I’ve just read an interesting take from Russell M Davies on my long-running pet hate – overly matey language on packaging and marketing materials.
Writing in the latest Wired UK, Russell says:
I get loads of phishing spam; messages from my bank advising me that my security has been breached and that I should log in immediately to resolve the situation. How do I know it’s spam? Mostly because of the language, because every email gets the nuances of English usage slightly wrong. It’s not necessarily the grammar, it’s the deferential tone.
The phishers are too polite, assuming that banks have Honoured Customers and are Greatly Pleased to be Doing Business with us. They’ve not understood that most banks have decided not to be our servants, but our mates. They’ve ditched fake formality for faux friendliness. Which is worrying, because all the phishers need to do is hire a decent copywriter, or any English graduate with a reasonable ear.
That’d be a good alternative to the TEFL year wouldn’t it? Sit at home, proof-reading phishing mails, tightening up the language to match illicitly obtained brand guidelines and sound a bit like the back of an Innocent smoothie bottle. Just think – all that sits between us and enough embezzlement to force the total collapse of the global finance system is the laziness of English-literature students.
Davies is right, of course – even banks are at it these days.
The primary example is Barclays, who revamped their signage and literature in 2006 to adopt a new, friendlier tone of voice. Not such a bad idea, except some of the results have been clunky to say the least (you can read Charlie Brooker’s less measured thoughts here).
Take this example – a Barclays pen dispenser.
No quibbles with the first line. But all that “your place or mine” stuff? Just plain weird.
I understand, of course, what Barclays are trying to say with this wording (mainly ’cause I recall the revamp being sold in the press at the time as “an end to pens on chains“).
So how about this instead?
Need a pen? Be our guest.
You can keep it if you like.
It’s simple, it’s graspable in the split-second you’re likely to spend putting your hand into the box, and it’s still friendly. But I’m sure it’d be rejected by the client as quirkless: lacking the all-important Innocent factor.
I’m not sure whether or not this is the company which helped Barclays create these results, but Afia are “tone of voice specialists” who name Barclays as one of their clients. On their page about the bank (I’d link to it, but the whole site is in Flash, so I can’t) somebody (who isn’t named) has this to say:
There are a variety of activities that we can employ to get the tone of voice used throughout the organisation. I think of them as top-down and bottom-up, or air strike and ninja insertion.
I promise I’m not making this up.
Nope, not us.
I’ve a story about the free pens though. I heard from the marketing director that one of the Leeds brand managers said it was all very well to ask people to help themselves but please could they screw the boxes to the tables. The local school had been on a raid.
The ninja thing? That was a joke.
And you can read all about it at http://www.afia.tv.
air strike or ninja insertion hey?. .someone’s been fantasising a bit too long about working for ‘gold command’
I’m kind of over innocent since they did their banana free smoothies. Nice though they were there was something odd about the use of a monkey sending them a threatening note. I mean wouldn’t monkeys be GRATEFUL they weren’t using bananas? or is this a more complex issue regarding the banana economy, demand and supply etc I have failed to grasp….