'Professor, when did you become so obsessed with voting?' 'The very instant I became old'

My hair is long gone, I can’t drink more than three pints and I can never remember what I came upstairs for. But there are consolations. I do have more disposable income. However, my leisure is limited, so I’m very much interested in ways to exchange cash for time. Which, you might think, makes me a plum target for advertisers.

But whenever I see marketing ostensibly aimed at me, I feel patronised. On TV, the only time I see people living lives similar to mine is on ads for awful, naff suburban brands like Bisto, Ronseal or Vauxhall – normally revolving around some sort of jokey vignette about family life. While I might recognise the situations with a wry smile, I don’t particularly warm to the product.

Contrarian viewpoint

As Bob Hoffman has often noted at Ad Contrarian, advertisers are curiously coy about targeting older consumers, even though people generally attain more spending power as they age. Everything is pitched at the young and the beautiful – even though they’re the least likely to be able to afford it.

Here’s a summary from his excellent free ebook, The Ad Contrarian:

There seems to be an irresistible urge for marketers to target young people despite monumental evidence that older people have far more money, are more willing to change brand loyalties, are far easier to reach, and all-in-all make better customers…

Not only is most advertising not appealing to the people who have and spend most of the money but it’s alienating them with imagery, values, and cultural references that are actively disliked and resented.

Embarrassment and humiliation

I can so relate to Bob’s observations. Video games are a case in point. I enjoy them, but I’m embarrassed by the culture that surrounds them. Despite the self-congratulatory blah about ‘interactive movies’, most games have yet to rise above the sort of setting, narrative and character development that appeals to 15-year-old boys. Even titles like Heavy Rain and LA Noire, which represent the very pinnacle of mainstream sophistication, barely manage to attain the level of an average genre movie. And yet new PS3 games cost £50, and the average age of a US gamer is 33.

Clothes are another good example. Having finally got to the stage where I can afford some decent threads, I’m increasingly intimidated by the experience of buying them. Going into a ‘proper’ fashion outlet means enduring the condescension of a 20-year-old assistant with a 28” waist, but I’m not ready for the unmitigated beigeness of M&S. So I end up in places like French Connection, Gap and Esprit, glumly browsing the light-blue shirts under a huge monochrome image of a pouting twink. And feeling very, very old.

Aspiration and visibility

Why the mismatch between message and reality? One reason might be the impulse to feature beautiful young people, whether for purely aesthetic reasons or because they are ‘aspirational’ for the olds. In areas such as women’s fashion, progress in this area seems painfully slow, having been limited (as far as I can tell) to a few patronisingly labelled ‘real’ models and the occasional 50-year-old with a freakishly youthful body, like Twiggy for M&S.

Relative visibility might be another part of the answer. Young people have enough free time to go online and make a lot of noise about the games, music, films or fashion they like – whether or not they actually pay money to consume them. Inevitably, brands and marketers listen, and end up skewing their messages towards a vocal minority. By the same token, they might fall into the seductive trap of ‘engaging’ young Facebook users who aren’t that likely to buy.

This was Mr Bleaney’s room

Another explanation is that ads (and ‘content’ more widely) are written or approved by people far younger than me, who are trying to think their way into my shoes. Inevitably, the attempt to ‘appeal’ ends up being lame and patronising.

Any junior copywriters reading? Let me give you a pointer, kids. In terms of your inner life, being 40 is exactly like being 20 – but the guy in the mirror doesn’t look like you any more. He looks like your dad.

OK, he thinks a bit like him too. But he still doesn’t want to be reduced to the sum of his lifestyle habits. The 40-year-old is more than the Bisto he ladles on to his sausages, the Ronseal he slaps on his fence or the Vauxhall he uses to take the boys to football. Like Larkin’s Mr Bleaney, he wants to shake off ‘the dread/that how we live measures our own nature’.

Inside the middle-aged man is someone who, against all the odds, still wants to be cool. Or feel cool, at least. And if he’s got half a brain, he doesn’t want to do it in a ludicrous mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, but on his own terms. Midlife Man doesn’t really want to go back in time 25 years. He wants to relive his youth with his knowledge and experience intact – and without giving up the hard-won comforts of middle age.

Clumsy nostalgia

One way to do that is by returning to the films, books and music of yesteryear. Cultural nostalgia should be a powerful weapon for the advertiser, but it’s often wielded in the clumsiest way. Take the much-lauded Christmas advert for John Lewis (excerpt below). For a certain type of person growing up in the 1980s, the music of The Smiths was literally sacred. (When I say ‘literally’, I literally mean literally.) Morrissey’s lyics, attitude and sheer living-signness were a lifeline, making Smiths records a qualitatively different cultural experience from other music.

Used in the right way, and for the right product, such music could have a powerful emotional charge. But a mawkish, wispy cover version is not the right way, and a crushingly middle-class department store is not the right product. Even though I am slap-bang in the middle of John Lewis’ target market, their ad actually eroded the little bit of their brand that lives in my head. The concept of the ad was OK – but you don’t mess about with The Smiths.

A more recent example is Honda’s spot featuring Matthew Broderick reprising his role from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (below). This sparked righteous outrage from some quarters, while others noted that the ad had not really captured the film’s ‘charm, energy and humour’, and that Broderick himself appeared rather stilted and ill at ease (perhaps because of his hesitation at agreeing to the ad in the first place).

Maybe it’s too much to hope for – sincere, considered marketing that connects with my life as I actually live it. But that’s what young people get, all the time. If advertisers want to reach the olds, they might want to ease off the suburban stereotypes and ironic button-pushing, and try treating older people as, well, people.

The post discusses Chelsea lip gloss, made by Chanel, which is described by its maker as follows:

This brilliant pink lipgloss delivers the ultimate pop of colour, along with subtle shimmer and a high-shine glow. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection, its striking hue is named for a thriving artistic and cultural area of London.

Photo by buzzybee

In Holly’s memorable phrase, the gloss is, in reality, ‘weaker than Anthony Worrall Thompson’s resolve in the Tesco cheese aisle’. She ascribes the discrepancy between copy and product to the writer being given little or no information from which to work.

It’s a point well worth making, but what’s most striking for me is the fact that the copy devolves to exaggeration by default – something that happens in many situations, regardless of source material, product, audience or brand. (And I do it myself.)

Here’s a few definitions of some words used in the Chanel description (from Collins):

brilliant adj. 1. shining with light; sparkling. 2. (of a colour) reflecting a considerable amount of light; vivid. 3. outstanding; exceptional… 4. splendid; magnificent…

ultimate adj. 2. the highest or most significant…

glow n. 3. brilliance of colour

striking adj. 1. attracting attention; fine; impressive… 2. conspicuous; noticeable

On one level, these show that the writer did a pretty good job, in the sense that the words chosen have just the right connotations for the concepts they’re trying to convey. But on another level, they describe an idealised version of the product, rather than the physical reality. Why do we write this way?

Why we exaggerate

The main reason, I suppose, is just to put the product in the best possible light: to communicate the benefits in the most powerful way. But this is clearly a question of degree: you can stretch credibility too far.

Another reason is the need to sustain aspirational brand values in descriptive writing. At the level of concepts and slogans, we can aim for something elegant and thought-provoking that dramatises a benefit without having to say that much (show, don’t tell). Slogans like ‘I’m lovin’ it’ and ‘Just do it’ are pure surface, explaining nothing. But when the context or format obliges us to go deeper, problems arise. Describing the physical reality of the product while staying true to the values projected by the headline or brand can lead directly to exaggeration. We can see this very clearly in the Chanel example.

Thirdly, there’s simple force of habit. Copywriters remove or recast negative ideas, elide or gloss over weak points and bend the truth to make the argument as watertight as possible. It’s simply what we do; having acquired the necessary skills, we become unconsciously competent and polish up the message almost without thinking.

And because it’s what copywriters do, there’s an element of cultural or peer pressure; a sort of verbal arms race. When everyone else is exaggerating, we have to exaggerate too, or our message might not prevail. If our lip-gloss shade is ‘bright’, and a competitor’s is ‘brilliant’, who’s going to close that sale?

The effect of exaggeration

I think it’s fair to say that, for most people, outlandish exaggeration is simply the accepted language of commerce. It’s just how adverts talk. We’d be alarmed to hear such words from a real person, but we’ve become completely accustomed to hearing them from brands.

As a result, we’ve become inured to their effect. The currency of marketing communication has been hyperinflated, with marketers shoveling on the hyperbole and audiences ignoring it, seeing through it or perhaps actively rejecting it. Exaggeration is the monosodium glutamate of content, habituating the reader to ever-stronger flavours while also making everything taste the same.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting to consider the implications of this for social-media marketing. While one brand channel (Twitter, Facebook) is saying ‘be my friend’, another one (TV, press) is screaming dementedly in the customer’s earhole about how great the product is. Is that really the best basis for engagement?

In some cases, however, I personally believe that exaggeration is more effective than we might like to admit. I’m thinking about zappy ads for toys aimed at children, scaremongering ads about germs aimed at homemakers or exciting ads for alcoholic drinks aimed at young adults. When the audience is particularly receptive or susceptible, I think the exaggerated idea is, at least partly, taken at face value. It might not lead to a purchase – the child sees the ad and pesters the parent, who says ‘no’ – but it still has an effect. When we hear or read language, we have to respond, even if only in thought.

The Innocent way

Seen in this light, exaggeration is irrelevant or ineffective at best, cynically manipulative at worst. So what else might work?

Well, there’s certainly scope for fresher language – words that are still vivid and forceful, but more precisely attuned to the actual nature of the product and/or less familiar in their effect.

For example, take the word ‘exciting’. It gets pinned to a vast range of products and services, very few of which are, in fact, very exciting. As a result, it has lost all its power in the commercial context. If we want to evoke excitement, we need to find a new way to say it. Other usual suspects include ‘great’, ‘delicious’ and, in B2B, ‘innovative’.

Some brands, such as Innocent, seek to make their words fresh again by taking the road less followed and shaking up the usage. Here’s what they might have done with the Chelsea prod desc:

Cheerful Chelsea is as thrilling as the district that shares her name and pinker than an embarrassed flamingo. Take her along to any party where only the shiniest, most shimmery shades are welcome. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection.

It’s still exaggerated – more so, probably – but at least it’s unexpected, and the use of wackywriting takes the edge off the hyperbole. The only problem with this is that it’s pretty labour-intensive, and may simply be too costly if you’ve got 500 product descriptions to create. (Many Innocent-style brands, including Innocent, write a lot of their own copy – killing two birds with one stone by saving costs and keeping a tight grip on their tone.)

The plain way

What about just toning down the writing? If we pull right back from exaggeration, what is the effect?

Chelsea is named after an area of London. It’s pink and shiny, with a sort of sparkle effect.

If exaggeration is monododium glutamate, this is plain boiled rice. In its effect, it’s weirdly point-blank and conversational, pulling you up short by being so totally different from what you expect. It also gives you the feeling of being addressed by a real person instead of a manic shrieking automaton.

However, the price of honesty is eccentricity, as a result of which it may completely miss the target. Exaggeration is so widely used that it’s almost an established style that readers have come to expect – if we take a very unexpected tone, they might be disorientated and just bail out.

Cognitive dissonance

This recent piece by Nick Usborne points out the futility of trying to change the reader’s mind. If you attempt to communicate an idea that is not in tune with your reader’s beliefs, the result is cognitive dissonance – a jarring discrepancy between what the reader already knows and what you are trying to tell them. ‘As you write your copy,’ notes Nick, ‘Your reader needs to be nodding his or her head.’

He’s right, of course. The way to sell is to identify those who are most likely to buy and focus on showing them compelling benefits – to ‘persuade the reader to do something they are already inclined to do,’ as Nick puts it.

When we resort to exaggeration, I think we are showing that we have given up on this goal. Instead of setting out a reasonable case for a purchase, we’ve resorted to turning up the volume in an attempt to browbeat the reader into buying. In a way, exaggeration denotes a loss of faith in the product, or our ability to sell it, or both. That’s why, when it comes to persuasion, less may well be more.

Rise & Shine
Begin the day refreshed and recharged with a delicious Millennium & Copthorne Hotels breakfast.

Not spectacular, but I can’t really argue with it. It totally does the job for the brand, the situation and the audience, and I’m sure I would have written something very similar.

On the back of the same menu, however, the tone of voice takes an abrupt left turn:

Items listed on this menu are subject to availability and we reserve the right to change or amend menu items as seasonal variations apply. Guests with allergies are urged to inform their server prior to ordering or selecting food items as full ingredient listings can be provided.

We’re used to seeing different tones of voice for different purposes or situations. After all, real people vary their tone all the time – the tone I take when meeting a client in their office will devolve dramatically if we go out for a drink later on.

And when writing for a brand, it’s completely natural to strike a different tone in ‘selling’ and ‘official’ content – a good example being the contrast between a website’s home page and its terms and conditions.

However, the variation in our desired tone of voice may not map neatly on to the different elements of the customer’s experience. It may be that things we see as separate, or want to treat in different ways, are closely related in terms of user experience, purchase cycle or brand touchpoints.

For example, the hotel guest may be pleased to learn that the breakfast will refresh and recharge them, but immediately anxious for reassurance about their nut allergy. For them, the whole value proposition hinges on the small-print stuff.

If we vary the tone too sharply between areas that are closely linked for readers, we may implicitly undermine trust and what NLP practitioners call congruence. In human terms, our text steps over the line that divides ‘smooth-faced’ from ‘two-faced’.

In my view, this menu is a case in point. It’s all smiles when it wants your money, but when it comes to what’s actually offered in return, it retreats into multisyllabic, passive-case formality. And these two tones are, quite literally, found on the two ‘faces’ of the printed format.

This is a classic instance of language as defence mechanism; of speaking without wanting to communicate. The officious bureaucrat erects spiky word barriers around accountability and commitment that few readers will want to negotiate (or be able to). Sadly, it’s an approach that gets used far too often, particularly in the public sector.

Behind the bluster, the actual message is usually quite simple. Here’s a rewrite of the back-of-menu text:

Some foods aren’t always available. Please tell us if you have a food allergy; we can give you a full list of ingredients.

This reduces the reading age from the original’s 17 down to eight, greatly enhancing the odds that allergy sufferers will actually get the message they need to hear.

My version also makes it much clearer that the menu isn’t a promise – and it’s probably this clarity of obligation that makes people shy away from a simple, straightforward tone. Or maybe it feels like a simple tone just isn’t ‘hard’ or ‘important’ enough. But once you start reaching for the big words, you usually end up with a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I’m not saying that everything should be written in exactly the same tone, regardless of its purpose. Instead, the tone should be as consistent as it can be, while still moving with the audience’s needs. We should write how people want to read.

But that’s just ambient irritation. I can deal with that without having to bore you about it in a post. The specific object of my ire, incredibly, is David Attenborough’s recital of ‘What a Wonderful World’, shown after the final episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet. Watch it below (bearing in mind you’ll never get these two minutes of your life back).

This strange clip seems to have captured the nation’s imagination, with some even calling for it to be released as a Christmas single. Visit it on YouTube and you’ll see people emoting about how beautiful it is, how they were moved to tears by it, etc. Well, each to their own I suppose. My favourite bit is the tagline at the end, which almost (but not quite) redeems the whole venture:

It’s a wonderful world, watch it with us

The comma is a wonderful punctuation mark, don't use it to separate sentences

You can’t use a comma to separate two sentences, but apart from that, nice work. Now, as regards the video preceding the line, I have a number of issues. Stop reading now if you love the clip and don’t want me to ruin the magic.

First off is the fundamental non-viability of the spoken-word cover version. Way out of his element, Attenborough dutifully drags his feet through the lyric, struggling to sound remotely natural while still keeping time with the dinky backing track. He ends up evoking, not the wonders of nature, but William Shatner’s demented cover of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.

Another stumbling block is the sheer numbing familiarity of the song. It’s been used so often, in so many contexts, that I find it hard to believe anyone can have a ‘clean’, unmediated response to it. It’s every film-maker’s go-to track for slushy, sentimental reverie – a sort of musical shorthand for ‘we’re pushing your emotional buttons, please cry now’. For me (if no one else), the result has been to drain the actual song of whatever expressive impact it might once have had. As a cultural artefact, it’s a pitiful, dried-up husk of a thing.

Moreover, the song’s been crowbarred here into a context where it doesn’t really fit. OK, the first few lines work well, but soon we’re being asked to reconcile the lines about ‘friends shaking hands’ with footage of whales. The remorselessly literal lyric offers precious little metaphorical breathing space.

But my real problem is with, yes, tone of voice. For me, the lyric of ‘What a Wonderful World’ just doesn’t feel like something that a British national treasure like David Attenborough has got any business reciting. (Cue commenters pointing out that it’s his favourite song, probably.)

Attenborough’s popular, but he isn’t populist. He’s not Johnny Morris. The films he’s made, and those he’s narrated, have always been resolutely educational and scientific. He makes things simple, but doesn’t dumb down, and very rarely resorts to anthromorphism. So the choice of this number, with its dopey, Disneyesque chord progression and trite picture-book lyric, just doesn’t ring true for me.

Call me a terrible pseud, but I’d rather have heard him recite an intellectually powerful poem that was more directly about the natural world and our place in it, without ladling ersatz sentiment over everything. Something by Ted Hughes maybe, if there are any that aren’t about death or crows. Or how about these lines from Wordsworth?

…For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth…
From ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’

Now come on, be honest. Wouldn’t that have been better than slop about ‘the rainbow so pretty in the sky’?

Humbug.

What is wackywriting?

‘Wackaging’ is a brilliant word, and great fun to say out loud, but what I’m talking about is bigger than just packaging. So I’m using ‘wackywriting’ to cover wacky, funky or childlike copywriting in all its forms – packaging, advertising, online, social. (Don’t worry, I’m not expecting it to catch on, or form the title of my forthcoming book.)

Here are a few examples (some from Nick’s post, and posts referenced there, and some I’ve found):

We’re not saying that there’s anything wrong with going for a gym workout, it’s just, you know, all a bit of an effort really, isn’t it? If I were you, I’d just have an Innocent smoothie instead.
Innocent (product packaging)

Lots of mummys got together to create a range that was carefully selected to be the best for their little ones…
Little Me Organics (product packaging)

My dad made a promise to me and my brother that he would only use stuff in our products that is natural, is pure and helps make us healthy.
Ella’s Kitchen (product packaging)

In 1997 all we could find were tasteless, junk-filled crisps. We knew we could do better. After a lot of searching we found an old fryer (a machine not a person) and put it in a tiny factory down here in deepest Devon…
Burt’s Chips (product packaging)

Thanks for picking me!
I’m your new running partner. The people here at Brooks designed me using advanced technologies for cushioning, stability, comfort, and speed…So, come on. Let’s get going. 5k, 10k, around the block?
Run happy!
Brooks (packaging for running shoes)

Guess it’s a bill.
Much more than that! It’s full of easy ways to save water and money.
Sounds great. Anything else?
Anglian Water (outside of water-bill envelope)

Just like a parking ticket, you can’t transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission… Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of   courts. Oh and don’t forget those men with big dogs.
Campaign Monitor (email newsletter contract)

As you can see, wackywriting is used by some brands that are very similar to Innocent, and some that are very different from it. Indeed, the extension of this hypercasual tone to more utilitarian, technical and traditional contexts testifies to the level of acceptance it’s attained.

Just to be clear, I’m not criticising the writers who do wackywriting, or the brands who use it. I don’t think wackywriting is inherently bad, or that there’s necessarily too much of it. (I’ve even done some myself, although it’s not online yet – I’ll link to it when it is.) I’m just interested in where it comes from, and where it’s going.

Parental guidance

Wackywriting is easy to parody – here’s a fine example from ‘Gordon Comstock’. But where does it come from? What are the real-world antecedents for the wackywriting tone?

In his piece, Nick Asbury compares wackywriting to ‘speaking to your mum’. It definitely has a familial feel, but I think Eva Wiseman is right on the money when she says that ‘adults are staying childish for too long’ and that ‘it’s no wonder we have trouble acting our age – we’re all being babysat by the stuff we buy’.

In my view, wackywriting has its roots in the sort of language used by some middle-class parents to their young children: jolly, zany and childlike, but with a colder undercurrent of authority, judgement and passive aggression. This dynamic comes through very clearly in the Little Me and Ella’s Kitchen examples above: an adult using a child’s voice to make adult points.

Speaking to control

I guess we all have days when we’d like to return to our childhoods, which accounts for the disarming appeal of wackywriting. But growing up isn’t all sunnyshine and wowwipops. It’s also a time of total dependence, fear and confusion – and, overridingly, a time of being told what to do. One way or another, a child spends most of their time being controlled.

As Nick points out, copywriting is not a one-on-one conversation between equals. A brand – a business – is ‘speaking’ to a mass audience of actual and potential customers. Rather than a conversation, copywriting is more like ‘a monologue conducted above a million solitudes’, as Albert Camus defined dictatorship. That’s why we can’t really ‘talk’ to a brand, any more than we can talk to a film or a book.

A brand speaks unilaterally, and it does so to achieve a clearly defined outcome. The tone of voice or the visual style may do a very good job of obscuring it, but that’s the underlying mechanic. Like the parent, the brand speaks in order to control.

Freedom from fear

Back in the day, both parents and brands were much more at ease with command and control. Adverts would come right out and tell people to ‘buy’, ‘use’ or ‘try’ a product in their copy, while parents would enforce their will by any means necessary, including physical violence. At least you knew where you stood.

But the 60s happened, and times changed. The customer, like the child, has moved centre-stage. They have rights. Feelings. Desires. And they must be met.

And yet the need to control has not gone away, because consumers, just like children, still don’t know what’s good for them – and it’s for parents and marketers to tell them. Just watch what happens at Apple now that Steve Jobs, the kind-but-stern father of personal electronics, is no longer around to create the ‘things we didn’t know we needed’.

After all, it’s OK to be forced to do something good. If someone in authority is telling you to do something fun, then you can be both happy and virtuous. You have what Don Draper calls ‘freedom from fear’; the sense that ‘you are OK’.

But what if you’re a parent who wants to be liberal, or a brand that wants to be human? How can you control people without getting all heavy on them?

Wackywriting is the answer. When direct instruction is culturally inderdicted or deprecated, you can still get the same result by smothering your command in playfulness, cosiness and niceness.

Nice to be nice

Niceness is the key value of wackywriting. The product is nice: it’s made from nice things, and it’s nice to use. You are nice for choosing it. The world, perhaps, is a nicer place as a result of your choice. And the people who made the product are also nice: their company was founded in nice circumstances and is run in a nice way.

Nothing wrong with being nice. But for everything that is written, there is something else that is implied rather than stated: the shadow of the text. With wackywriting, it’s the unspoken threat of exclusion from the world of nice.

If you don’t tidy your room, or eat this couscous, things will not be nice. You may no longer be considered nice, and I may stop being nice to you. If you buy Wotsits, you will not be as nice a person as if you’d bought Burt’s Chips. (Some brands, like Peperami, go the other way and emphasise their ‘nastiness’.)

Material world

All this is shown, not told. But it’s what gives wackywriting its persuasive edge. The price of niceness is a purchase. Only by buying those crushed-strawberry cords can I become like the achingly handsome guys who laugh on beaches in the Boden catalogue.

This is the crack in the mirror. Like all marketing copy, wackywriting is materialistic and transactional at heart. It paints a picture of a world where nasty things don’t happen – but joining that world costs. I can’t buy some tatty old green cords from the charity shop and expect to be as sexy as Boden man, no matter how enlightened my values. In every sense, I must buy in.

Wackywriting embodies the dilemma of the liberal middle classes: material privilege, and unease over that privilege, glossed over with affected bohemianism and faux-naïveté. Hopelessly compromised by power and possessions, we long to return to the garden, but can’t pass through the eye of the needle. We’re guilty, but we wish we were, yes, innocent.

Respect the experience

With many wackywriting brands, what we’re looking at is straightforward class appeal. Boden, Burt’s, Ella’s Kitchen – these brands are made by the middle classes, for the middle classes. Far from being a pitch for universal appeal, wackywriting actually homes in like a laser on a very precise subset of society.

If that subset doesn’t coincide with the target audience for a product, wackywriting risks being at best irrelevant to their experience, at worst damaging to it. Imagine a single mum on benefits receiving the Anglian Water bill described by Oliver Wingate here – as many hundreds undoubtedly did. Will the wacky humour lighten her load as she agonises over whether to pay the bill or buy her kids some school uniform?

The copy for Brooks running shoes quoted above is another case in point. As a middle-aged straight guy buying specialist kit, I want to feel that my chosen product is technically robust, professionally made and packed with practical features. For me, running is enjoyable but virtuous leisure rather than frivolous fun. Making the product talk to me like a Furby runs directly counter to my desired experience.

In my view, Campaign Monitor’s use of wackywriting in a legal context – where both writer and reader need crystal clarity – is self-indulgent, disrespectful and downright reckless. If you doubt it, click through and imagine a non-native speaker trying to get the gist of it.

Wrong foot

In the wrong place, wackywriting can be like freshly ground Maldon sea salt in a wound. But if it’s done well, it wrong-foots the competition, making them seem suddenly dour and proletarian. In the premium crisp market, the advent of brands like Burt’s and Kettle Chips made Walker’s, with their grinning upper-working-class spokesman Gary Lineker, look hopelessly gauche.

And this can be done independently from, or even in spite of, the physical nature of the product. If you habitually buy Burt’s, just try a bag of Walker’s. Tastes differ, but I’d suggest that neither is really better. They’re just different.

In fact, that’s what wackywriting is about: differentiation. At first, to use wackywriting was to be young, fresh, different – and that’s what follower brands are hoping for too. But the more brands go down this road, the less differentiation there is to be had. What was once eye-catching and refreshing becomes tiresome and wearing – not because wackywriting is used everywhere, but because it’s quite hard going when it is used.

Clichés have obvious drawbacks, but they can act as convenient shorthand for concepts that advertisers want to convey quickly and economically. Obliging the audience to decode too much original or unusual text risks wearing out their cognitive resources – particularly if they’re just looking for information, like how to use a product or what it contains.

Wacky races

In some markets, the rise of wackywriting might lead to a sort of wacky races scenario, where brands compete to out-wack each other – for a possible instance of this, have a look at Innocent upping the ante on imitators with this bizarre bungalow gag (which, I have to report, my daughter loves). Or, moving further afield, the recent TV spots for Chedds and Twirl Bites, which bring some serious wack and are clearly gunning for a WTF? reaction.

I think those ads are brilliant, but they illustrate how high the stakes are with wackywriting. It’s hard to stand out, and easy to fall flat. Even if follower brands get their wackywriting right on the money (which is hard), the best they can achieve is parity with other wacky brands. And if they fall short, they risk irritating or just baffling their audience.

On top of that, wackywriting is labour-intensive. Like Vic and Bob rehearsing Big Night Out, wacky brands must work hard to get their stuff looking loose, spontaneous and natural. Other brands can lapse into a standard-issue tone without striking the wrong note.

Return to innocence

As wackywriting becomes the norm, perhaps we’ll see forward-thinking marketers make a deliberate return to a more innocent age – by which I mean not pretending to be childlike, like in the 60s, but aspiring to be adult and authoritarian again, like in the 50s and before.

To rebrand. To irritate.

One possible move in this direction is British Airways’ recent campaign, which features a shiny silver crest and the slogan (motto?) ‘To fly. To serve.’

This creative got universally panned by the copywriters I follow when it was unveiled, with additional controversy generated by Nigel Bogle’s remark that it was ‘something that a copywriter wouldn’t have thought of, because it comes directly from the brand’s core values’. (Read more on that from Larner Caleb.)

I’m still not quite sure what Mr Bogle meant, or whether he was being complimentary. One interpretation of his words is that the line is a true representation of BA’s real personality, unmediated by what Nick Asbury calls ‘the basic philosophy we espouse as copywriters’, which holds that brands should talk more like people.

What comes next

I have no trouble believing that BA is, in reality, a pretty straight-edge company that’s proud of its heritage. But it’s still interesting that it’s chosen to emphasise those traits, rather than cover them up with funny talking animals or a choir of flight attendants singing a Beatles song. Interesting, and… admirable.

Actually, the execution of the BA campaign is a bit more flighty than the tagline might suggest. One press ad uses the headline ‘A new old promise’, alongside a picture of a boy wearing a captain’s cap (because ‘every pilot once dreamed of being a pilot’). It’s not wackywriting by any means, but it’s a let-down if you were hoping for square-jawed Soviet-style aerocaptains gazing resolutely to the horizon.

The self-referential ‘new old promise’ foregrounds the consciously retro nature of BA’s tagline – and its dangers. Doing a 1950s-style ad today risks coming across as ironic, arch and even a little bit camp. To be relevant today, the message has to be played absolutely straight.

Personally, I like the BA line. It’s brave in a way that wackywriting isn’t – being genuinely different, rather than different in the same way as everyone else. And although it might not be completely successful, I think it represents the first stirrings of what will eventually replace wackywriting: the New Formality.

Bring it on! Or rather, Forward Together…

In posts under the banner of ‘Plain English Patrol’, a name I’m quietly pleased with, I’ll be looking at everyday examples of obscure, wordy and unclear writing and seeing if I can improve them. (Well, obviously I’ll improve them – I’d hardly include them if I couldn’t.) Let the games begin…

Verbal diarrhoea

First up is Costa Coffee. I’ve had a pop at Starbucks before, so it’s only fair their rival should take one in the shorts. I was last there trying my very first Flat White, which I was quite excited about until I discovered it was exactly the same as a Latté. So now I will have my revenge – through a smartass blog post about their signage that no-one from the company will ever read.

The notice below appears in the loo of the London Street branch in Norwich.

COSTA NOTICE
We would kindly request that customers refrain from disposing of nappies and sanitary towels down the toilet and ask that you make use of the disposal bins provided
Thank you

That’s you told! The curiously branded ‘Costa notice’ certainly strikes the right snappy, vinegary tone. The total lack of punctuation gives an icily brittle, peremptory feel, while ‘we would kindly request’ and ‘bins provided’ add a bitter twist of passive aggression and pursed-lips butter-wouldn’t-melt etiquettery.

The problem is that the spindly, overlong sentence and wilfully obscure language (‘refrain’, ‘disposal’) are highly unlikely to reach the target audience. I think it’s a safe assumption that people who stuff nappies down public loos (would they do that at home?) probably don’t read notices – not even red ones. We’re on a hiding to nothing here, but we can at least give ourselves the best possible chance of getting through:

NO NAPPIES OR TOWELS DOWN THE TOILET
Please don’t put rubbish down the toilet. Use the bin instead.
Thank you.

That’s more direct, more conversational and I think more likely to work. And at 20 words to the original’s 32, the audience might even reach the end of it.

What’s more, Costa could use a smaller notice, saving themselves untold thousands on ink, paper and glue across their gazillion branches. What a wonderful example of the good that copywriting can do in the world.

That one’s on the house, Costa – just be sure to inbox me next time you’re revising your tone of voice guidelines.

Foot shoot

Flushed with success, let’s move on to Fruit Shoot, the insanely chemical drink that’s like catnip to kids. (My estimation of a leisure venue always rises if they’ve opted to stock the smaller bottles.)

Unfortunately my camera phone wasn’t up to capturing this one, so you’ll have to trust my transcription. It’s the small print about a competition that’s promoted on the bottle.

Open to those aged 12 and under. Parent/Guardian consent is required for participation…

So let me get this straight. By definition, we’re talking to kids – if the parent or guardian is already reading, there isn’t a problem. And we’re talking to kids as young as five or six. So why, in the name of all that’s holy, are we using words like ‘consent’, ‘required’ and ‘participation’?

The Flesch-Kincaid reading level of this text is 9.0, or US ninth grade – in other words, only likely to be comprehensible to children of at least 14. Clearly, whoever wrote this didn’t spend too long thinking about the nature and concerns of their audience.

It’s puzzling because the understandable version is so obvious:

You must be 12 or younger to enter. Ask your Mum or Dad first.

OK, I’ve lost the ‘guardian’, but I’m sure kids with guardians will get the message. And with a grade level of 1.4 (clear to a six-year-old) I feel the trade-off is totally worth it.

Deep water

Finally, here’s a notice from the pool where my daughter has her regular swimming class.

Dear Parent/Carer,
Please note that in line with the ASA and Child Protection Guidelines only parents/carers of the gender specified for the changing room may enter the changing rooms with their child/children.
Thank you for your co-operation.

Now, we’re talking about protecting children here, not just toilets, so it’s important that the language is precise and authoritative. But at the same time, it needs to be understood by people from every educational background. And with a reading age of 15+ for this text, that’s by no means guaranteed. (It’s not uncommon for organisations seeking universal readability to aim for an age of 12 or so – but the lower the better, obviously.)

It actually took me a while to tease out the underlying meaning. As far as I can tell, it can be boiled down to:

Women only in the girls’ changing room.
Men only in the boys’ changing room.

Yes, that’s right – if I’m taking her, my poor daughter has to get changed with the boys, with their incessant shouting and infuriating unwillingness to lift up the loo seat. (Again, would they do that at home?)

I can see my version might have been rejected – it feels clumsy and duplicative having to write two parallel sentences when you can convey the same meaning in one. But when such economy means you have to resort to phrases like ‘gender specified’, I think you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Better to be clunky and clear than elegant and elusive – and I’ve got the reading age down to eight, so I think that’s mission accomplished. All in a day’s work for the Plain English Patrol!

The first was seen above the hand dryer in the loos at the Princess Diana Memorial Park, of all places. (Sorry for the rough image – it was a bit dark in there.)

PLEASE

DO NOT USE FOR DRYING CLOTHES

Prolonged, continuous usage causes overheating of this equipment. Its subsequent, frequent breakdowns are costly to repair.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The writer might have got a better result if they’d written down what they wanted to say in the simplest, most conversational way:

This dryer is not for drying clothes

If it’s used for a long time, it breaks down, and costs us a lot of money to repair.

Thank you.

Arguably, that would have been fit for purpose as it stood. Another option would be to anthromorphise the dryer as the speaker, a twee approach but arguably the right one in a child-centric environment:

I’m for drying hands, not clothes

If you use me too much, I break down – and that costs the park-keepers a lot of money.

Thanks!

The problem, here, I think, was that the reader started off thinking about the end point. Aware that they were writing an official notice, they reached for a bureaucratic tone. But the result is so complex, so officious, that I question how many people will understand it at all.

That means that the whole project is doomed – it destroys value rather than adding it. And all for want of a few simple words.

Say it straight

A much more productive approach is to express your message in the simplest, plainest way possible, then knead it into the shape you want. Luke Sullivan expresses this as ‘say it straight, then say it great’.

Don’t worry about how the words sound – indeed, don’t even think in terms of a headline, or a tagline, or whatever the end product is. Nobody need ever hear or see your ‘workings’. Just get the essentials down on paper and start working with them.

My second example, which is a van I saw in East Dulwich, shows the power of ‘just saying it’ without worrying about tone:

HIRE THIS
VAN AND DRIVER
£20 PER HOUR
2 HOUR MINIMUM
PLUS £10 BOOKING FEE
078·5255·4567

It could hardly be more simple and direct. And yet it serves the purpose – we’re talking about a ‘best price’ offer, and combining the product with the ad (and total price transparency) means that ‘what you see is what you get’. The finishing touch is the imperative ‘hire this’, which gives much more oomph than something passive like ‘van for hire’.

OK, it probably won’t win anything at Cannes. But it does show that if you want a compelling message at the end, you have to be simple at the start.

“MORE” THAN A “SNACK”

Very much stet on those bizarre scare quotes, which took a terrible cliché and plunged it into post-structuralist uncertainty. Just what was being queried about the ‘more’ and the ‘snack’? Could something be allegedly or possibly ‘more’ than something else, and in what sense? And what dimensions of ambiguity, allusiveness or irony did a snack take on once it was in quotes? (Sadly, as you can see, I can only find an image of a later version of the slogan, with a misspaced hyphen between ‘more’ and ‘snack’ – hardly an improvement.)

Seabrook’s has updated its packaging now, adopting the questionable slogan ‘a right proper gobful’, but it’s still way off the pace in terms of crispy copy. The plethora of ‘healthy/real’ crisp brands that have bobbed up in the wake of Kettle Chips have ladled an unbelievable amount of funky tone of voice on top of what’s essentially a commodity product. With almost nothing to choose between their product and a competitor’s, boutique crispsters look to their copywriters to give their products an air of fun, character and authenticity with some winning packaging copy. So let’s rip open the word bag and grab a handful…

Kettle Chips

We like to keep things simple…

We always insist on using the best potatoes we can find, hand cook them with care in small batches, then season with great tasting ingredients.

So what you get are naturally crunchy and tasty chips, each one a little different from the last.

There’s no need to add anything artificial – MSG, artificial flavours, colours and the like. And that’s the way it’s been for 25 years.

Simple really.

The daddy of ‘real’ crisps establishes a theme we’ll see in many competitors – the alleged quest for the ‘best’ potatoes and other ingredients.

Kettle Chips make a play on authority here, citing the 25 years they’ve been in the authentic-crisp game, man and boy. Does that convince the reader? Possibly, but in most contexts I advise clients that the date of foundation for the company is of marginal interest to their customers. If the crisps taste good, I don’t really care if you started up yesterday.

A few technical observations. Personally, I’d have put a hyphen in ‘hand cook’ and ‘great tasting’. I’d have found a way to rephrase ‘so what you get are’, to avoid the jarring singular/plural juxtaposition. And I’d have avoided saying ‘artificial’ twice in the space of three words.

In terms of tone, it’s all very self-centred. What about my enjoyment, my mood, the value I get from the product? I’m only tangentially involved in this whole deal. But as we’ll see, smug self-absorption is very much the order of the day in this sector.

Red Sky

A red sky at night is nature’s promise of a good day.

Red Sky potato chips are our promise of something good from nature.

We only use the best ingredients from nature’s kitchen to bring you these beautifully crunchy potato chips which taste as good as you would expect from 100% natural ingredients.

Grammar: there should be a comma after ‘chips’ in the last sentence.

I must admit, I quite like the cheesy play on the brand name (‘promise of something good’). I’ve written before that a slogan should promise value, and making that explicit is quite nice. However, some might find the tone here a bit pious.

The final paragraph is a bit clunky, stumbling around in a circle to where it began with the ‘natural ingredients’ riff. I might have got rid of this last bit in a spirit of ‘less is more’ – the first two bits imply ‘good ingredients’ without needing to wheel out the ‘100% natural’ guns. And as we’ve seen, this theme is hardly original.

Burt’s Chips

A big hello from all the fryers at Burt’s!

In 1997 all we could find were tasteless, junk-filled crisps. We knew we could do better. After a lot of searching we found an old fryer (a machine not a person) and put it in a tiny factory down here in deepest Devon. We then started to work out how to make fantastic chips using only the finest and freshest natural ingredients.

It took us ages to cook the perfect chip with quite a few burnt ones (and fingers) along the way. Eventually we worked out a simple and delicious recipe. Our chips are crunchy, natural and full of flavour – just as they should be. The most naturally delicious chips you have ever tasted.

The ‘tasteless, junk-filled crisps’ of 1997 presumably include Burt’s rival Kettle Chips, who (as we’ve seen) had been going for a decade at that point.

In the hands of challenger/premium crisp brands, this ‘rural quest for perfect crisp’ tale has actually become a cliché. Its weak point, as far as I can see, is the audience not really giving a toss about the fryer, or the factory, or the whole dreary burnt-out-stockbroker-starts-boutique-business-somewhere-not-London narrative. However I must grudgingly admit that ‘good origin’ does seem to play on consumers’ minds – middle-class, recession-immune consumers’ minds, anyway.

The tone is quite interesting. It’s a sort of sub-Innocent, faux-naïf voice that’s used in different forms by lots of these ‘real’ brands. In terms of meaning, it positions the whole Burt’s enterprise as a sort of happy-go-lucky, kitchen-table affair where success, well, just kinda happens to nice people. In fact, Burt’s cottage-operation days are long gone – but the homely connotations suit the brand even as its executives talk turkey with Tesco’s.

Note the recurrence of the ‘only the best ingredients’ jive once again. Although the theme no longer offers any differentiation – they’re all using the best, apparently – premium crisp makers just can’t leave it alone.

(Perversely, all this ‘good origin’ stuff makes me want to pig out on the low-rent snacks made with all the crapola Class B spuds. I bet they’re fantastic. In the same way, Green & Black’s po-faced preening sends me running for the Dairy Milk.)

Real Crisps

When it comes to crisps, we don’t mess about. Oh no. We pick out the best potatoes and hand cook them, so the goodness stays put. No nonsense. Just delicious real crisps – like these, sprinkled generously with sea salt. And you don’t even need your sea-legs to enjoy them.

Best potatoes, delicious, yawn. Not much new here in terms of the content.

Technically, why is ‘hand cook’ two words when ‘handcooked’ is one word on the front of the bag? (See image.) Poor, unfashionable hyphens, we’ll miss you when you’re gone.

Tonewise, we’re striking out even further into Innocent territory – ‘Oh no’, ‘no nonsense’. What is this tone of voice? Tentatively, I identify it as the voice of the middle-class parent: shrill, desperate jollity thinly masking an undercurrent of snobbishness, control-freakery and passive aggression. The sound of an adult talking to a child, or trying to sound like a child, or irritating anyone who isn’t a child by being so overbearingly twee and patronising. With posh crisps, we’re hearing a ‘cool’ but nonetheless authoritarian parent telling us we really should be eating proper snacks instead of those nasty orange Wotsits. Mm?

The last sentence is interesting: a joke that doesn’t make you laugh. (OK, it links in with the picture of a fisherman on the front of the packet, but still.) Why use unfunny humour? One answer is that it’s mandatory for the would-be ‘funky’ brand, so the copywriter goes for the cover drive even if the ball just isn’t there to be hit (see Burt’s lame ‘fryer’ pun above). Another answer is that the humourless lack insight into their own humourlessness.

I always advise my clients never to write something they would not feel comfortable saying to a customer, face to face. I’m not sure this copy passes that test. Who’s talking here, and to whom? And why? (Answers: A. A marketer; B. Themselves; C. To ‘build a brand’.)

Be yourself

As you’ll have guessed, I sampled all these products in the course of researching this post. I have to report that, to my uncouth palate at least, they’re all pretty much the same. So it’s not a surprise that they’ve reached for content and tone of voice as means of differentiation.

What is surprising, arguably, is that they’ve all ended up with broadly the same messages. In place of any allusion to the consumption occasion (when you eat the crisps), the mood of the consumer or anything else we could identify with, we’ve got the same old ‘good ingredients’ thing across the board. Is there nothing else to say?

I’d also argue that the tones used are pretty uniform, with the possible exception of Red Sky. While tone of voice as a concept has value, its practitioners will lay themselves open to ‘emperor has no clothes’ charges if they just end up copying Innocent or Apple, using the same tools regardless of the job at hand.

In my experience, every brand really does have a narrative and every company really has a unique character. The brands who find genuine differentiation are the ones with the guts to be themselves.

Believe in better

actually mean? I’m not really sure, but to make sure I wasn’t being deliberately obtuse, I asked my Twitter feed what they thought. Here are some of the answers (not all serious, natch):

• Tim Rich (@66000mph) reflects both their desire to be seen as innovators (we’re NOT the BBC) and the way technology is changing TV. Vague though.
• Dan Adams (@danadamstweets) just a paraphrase of ‘expect more’ but with some alliteration thrown in for good measure?
• Zakaullah Khan (@balinor) Sounds campaignable, but incomplete… Believe in better programming, believe in better content, etc


I can't believe it's not better

• Rob Wright (@Copywrighting) It – sincerely – says to me is ‘we’re not great right now, but stick with us, ‘cos (trust us) we will get it together for you’
• Stella Eleftheriades (@stellamedia) I always want to say believe in batter #cakeonthebrain seriously tho gives idea of going extra mile, more personalised service?
• Alasdair Murray (@Alconcalcia) Got no idea what ‘Believe in better’ actually means. Who, if anyone, believes in worse? The coalition perhaps.
• Andrew Nattan (@Mr603) It means you have to close your eyes and believe really hard to think it’s worth paying for over Freeview.
• Lydia Nicholas (@LydNicholas): Externally: TV should be better, if you believe this, make an act of faith and pay for it. (so paying is a brave stand for quality). Internally- there is a more efficient, TV business & organisational model than those inspired by BBC.
• Kevin W (@CreativeCopyKC) Believe in Better? Sounds like they’re pitching improved quality (both HD picture and higher quality programming)
• Ash_Humby (@AshHumby) For me Believe In Better is Sky’s attempt to sum up the Sky experience, in a similar way to BBC iplayers Making The Unmissable Unmissable.
• Peter Baruffati (@peterbaruffati) What you are viewing may be bad, but don’t lose hope.

The range of answers confirms that, while it may or may not be effective, the slogan is certainly ambiguous. In my view, the meaning is unclear because the language is deliberately unfamiliar and clunky.

Finding clunky

A similar effect is achieved with Bupa’s current slogan:

Helping you find healthy

I didn’t ask for views on this one because I think the meaning is clearer, but it’s still been twisted slightly out of shape with unorthodox language. (In passing, note that Bupa are using the clichéd ‘we understand/that’s why’ ploy that I highlighted in this post – perhaps to redress the balance?)

Both this and the Sky slogan create a jarring effect by using adjectives as nouns, which is disorientating. We believe in fairies or democracy, but not ‘better’. We need help finding our car keys or a way forward, but not ‘healthy’.

‘Better’ and ‘healthy’ are positioned as nebulous metaphysical states that we can aspire to; the diffuse language creates (or tries to create) the impression that there’s something special or amazing about watching telly or buying health insurance.

And this is, of course, part of the seemingly endless trend for brands to be more soft and friendly, sucking up to customers and wheedling their way into their lives at every turn. Social media’s got a lot to answer for.

Awkwarder than yesterday

Another example is put forward by copywriter Kevin Mills, in his post Stumbling over copy. He cites an outdoor campaign by Fitness First featuring the line ‘Our members are fitter than yesterday’.

As Kevin notes, this is a very unfamiliar phrase. To me, it sounds like it might have been translated from French. Again, this leaves the reader slightly disconcerted and uncertain, just as they might be if a non-native English speaker came up and asked the way to the station of trains. The meaning is clear, but it’s been expressed strangely – which means the impression that stays with you is strangeness, rather than the benefit of being fitter.

Unspoken words

As they stand, these three phrases are classic cases of things that get written, but would never be spoken aloud:

• ‘I’m going to get a Sky dish because I believe in better.’
• ‘My BUPA doctor’s really helping me find healthy.’
• ‘I’ve started going to Fitness First, and now I’m fitter than yesterday.’

However, these brands aren’t going for a Ronseal-style vernacular vibe. Instead, they’re aiming for differentiation through language – using unusual construction to imply that they themselves are exceptional.

Does it work? Does the unusual slogan stick in the mind – and does that lead to a sale?

In his post, Kevin suggests that using an unexpected or unusual phrase could make an ad more memorable. I think much depends on whether it gets ‘filed’ in the zone of the reader’s mind you want it to – whether it goes in a mental category marked ‘curiosities’ rather than ‘things to buy’ or ‘things to find out more about’. My worry would be that an unusual construction would just be deleted from the reader’s consciousness because it didn’t fit the rhythm and tone of their internal monologue.

Do different

It would be easy enough to discover, with A/B testing, which slogan produced a stronger response. However, with the Sky and BUPA examples given above, I’m not sure that a desire to be understood, or even to drive sales, is centre stage. We’re in the realm of brand-building here, where the overall impression is more important than the immediate real-world result. (With Fitness First, there’s a strong suspicion that the effect is the result of carelessness rather than strategy, as Kevin notes. Of course, a campaign might still be good by accident.)

The Sky slogan, interestingly, was explicitly oriented towards internal marketing as well as external – generating an ethos and vibe within the organisation as well as outside it. It’s Sky’s own staff who are exhorted to ‘believe in better’ too.

However, I think there’s another important audience: other marketers. Whenever a campaign has a flavour of wilful differentiation, there’s always the suspicion that the client has got a bit bored of their own marketing, perhaps even embarrassed by it, and wants something out there they can really feel proud of. Something clever, edgy and modern. And what better way to signal your superior intelligence than with words that no-one’s ever spoken, or even thought before?

At Boots we know how precious your memories are. That’s why our experts only use the highest quality materials before carefully hand checking every photo

This text, from Boots’ photo print envelope, suddenly tickled my cliché antennae when I saw it the other day. I realised I’d seen hundreds of variations on the same device – and written a fair few too. It was such a shock that I decided not to mention the two missing hyphens in the copy.

The formula goes like this:

At A, we know how important B is. That’s why we C, which gives you D.

Where A is the brand, B is a customer’s (presumed) concern or priority, C is a feature and D is a benefit (although Boots have decided, foolishly, to miss this last part out). Vary phrasing as required and season with cheesy adjectives to taste. And there you have it – instant reader empathy!

This formation has become a cliché, which never helps. But it’s also unsubtle and clunky. Consider the same technique in another context:

As your mum, I know how cold your hands get in winter. That’s why I bought you these fleece-lined gloves, which will keep you warm and toasty, take up minimum space in your handbag and dry quickly after washing.

As opposed to:

I saw these and thought of you!
(PS Ring your sister)

To generate empathy, you need to make the implication ‘I have your interests at heart’ or ‘I understand the problems you face’. However, this has to be done with great care; a light touch and an indirect approach work best.

First off, leading with the brand name is just nuts. Ascribing personal human feelings to a corporation, or even a group, kicks credibility into touch from the outset. Social media madness tells us that brands or even entire countries can be our best friends, with feelings and beliefs, just like real people. But no-one in the real world believes all that rubbish.

As in my frivolous example, it’s rarely necessary to doltishly point out who’s talking anyway. The presence of a logo or even just the format and occasion of the piece is enough. Look at the actual Boots envelope – the logo is present, so why say ‘At Boots’? (Answer: because the content is corporate boasting rather than advertising copy.)

This change leaves us with:

We know how important B is. That’s why we C, which gives you D

But is ‘we know how’ really needed? The key point is that the customer knows it, not the brand, or whoever is supposed to be talking. And who is talking, anyway? It’s not a trusted friend or relative; the text is being read off a website or poster or whatever. There’s no need to foreground the artificiality of the communication by positing an implausible or ambiguous ‘we’. Which gives us:

B is important. That’s why we C, which gives you D.

The ‘that’s why we’ link can be taken out, again to avoid introducing an ill-defined and distracting authorial voice:

B is important. C gives you D.

Now we’re getting somewhere. Freed of all that self-indulgent, self-regarding waffle, we might actually be able to sell somebody something. Let’s try an example:

Making a will is essential for preserving your family wealth. Our professionally written wills minimise your tax liability after death.

It’s admirably tight, but the tone is far too confrontational. Readers will be put off, even if they agree with the premise. It needs to be softened up a bit – but with gentle third-party authority, not branded boasting:

You’ve probably heard how important it is to make a will. Maybe your friends have already done it. It’s by far the best way to make sure your wealth stays in your family. We’ll give you all the help and advice you need.

By alluding to a shared experience or perception, we can gently introduce an idea that will resonate with the reader, but without bashing them over the head with it. Cosying up to the reader is more effective than getting right up in their grill and telling them what they think.

Using ordinary, conversational language is essential. To check for natural tone, trying reading aloud – nothing exposes pious, pretentious language better.

If you succeed in generating empathy, you can go easy on the brand-mentions and the selling – just evoking warmth and understanding in the vicinity of the brand is enough. In this context, when the call to action comes, it simply makes sense – it’s sensible advice from someone who understands. And who wouldn’t act on that?