underground (and the lessons they learn)

I’ve been taking part in a marketing experiment.

Now usually, I’m quite wary of these sorts of things. Partly, it’s because I’m just naturally wary. And partly, it’s because I don’t like being manipulated.

But in this case, price trumped principle.

So I gave in.

Another way

So what is this marketing experiment?

Well believe it or not, I’ve changed mobile-phone operators. Now if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a phone tart, so it won’t really come as a surprise.

Over the years, I’ve jumped into bed with Virgin (don’t go there), T-Mobile and 3. And now I’ve found a new partner, who meets my needs to perfection.

It revels in the bizarre name giffgaff, which is an old Scottish word meaning mutual giving, or giving and receiving. You’ll see why in a moment.

It’s a SIM-only operator, and has great prices. It’s got a funky website, and an active community that’s ready to jump in with help and advice.

But they’re not doing it because they’re kind, selfless and altruistic. Well maybe they are, but that’s incidental.

Their real motivation is that they’re paid to help others. You answer a question in the forum, you get points. You send a SIM to a friend, more points. You do virtually anything, and you get points. And points mean one thing.

Prizes.

Every so often, they have a reckoning, when your points are converted into hard cash. So I recently got an email saying I’d earned the princely sum of (drum roll) 17p.

Mind you, I’m not exactly what you’d call a joiner, so my participation was somewhat limited. And I’d only recently signed up, so my activity was limited even further. Still, 17 pence is 17 pence, and it’s not to be scoffed at.

Neither is £200, which 40 giffgaffers earned. Or the £654 that another one managed to clock up, presumably by spending most of his time answering questions rather than making calls and sending texts.

You get the idea. It’s a let’s-all-muck-in approach. You’re no longer just a number, as it were. You’re a valued member of a growing community of people who’ve realised – in the now-famous words of NatWest – that ‘there is another way’.

They take an open-kimono approach to virtually everything, including pricing. They actively solicit suggestions and regularly implement them.

Their tone is deliberately informal. There isn’t a hint of corporate-speak in any of the communications they send out.

When I sent an email to support, the response time was a disappointing 24 hours. But I forgave them as soon as I read the first line of their message: Sorry it’s taken so long, Kevin, but we’ve been very busy here at giffgaff towers…

Can’t you just see it? Wing-back chairs, ancestral portraits, a roaring log fire. Heavy oak doors that creak satisfyingly, and narrow spiral staircases that lead up to turrets. A camp Gothic-revival mansion nestled in a valley somewhere deep in the West Country.

Actually, no.

The reality is somewhat different. And that’s where the experiment comes in.

The SIMple truth

OK, let’s open the kimono a little further.

giffgaff, you see, uses the O2 network. In fact, giffgaff is O2. Wholly owned, operated and managed by O2, but run as an apparently separate entity.

So swivel chairs, not wing-back. Climate control, not log fires. And sliding glass doors, not oak ones.

And you can forget the rolling hills of the West Country. We’re talking the concrete jungle of Slough (be still, my beating heart).

So funky, hip, off-the-wall giffgaff is wholly owned by O2, which in turn is wholly owned by Telefónica, the Spanish telecoms giant.

Seems a little less appealing, doesn’t it?

Well, yes and no. The thing is, giffgaffers know all this. And guess what? They don’t care. They get unbeatable pricing, good service and those points just keep stacking up.

Which means so do the prizes.

And O2? What’s in it for them? Well quite a lot actually. But first, let’s look at some of the cons of their little Truman-Show-with-phones experiment:

They run the risk of devaluing the O2 brand.
They’re so successful they start cannibalising the O2 market.
It fails miserably (unlikely).

These are far outweighed by the pros:

They reach a market that O2 doesn’t appeal to.
They’re so successful they start winning significant chunks of business from other SIM-only operators.
They learn some valuable lessons that can be applied to O2′s core business.
Costs are minimal, and can easily be written off. There’s no advertising and they don’t do call centres.
If it all goes wrong, they pull the plug, hang a ‘For sale’ sign on giffgaff Towers and move on.

So everybody wins – except possibly the competition. Which is nice.

And if it does all go wrong, what will I do? Well I’ll take rejection in my stride, pick myself up, brush myself off and get back in the mobile dating game again.

After all, that’s what phone tarts do best.

Find out more:

Give a little, get a little. You get out of it what you put into it at giffgaff.com.
Payback time: Mobile provider giffgaff makes first customer payouts at The Guardian.
You get the point (but only if you play your cards right). The irrepressible Brucie’s famous catchphrase.

Learning, communicating and inventing

Kevin — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:00:26 +0000

Getting creative, sending out signals and finding the perfect name

Three unrelated themes this time.

Except they’re not.

They all take something that’s ‘obvious’ and turn it on its head. They’re about coming at something from a different angle, and solving a problem creatively.

1. Brick in the wall

It’s three whole years since I highlighted a funny, compassionate and intelligent presentation by Sir Ken Robinson at TED entitled Do schools kill creativity?

It appealed to my inner rebel – and my outer one too.

And I wasn’t alone. His landmark talk was downloaded over 4 million times, striking a chord with a global audience.

And now he’s back.

His 2010 talk – Bring on the learning revolution! – will make you stop and think about how best to find your niche. His central idea, that ‘education dislocates people from their natural talents’, is a powerful and persuasive one.

He also talks about the ‘tyranny of common sense’, something we hear every day in the business world (‘we’ve always done it that way!’). And why education shouldn’t be linear (because life isn’t).

It’s all there – from Eric Clapton to fast food, from dreaming about being a fireman to why nobody under 25 wears a wristwatch (do you?).

Enjoy.

[If you're reading in email, click here to see the talk on TED.com]

2. Tomayto, tomahto

What’s your company’s tone of voice?

And before you say business-like or professional, think about who you like to do business with. Businesses or people? Faceless and anonymous, or personal and friendly?

Would you like to do business with your company?

I thought about tone of voice again this week when I re-read a blog post from the Wise Old Man of Marketing, Seth Godin.

What sort of accent do you have? starts with the obvious (accent) and extends the idea.

Writing, he says, has an accent. And actions have grammar.

He’s right. Everything we say, everything we do, every interaction we have with people sends out a subtle message.

Don’t know the difference between principle and principal? (Find out.) Think you are sounds more professional than you’re? (Think again.) Don’t have an address on your website? (Include one.) Don’t make it obvious what your prospect should do next? (Change that.) Like to include ‘takes up to 28 days’ to make sure you’re covered on delivery lead times? (Nothing takes a month.)

Everything sends out a signal, whether we like it or not.

So what signals are you sending out?

3. It’s all in a name

Can’t think of a name for your business? Tell me about it.

Actually, don’t. Instead, jump on over to Wordoid.com. And you’ll have a new business name in next to no time.

The idea is simple – you suggest a word to use as the basis (e.g. tech, shop, idea, high, first, micro) and it’ll create a new word for you.

You can choose to put your word at the beginning, middle or end of the new word. And you can choose to make it sound natural, almost natural or (bizarre, but actually kind of funky) hardly natural.

It even checks whether the .com and .net domains are available for the new word. And best of all, it’s free.

Could naming your business get any easier?

Thought not. So what are you waiting for?

Find out more:

Do schools kill creativity? Sir Ken Robinson’s original 2006 talk.