Annabel

An occasional celebration of words and writing worth reading.  Or best avoided.

Word love – Words to savour

Anythingarian. Every time I listen to Something Rhymes with Purple I come away with a nugget of word love that makes me happy. This week: an ‘indifferentist’ or anythingarian: someone who doesn’t hold to any particular set of beliefs. The opposite of what brands need to be.

Eunoia. A word I’m amazed not to find in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as a ‘feeling of goodwill’. Often translated from Greek as ‘beautiful thinking’. What a lovely concept.  Also the name of a useful and intriguing website of words that don’t translate across global languages.

Lush. Greens so bright they hurt your eyes. Buds, stems, leaves unfurling life. Light brighter, longer, balmier. Hope, promise, rebirth in natural form. Not a word I get to use much in copy for financial services and technology. But…aaaah…a word for Spring. My favourite season.

Word less – Words we could do without

Unique. Ugh. As usual, Reed Words comes up trumps for skewering the good, bad, and ugly of writing in this piece showing just how bland an overused word becomes. So easy to reach for when imagination fails. But oh so lazy not to try again. Cull unique. We’ll all be better for it.

Clarity. Clarity is a good word – the crisp ‘cl’ sound to grab attention, balancing nicely with the ‘t’ sound at the end. The assocations it triggers: Blur into sharp focus. An idea suddenly making sense. A resounding church bell on a still winter day. But clear and clarity are starting to grate on me. Maybe it’s all the ‘Let me be clear’s from politicians. The phrase is a good rhetorical device to create a pause that focuses listener attention, but let’s be clear: we’re over it.

Words in context – Words worth a read or listen

Ali Smith is a god of writing.  Every one of her books blows my mind. The effortless way she plays with language. Slips the fantastic into the world we know. Makes you think about issues that matter through her characters and humour. If you haven’t read her, do. Hotel World, Girl meets boy, the seasons quartet. Any of them.

The Subtext. My latest work discovery. A genius source of insight on brand writing that will make you think, and excellent resources to help hone the craft. Take a look.

The Adland Urban Dictionary. I’m at risk of becoming a dictionary nerd. But this one is a gem. Demystifying the jargon of the marketing and advertising industry in straightforward terms. Great for newbies. Fun for buzzword bingo.

I recently found myself rolling my eyes at yet another headline written in the same style by a B2B corporate brand I follow. I know why they’re doing it; the style fits with their global brand message and guidelines. But seeing it over and over wasn’t just boring, it turned a meaningful message into a hollow one. It made me wonder: can sticking to a rule designed to amplify your brand actually damage it?

In brand theory, consistency rules

Brand theory says be consistent. Define a clear brand message and style and stick to it every time you communicate.  Do this because we humans like things simple.  We respond well to repetition, and even if we don’t realise it, when a brand communication jars, we notice. Enduring company slogans show us how it’s done, from Nike’s ‘Just do it’ to ‘Red Bull gives you wings’, McDonald’s ‘I’m lovin’ it’ and KitKat’s ‘Have a break. Have a KitKat’ (which, by the way, apparently first launched in 1957, which certainly shows consistency).

In practice, consistency can become rigidity

Consistency is all very well in theory, but many large global companies turn to doorstop style guides to deliver it in practice.  These weighty tomes set out the rules for applying the brand visuals, tone and message to different communications, often as principles, but also as hard and fast rules.  External communication, from ad campaigns to personal blog posts, go through the brand police to keep what’s said (and designed) on-message.

The question is whether this rigidity works.  Brand storyteller, Lidia Rumley, thinks flexibility is a better answer.

“Brand guidelines articulate how a brand presents itself to the world clearly, consistently and confidently.  But brands are a living, breathing thing.  They should flex and evolve in response to the world around them and be an active part of a bigger conversation.  If a company treats its brand guidelines like a stick to beat its employees with when they veer off track, or like a cage to keep the brand ‘safe’, they’re missing out on that conversation and the opportunities it can bring to better engage with their audiences.”

Brand police or brand guardian?

It’s an interesting way of looking at it, especially in today’s social media age when every employee is potentially a brand communicator.  Perhaps, suggests Lidia, one approach would be to rethink the role of brand guardians as more than brand police.

“Media training is commonplace in corporates, so why not brand training?  Companies often outsource brand to external agencies, but in-house brand specialists could create so much more value by educating employees on the brand and training them to live it and adopt it into their own natural narratives.”

In-house marketers may wince at anything less than full control (while creative agencies do a Frank Sinatra side air foot-tap), but the reality could be really exciting. Yes, companies need to define a brand story that embodies what they stand for and differentiates them in their market.  And they need to create the messages and style that tell their story consistently. But why not set these parameters and see where a less constrained approach could lead?

What brands do you think do this well? I’d love to hear about them.

An occasional celebration of words and writing worth reading.  Or best avoided.

Word love – Words to savour

Ennui.  The word of lockdown 3. Is anyone not feeling a bit of it? I doubt it. 

Tittle.  Did you know that when we Brits say someone is like someone else ‘to a t’, the ‘t’ is short for tittle, the word for the dot in the letter ‘i’? It implies the two people (or things) are similar to such a degree that the difference between them is barely the smallest part of the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. Yet again Susie Dent delivers a blinder on my go-to word love podcast Something rhymes with purple. Every episode is a joy.

Revision.  I have revised my opinion of the word revision. No longer is it a lonely teenage anxiety but a process of renewal, of re-vision. I discovered recently that it comes from the Latin word ‘revisere’, meaning ‘to look again’. This past year has been a process of looking again – at what makes us happy when much is stripped away or at risk; at the choices we make; at the work we do, how we do it and why it matters. A bit of re-visioning can go a long way, even without the enforced impetus of a global pandemic.

Word less – Words we could do without

Zombie nouns.  Thanks to The Writer for drawing my attention to Helen Sword’s coining of the term ‘zombie nouns’ for those nemeses of engaging corporate copy: the ‘ments’, ‘tions’, ‘isms’ and ‘ities’. If I had one piece of advice for someone writing for a big company, particularly in technology, it would be Beware the Zombies. (If I had two, the second would be: ask yourself ‘so what’ – why does what I’m saying matter to the person I’m writing to). Turning management into manage and formation into form is like plugging in the light. Do it and your writing instantly springs to life.

Words in context – Words worth a read or listen

Grammar Girl can always be relied upon for pithy posts on wordy matters. Her website and Twitter are a treasure trove of linguistic tips, stories and bugbears de-bugged. Her recent post on italics will give you a flavour.

Hucky and Buzz.  We all need more positive at the moment, and every time the talented writer and illustrator Emma Dodd posts a Hucky and Buzz message I smile and feel just that little bit better. Follow Emma, or Hucky and Buzz, on Insta to feel the love.

Short, curated e-newsletters. Increasingly, the brand newsletters I actually read are all smart, short snippets of curated content that I find relevant, interesting and quick to digest. Reed Words, Destination Yes, and The CR Newsletter from Creative Review are good examples. None of them sell per se. They sell their brand through the content they choose to curate and how they talk about it.