Why did my copy need to change? Because, he said, it was planting negative ideas. But, I said, it’s sharing people’s bad experiences only to point out how we do things differently. No, he said. The negative ideas will make people feel negative. Rephrase it positively. I had another go: ‘You want the right person and you want to find them quickly and effortlessly.’ It got the thumbs up.

He went on to explain that if you tell a hypnotised person something positive but phrase it negatively, it will be interpreted by their subconscious as a negative message. Something like: ‘You will not feel anxious about the interview.’ That plants the idea of being anxious. ‘Anxious’ is a negative trigger word. Just hearing it makes people, on some level, to some slight degree, a little more anxious than they were.

Whereas ‘you will feel strong and confident about the interview’ plants positive ideas. You can actually feel the difference as you read:

You will not feel anxious about the interview.

Versus:

You will feel strong and confident about the interview.

Notice how those words ’strong’ and ‘confident’ make you feel that little bit stronger and more confident.

The same applies in marketing and business writing. Always aim to use positive phrasings.

So instead of: ‘We never allow shoddy work on our assembly line.’

Try: ‘We insist on the highest standards on our assembly line.’

Instead of: ‘We cannot ship in boxes of less than 12.’

Try: ‘To help keep your costs down, we ship in boxes of 12 or more.’

Even though the factual ideas being conveyed are the same, putting it in a positive way makes a remarkable difference to the emotional impact.

I consider this one of the most important questions a writer can ask, preferably before he or she starts writing. Unfortunately a lot of the time you’ll have to ask it after you’ve written your first draft, to help you see the wood for the trees once you’ve got lost among all those words.

For some reason people do something weird when they begin some marketing or business writing. They put on a voice. They start to sound like a bureaucrat. They become boring and awkward. But above all they make things complicated and they hide the message they’re trying to send.

Your typical piece of business writing will require some effort from the reader to disentangle it to understand ‘what you’re really trying to tell me’.

My advice: imagine you’re telling a friend the key message you’re about to write. How would you say it? Write that down. The chances are it’s your message in a nutshell. Now you can tidy it up, find neater ways to put it, be a little bit clever.

It’s so important to cut to the chase at the beginning of a piece of communications to a group of readers who don’t know they’re interested until you tell them why they should be. Forget going round the houses first by introducing your organisation or setting the scene.

What are you actually saying here? That’s the message you need to focus on. Don’t let the act of writing confuse things.

From early on in the project, Robson Dowry worked hard on their positioning with the Manchester agency Wradar. Wradar’s approach is to take no prisoners – they’ll tell you what you are and what you’re not, and they won’t let you get away with any illusions.

They forced Robson Dowry to recognise that they have a specific type of client. And that there’s no point in trying to present themselves as a design agency for everyone.

Critically, instead of trying to make Robson Dowry appeal to as wide an audience as possible, they narrowed the focus and actually reduced the potential audience.

Surely a mistake?

Well no. Because if you know who you’re selling to, you can focus on how to sell to them. Instead of diluting your messages to make sure you’re catering for anyone who might happen to visit your site.

By narrowing the scope you sharpen the focus.

Hence the copy taking the lead. Let’s be absolutely clear on who we are, what we do, and who we do it for – that was the approach.

Robson Dowry certainly have their own distinct ways of doing things: methodically, calmly, meticulously, with an emphasis on craft and care, not flashy instant answers. The copy had to reflect this.

So it’s not punchy and in your face.

It’s not chatty or jokey.

It doesn’t shout and challenge.

It doesn’t strike a pose.

It simply talks clearly, calmly and lucidly, with a certain gravitas and seriousness. It is ‘quiet’. And that’s remarkably refreshing.

In addition to this distinct and particular tone of voice, the copy has something to say: a distillation of who Robson Dowry are, what they do and who they do it for.

Wradar forced Robson Dowry to narrow their focus and clarify their positioning; the copy then gave them that positioning, supported by a beautiful, calm site design.

Above all, this project shows the power of knowing what you are, and what you’re not. That’s why it’s so foolish when brands ask their copywriter to ‘do an Innocent’ or copy some other tone and attitude they’ve just got excited by.

Faking this kind of stuff is the best way to fail.

You need to capture what makes you special, what you offer in particular, including your personality – so visible and clear to others, so hard to identify for yourself – and distil it into an essence. Then capture that and put it into words.

You can see Robson Dowry here.

And Wradar here. (They have a new site on the way which I’m also working on. I’ll report here any further insights gained from working with these very sharp boys.)

Why do they love them so much?

What do headlines like that make you think of? They make me think of a lame internal staff newsletter. Or perhaps that tired local authority newsletter that comes through your door. News that isn’t really newsworthy, stories that aren’t interesting, a poor attempt to pretend you’re reading a real newspaper that you’d be willing to pay money for.

Those ‘ing’ headlines give the game away. They don’t actually make a statement, like ‘We are working for a better tomorrow’, because that sounds grandiose and, frankly, unlikely to be true. They don’t even say ‘How we’re working for a better tomorrow’ because that would put too much of an obligation on the paragraph that followed to explain things.

Ing headlines are gutless headlines.

Formally they are a sort of bastardised present participle. In the sentence ‘We are working for a better tomorrow’, ‘working’ really is a present participle. But in ‘working for a better tomorrow’ the ‘we are’ is implied. Or half-implied. Because it’s not entirely clear who’s doing the working.

And that’s the nub of the problem.

Ing headlines avoid saying who’s doing the action. They avoid a definite statement.

The impression they give is of inaction, inexactness, vague good intentions, things getting better somehow, a desire to sound better than the reality.

So if you want to add instant impact – and force yourself to work out what you’re really saying – then kill your ing headlines.

Replace them with instructions (‘Give some of your spare time’), promises (‘How we’re supporting a local charity’), questions (‘Are you ready to give something back?’), declarations (‘We’ve paid for a new van for a local charity’).

There are many alternatives to choose from (more on these later). The key is to say something, and the more specific the better.

Just don’t say nothing while pretending to say something.

I’m running one of my one day ‘Introduction to Effective Business Writing’ courses on 23rd January at University College Falmouth (UPDATE: next course will be on 17 April). It’s a pretty intensive day and those who attend have to apply themselves to a series of exercises and challenges, but if you join us you won’t look at either your writing or other business writing in the same way again.

This isn’t primarily about grammar, it’s about how to get attention, structure an argument, be concise, persuasive, memorable and inspiring. I won’t just teach you a few dos and don’ts, I’ll equip you with a set of tools to analyse your own work and that of others, so you’re able to see why it’s not working and understand how to improve it beyond recognition.

I’ll also show you that you’re a better writer than you thought – and a more creative writer too. Even straightforward business writing, when done well, is creative writing.

‘I thought the course was brilliant,’ wrote one person after attending a course last year. ‘Piers is a great tutor and I really think I got a lot from the day. So many of these courses are a long day of listening and no practical work. I loved the constant interaction.’

Read more details.

So I’ll see you there then.

Piers

Actually, the research is about reading news, but what applies to reading news applies to all information gathering online. People generally prefer text if they want facts. It’s true for people in their 20s as much as it is for people in their 50s and 60s. Audio, video and information graphics are less popular.

Here’s the story.

Why is this the case when we can employ advanced, interactive, dynamic, digital new ways of presenting information?

Imagine you see a link that catches your attention and sounds interesting, but you’re in a hurry. You click to the page and you want to know what it’s about. Are you going to watch the five-minute video that starts loading? Chances are you’ll pause the video and read the headline below it, and the first paragraph below that. If there’s a summary box over on the right, you’ll read that. Then if you want to know even more, you might save it for later, when you watch the video.

Words give us the facts. And they do so quickly.

That’s not to say graphics, images and audio/visual don’t have an important role to play. They do. But if you want to get a specific message across to your customers, say it in words. Use graphics to generate atmosphere, to position your brand, to get people looking, to make them feel nice (or however you want them to feel). Use audio or visual to engage them in more depth.

But use words to put ideas in their heads. (Although if you get the words wrong, the ideas won’t even go in.)

We’re delighted, because they do great work that makes financial products fresh and attractive – and because a lot of our words go into their work, helping making those financial products clear and compelling.

The agency is called Redtag and the award was from the Financial Services Forum. It’s good to know that their work, and ours, is being recognised nationally.

www.laurajervis.com

In fact she’s working on an updated version of the Wordbrain brand and site. Watch this space, but here’s a sneak preview:

‘Hi from Orange. We’re increasing the price of your monthly plan by 4.34% from 8 January 2012. For more information visit orangeworld.co.uk/planupdate’.

Unbelievable.

Now I’m not going to claim that all the trouble was caused by the wording of the text, but I am going to claim that it made it a lot worse. Yes, they were raising the price of a fixed monthly bill, which the customers had signed up to for a certain period, for, you know, a fixed price. It’s not as if customers have the right to decide they’re going to pay a bit less this month.

What’s certain is that large numbers of customers were up in arms, many left, and there was huge discussion about it. There’s no doubt that Orange’s brand has suffered badly.

And who can blame customers for reacting angrily, for feeling betrayed, when they get told bad news in a text like that?

First of all it starts off nice and informal – ‘Hi’. Great. Then it just says we’re increasing what you pay us. And that’s it. No apology, nothing to soften the blow, not an ounce of regret, not the tiniest acknowledgement that this is not good news, that this will hurt people’s wallets.

In the circumstances, that ‘Hi’ just makes things worse. It’s like someone who’s just gone off with your wife passing you in the street and cheerily saying ‘Hi!’ You probably want to kill them, when before you just wanted to hurt them.

I’ve been involved in discussions about how companies can best break bad news and the problem with big organisations, like people with big egos, is that they really hate saying sorry. When they do, they tend to say ‘We regret any inconvenience this may have caused’. If that were said by a human being when they’d just overcharged you, or not done what they said they would, or broken the electricity supply into your home (let’s say), you’d be gobsmacked by the sheer, utter insincerity of it. In fact, you’d think they were being sarcastic.

Big businesses hate saying sorry for charging you more because saying sorry implies they’ve made a mistake. And it’s obviously not a mistake. And if they really regretted it they wouldn’t do it, so they don’t want to express regret either.

The result is texts like this, or letters that are just as dead-eyed but spend longer getting to the point. Which is a separate problem – trying to avoid saying what you’re actually saying, trying to hide the bad news. At least Orange didn’t do that.

So what could Orange have done differently? Recognize their customers as human beings. Talk as if they, the people at Orange, are actually people. Because the people who work at Orange are, despite how they come across, in fact human beings.

What’s particularly irritating is that a brand like Orange normally comes over as your best mate, cool, friendly and chatty, and then when things turn a little tricky, revert to being a blank, faceless, feelingless corporation.

But businesses can express regret. They can show empathy with their customers’ feelings. And it makes a huge difference when they do. Orange simply needed to show it understood that this wasn’t good news. It could have done so without saying sorry, if it really didn’t want to say sorry. But why not say sorry? If I have to tell someone that their car is blocking mine, I’ll say something like, ‘Sorry to disturb you, but could you move your car?’ Obviously I want to disturb them, in the sense that I want the result of disturbing them, but I do also regret having to disturb them.

‘Hello from Orange. We’re really sorry about this, but we are having to raise the cost of your monthly plan. Find out more about why and what difference it will make at orangeworld.co.uk/planupdate’.

Something like that would have made a big difference. It would have showed they gave a bit of a damn, and it wouldn’t have damaged their brand so horribly.

Remember Ratners? Words can destroy a business.

What is it about management and jargon? Do they consciously adopt it because they genuinely believe it makes them sound cleverer, more authoritative and more reliable?

Revealingly, in the same announcement, Deighton explained that the chaotic failure of security company G4S to supply sufficient numbers of security guards, and the subsequent introduction of large numbers of soldiers, is actually a success. ‘The net outcome is, you end up with an even better security force.’ The man has remarkable powers of spin.

It’s clear why a man who can explain a cock-up as a good thing would use business jargon: it is there to mislead, to be less than honest, to make one thing look like another or look bigger than it is.

But does it work? Do people trust LOCOG? No. The ridiculous language seems part and parcel with its inc0mpetence. That’s what’s so clever about the rather brilliant comedy Twenty Twelve: it recognises that the abuse of language in the pursuit of looking clever is evidence of stupidity.

Incompetence goes hand in hand with corporate jargon.

Whereas clear speaking (and writing) demonstrates clear thinking.