Verbosity

Verbosity wastes a portion of the reader’s life.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In the midst of Britain's "darkest hour," Winston Churchill paused to write a one-page memo scolding his war cabinet ministers for verbosity.

"Clarity and cogency can be reconciled with a greater brevity," he told one of them. "It is slothful not to compress your thoughts."

That memo, entitled "Brevity," is one of Churchill's most famous.

It demanded that all ministers and their underlings avoid "officialese" in writing, and keep all memos brief—no more than a page long.

Brevity, Churchill promised, would save readers time—time better spent outsmarting their Nazi adversaries.

Churchill singled out pompous and clichéd gobbledygook as particularly wasteful.

"Let us have an end of such phrases as these: 'It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations,' or 'Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect,'" Churchill wrote. 

"Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational."

Brevity, Churchill promised, would not only save the government time, but "prove an aid to clear thinking."

Churchill was right, on both counts. 

Concise usually is precise—provided you avoid clichés.

I once had a boss who traveled a lot. 

When responding to draft sales copy or ideas and suggestions from me while she was out of town, she'd send me extremely concise emails.

But they consisted of nothing but clichés like "Off brand," Wait, what?'' and "Meh."

Concise, but not precise.

I always had to await her return to the office to learn what she expected me to do. 

She both wasted my time and set back my projects.

Clichés are fine when you have nothing but praise or approval to offer. "Lovin' it!" for example. "Good stuff!" Or, my favorite, "Boffo!"

Clichés are also fine when you can't help out. "Sorry, haven't a clue." "Sorry, not in my wheelhouse. "Sorry, no can do." (Churchill, for example, telegrammed FDR asking for help with the evacuation of Dunkirk. FDR replied simply, "Good luck.")

If you want to be a good boss or colleague—a helpful, thoughtful one—take the time to write concise, but precise, directions. 

"Ask Legal to review the entire contract one more time before you send it to the customer. The sales guy changed a lot of our boilerplate. Not sure that's kosher. Ask for it back within 24 hours."

"Make the subhead the major headline. It's stronger. And add a call to action."

"Ask Meghan whether she wrote code for another client that calculates shipping costs. You can just plug her code in. But be sure it can handle Euros."

In The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies, Australian philosopher David Stove argued that verbosity is more than long-windedness and muddled thinking.

Verbosity reflects a grotesque "character defect;" a trait he calls "pathology of thought."

Verbosity, Stove says, signals "a simple inability to shut up; a determination to be thought deep; a hunger for power; and fear—especially fear of an indifferent universe."

I've certainly observed that character defect during my career.

The best bosses I've ever had were also succinct and enviable writers; the worst were inarticulate psychopaths who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. 

The memos they produced were long, flatulent and inscrutable. 

The next email you write, please, take a few moments to edit yourself. Kill the clichés. Get to the point. Be specific. Then trim every third word. 

Your reader will thank you. 

Gasbagging

The fewer the words, the truer the words.

— Robert Brault

Logorrhea, the gasbag's debility, eventually becomes our affliction as well.

That's because, through his torrent of words, the gasbag seeks to divert us from the inconvenient truth.

We often hear, in regard to politicians, talk about gaslighting; we hear much less about gasbagging.

Gasbagging—bloviating to distract and cover up—has become the weapon of choice for many politicos, especially ones on the right. Personally speaking, I can't stomach the tactic. I associate it with bullies and con men.

George Orwell warned against gasbagging in his essay Politics and the English Language. 

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," Orwell said. 

When confronted by an inconvenient truth, the insincere gasbag—then deny they're "playing politics" when that's precisely what they're doing.

"In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics,’" Orwell says. "All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia."

"The fewer the words, the better the prayer," Martin Luther said. I like that formula.

So, let us pray: 

Lord, make them SHUT UP.

Amen.

Marketers Using More Agencies Less

Today's marketer farms out projects, not accounts, according to a survey by RSW/US.

RSW/US found that 74% use more than two agencies; and 17%, more than five.

They're also keeping project-work in house, hiring specialists galore.

And 40% of marketers expect project-work to increase this year.

While agencies may cringe, RSW/US sees an upside.

Marketers can no longer brush them off with "We already have an agency."

"With more marketers potentially using multiple agencies in the coming year, that objection becomes less of a hurdle, even potentially advantageous," says Lee McKnight, vice president of sales.

Marketers say they're wearied by agencies that claim they're full-service, but aren't, the survey reveals.

Marketers also say they're troubled by agencies "defaulting to digital." Too many have abandoned creativity, customer insight, and expertise in traditional media.

With more opportunities before them, agencies can win business by pitching novel projects, deep category knowledge, or know-how in a particular channel.

2 Monkeys Wrote 50 Headlines: See Which Worked Best

When it comes to novel ideas, less isn't more, Adam Grant says in Originals.

"Many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection," Grant says.

But originality take tonnage.

"Quantity is the most predictable path to quality," Grants says.

He cites the case of two copywriters employed by Upwworthy.

Each wrote headlines for a video depicting monkeys receiving food as a reward.

Some were good. One was gold.

The headline "Remember Planet of the Apes? It's Closer than Your Think," for example, drew 8,000 viewers.

The headline "2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally: See What Happens Next" drew 500,000.

Upworthy in fact has a house rule: You must write 25 headlines.

You need to unearth tons of debris to discover a diamond.

"It's only after we've ruled out the obvious that we have the greatest freedom to consider the more remote possibilities," Grant says.

The first twenty-four headlines may be lousy, but the twenty-fifth "will be a gift from the headline gods."

Direct

Ever notice how brief and clear good direct mail letters are?

How direct is your writing?

Blogger Josh Bernoff asked 547 business writers what troubles them about other people's writing. He discovered:

• 65% think others' writing is too long

• 65% think others' writing is poorly organized

• 54% think others' writing is riddled with jargon

• 49% think others' writing is not direct enough

"Now we have proof that brevity, organization, and clarity issues in what you write are frustrating people more than you think," Bernoff says.

Writing shorter—compressing your arguments into tight little packages—can help.

By writing shorter, the organization of your arguments becomes clearer—and your writing more direct.

"Worry about being brief and clear, and the reader will perceive you as direct."

A Call to Armchairs

Midway through his fireside chat at SXSW last month, President Barack Obama issued government communicators a call to arms.

Or, more accurately, armchairs.

It's communicators' fault that citizens only associate government with failure and corruption, rather than humming infrastructure, the President said.

"A significant part of the task at hand is telling a better story about what government does," Obama said.

Sadly, the President's call for storytelling comes a little late. 

His second term will soon be history.

Not that private-sector storytellers are much better at the craft, as Hill+Knowlton's content director Vikki Chowney notes in PR Week.

Private-sector flacks are too technocentric to tell stories customers care about.

"In an age in which people get their information from digital platforms, it’s our responsibility as communicators to not just think about building new things—but also think about what we say and where we say it in order to get people to care more," Chowney says.

Private-sector flacks should shun the shiny objects swimming before their eyes and get back to PR basics, Chowney says.

"Cutting through the overwhelming noise of online content with a clear, concise message is something we should all be reminding ourselves to focus on daily."

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

The Ocean State's marketing captain has been fired by the governor for sinking 10% of the state's $4.5 million budget into a new logo.

Betsy Wall paid famed designer Milton Glaser $400,000 for his work. She poured another $150,000 into logo pre-tests.

Glaser's tab included the tagline Rhode Island: Cooler & Warmer, which the governor has also deep-sixed.

Glaser, the power behind the Dylan Poster and I Love New York, seemed the right man for the job—until media scrutiny took the wind out of his client's sails.

Wall's spending spree hit the front page of The Providence Journal and put the governor on treacherous seas.

"It is unacceptable how many mistakes were made in this roll-out, and we need to hold people accountable because Rhode Islanders deserve better," the governor told the paper.

The day before she was fired, Wall told Adweek she wanted to make a splash with Glaser.

"The Milton Glaser art, that is not your typical state logo," Wall told Adweek. "If you look at what other states have on their websites, it isn't usually true art like that, it isn't usually so thought provoking and inspiring. I can't think of another state, besides obviously New York, that would think to bring in somebody like Milton Glaser."

The storm's just politics, in my book.

In the early 1980s, I spent $450,000 for my employer's new logo.

No one lost her job.

Decades later, a version is still in use.

Big Data Meets Big Idea

J. Walter Thompson wondered whether big data could be assembled to paint "The Next Rembrandt" for client ING.

So a team of art historians, scientists, developers and analysts created scans of Rembrandt's 346 extant paintings and used a computer to catalog the data based on commonalities.

They then asked the computer to paint a Rembrandt.

The resulting portrait combines 160,000 fragments of the artist's oeuvre.

HAT TIP: Appraiser Todd Sigety alerted me to this story. 

Hack vs. Hacker

Never mistake a hack for a hacker.

Unless she's evil, a hacker creates code.

A hack creates crap.

In general, a hack's a writer who produces undistinguished prose. (The opprobious name derives from hackney, a horse for hire.)

In marketing, a hack's a writer who's:

• Passionate about content; immune to ideas.
• Happy to plagiarize; put off by research.
• Enamored of opinions; averse to facts.
• Obsessed with quantity; indifferent to quality.

Foremost, a hack's a writer who chases eyeballs.

Speaking of quantity, Express Writers offers a useful hack: publish content of "ideal length."

I'll hack the info graphic. Here's the bottom line:

• Write blog posts 2,000 words long; 
• Write Facebook posts 40 characters long; 
• Write Tweets 11 characters long; and 
• Write Pinterest captions 200 characters long.

B2B Becomes B2C. Welcome to Bizarro World.

"Hardly a week goes by without someone saying the worlds of B2B and B2C marketing are converging," Gary Slack wrote recently in this blog.

To picture the two worlds as one, he asks us to imagine a place where municipalities buy equipment on impulse, and manufacturers buy machinery and materials without due diligence.

"Were this all to start happening," Gary says, "pigs would be flying, too. 

"Consumer and business purchasers and purchases are just too different—always have been and always will be."

But what if… just what if, instead of businesses, consumers changed?

In that alternate world:

• All consumers would have split personalities (at least six, called a "team").

• Before every purchase, they would email an inscrutable document to at least 15 suppliers, and demand a response within 10 days.

• All consumers would postpone their purchases until their incomes are certain.

• AdAge would be repackaged as an insert in O, and B2C would collapse into B2B, forming a supercontinent named Omnicom.

Stranger things have happened...

In a pig's eye.

Are B2B and B2C Marketing Converging? Hardly.

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Chicago-based Slack and Company. Ad Age named the firm as a runner up for B2B Agency of the Year in 2014.

Hardly a week goes by without someone saying the worlds of b2b and b2c marketing are converging.

For this claim to be true, nothing less than the following would have to start happening.

Boeing would have to start buying jet engines on impulse.

Police and fire departments would have to switch to other brands of first-responder radios on mere whims.

Coke would have to start reformulating sodas with new ingredients procured with little or no due diligence.

Of course, were this all to start happening, pigs would be flying, too.

Consumer and business purchasers and purchases are just too different—always have been and always will be.

It’s not that b2b buying is more rational than consumer buying. In fact, it may be more emotion-wracked—the emotion being fear of making a bad decision.

That's why tier 1 suppliers, a la the IBM of old, are so lucky. As the "safe bet,” they get a pass a lot of the time, while lower-tier suppliers have to try harder.

But CEB research shows there can be a more positive emotion involved, too—the pride of making a good decision and the career enhancement it can generate.

In fact, CEB says the personal value of making a good b2b buying decision is twice as great as the business value.

So b2b buyers aren't automatons—they are people, too, as our agency’s ad here explains.

But exaggerated praise, or puffery, the province of so many consumer marketers, won't work with b2b buyers.

With their careers and livelihoods at stake, they need loads of convincing and months and maybe years to take a chance on another supplier.

And that's the extra fun and formidable challenge of much b2b marketing—and why it'll always be very different.

4 Keys to Content Marketing for Events

Event producers didn't have enough to do.

Now comes content.

No sweat.

BrightBull founder Ricardo Molina offers four keys to unlocking the time you need for content marketing:

1. Repurpose. Event production is a treasure trove of content. Your list of speakers and the producer’s notes about their expertise are "a quick polish away from being a 'who’s who' list." Transcripts of production research calls are "blog posts in the making." "Think about all the possible sources of content that already exist in your organization," Molina says. "You’ll be amazed how much there is."

2. Outsource. Why tackle the chore alone? "The world is full of great content creators," Molina says. Buying or bartering for third-party content can be a great way to acquire super stuff, quickly. Combine the task with your search for email lists.

3. Repackage. "Take one kick-ass piece of original content, e.g. an industry survey, and create a whole content series out of it," Molina says. Publish the findings as a report, an e-book and an infographic. Ask speakers to write responses to the findings for your blog.

 4. Email less. Invest less time in emails, to free time for content. "Emails are "the event marketing security blanket," Molina says. "Event marketing plans are littered with them." But with all your time spent writing and blasting emails, you have none to spare for content. Change that.

Eschew Inkhorn Terms

Queen Elizabeth's confidant Thomas Wilson warned writers away from fancy words 450 years ago in his Art of Rhetoric.

Wilson paid no court to "clerks" who used "outlandish English."

He called their fandangles "inkhorn terms"—words only pedants prefer.

Wilson warned:

Among all other lessons this should first be learned, that we never affect any strange inkhorn terms, but to speak as is commonly received: neither seeking to be over-fine or yet living over-careless, using our speech as most men do.

Think you're immune from Wilson's law, because yours is a C-level audience?

Think again.

Inkhorn terms could cost you credibility, no matter how well-paid your audience, says copywriter Keith Lewis.

Convoluted copy backfires, Lewis says. 

"Far from making you or your company sound intelligent, it alienates audiences. It turns them off, no matter how high up the income chain a potential reader might be."

Want to be a Writer? There's a Catch.

In 1953, Joseph Heller was employed as a copywriter at Merrill Anderson when he imagined a novel that, eight years later, would appear as Catch 22.

"Working on Catch, I’d become furious and despondent that I could only write a page a night," Heller once told an interviewer. "I’d say to myself, ‘Christ, I’m a mature adult with a master’s degree in English, why can’t I work faster?'”

Moxie isn't always included among the copywriter's traits, though it should be. One page a night for eight years takes a lot of moxie.

Hubspot contributor Matthew Kane says copywriters must have nine other traits to be any good. They must be:

Top-notch researchers and interviewers. "Copywriters will need to pivot from client to client and sometimes industry to industry," Kane says. "As such, they’ll need to get up to speed—quickly." Interviews with experts add context to samples and reading materials.

Knowledgeable about audiences. "We try to write in the vernacular," David Ogilvy once said. Ads, ebooks, case studies and blog posts only work when the writer knows "what the intended audience thinks, speaks, and searches for," Kane says.

Thirsty to learn. A copywriter should thirst for knowledge—but not turn insatiable. "Copywriters know their goal should be to learn as much information about the product and the audience as possible to write effective copy—and nothing more."

Informed. "Bad copywriters often stuff their work with purple prose or other literary devices in an attempt to make some sort of high-minded art out of an innocuous project," Kane says. "Good copywriters, on the other hand, understand the modern world. They’re knowledgeable about how consumers skim and read, understand the importance of an attention-grabbing headline, can articulate the sales and marketing objectives, and know a thing or two about SEO and keyword optimization."

Thick-skinned. Rejecting feedback from others never works. "Good copywriters believe in their convictions but understand that they may not always be right."

Self-assured. Good copywriters can explain to critics why they took a particular approach and chose particular words.

Anti-perfectionist. “Art is never finished, only abandoned," da Vinci once said. "Good copywriters realize that the pursuit of perfection—while noble—is futile," Kanes says. "They know that they can go on tweaking forever, but understand that 'good enough' is exactly that."

Willing to seek help. Writing is a solitary pursuit. "As a result, many copywriters have the tendency to view themselves as a 'lone wolf,'” Kane says. But good copywriters seek out mentors, editors, teachers and advisors who will push them to do better work.

Always reading. "An exceptional copywriter is always aware of the latest industry trends," Kane says. "They cringe at coming across as out of touch."

The Clarity Commandment

The B2B marketing-scape is littered with statements like this one:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software is designed to optimize the surgical experience through an intuitive solution which includes a personalized surgical workflow to help support OR efficiency.

Much of B2B copy not only bores, but breaks a rule Herschell Gordon Lewis calls "The Clarity Commandment:"

When you choose words and phrases, clarity is paramount. Don’t let any other component of your communication interfere with it. 

Like other commandants handed down, easier said than done.

Clarity comes from more than short words and phrases.

It comes from avoiding jargon and any terms with less than laser-precision.

"In our enthusiasm for creating uniqueness, sometimes we lapse into poetry or in-talk, or we pick up phraseology that may make sense within the office but is gobbledygook to outsiders," Lewis says. 

"Or we go just one step beyond clarity—not a cardinal sin, but not a message that’s quickly and clearly understood."

Clarity's at risk whenever ambiguity rears its head.

Think about the example above:

Really, what's an optimized surgical experience?

A personalized surgical workflow?

What is OR efficiency?

And clarity's at risk whenever we add the unnecessary.

Why an intuitive solution? 

Why to help support?

"Clarity is hog-tied to simplicity," Lewis says.

And simplicity's, well, simple.

Copy that doesn’t demand analysis is more likely to hit its goal—command of the reader’s attention—than complex copy.

PS. An inquiring reader asks, How would you handle the statement above? Here goes:

SpineMap 3.0 Navigation Software gives you a second pair of eyes and hands during back surgery. Less time in the OR means more time on the green.

Now, I think I'll go watch This is Spinal Tap.

Short and Easy

"It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’"                               

― A.A. Milne

Most often, your purpose in publishing is to inform and persuade. Why mask your meaning with long, difficult words?

Why say your product "will provide seamless multi-user functionality," when you mean it "supports up to 15 users?"

Why sound like some abstruse academic or dodgy bureaucrat?

"Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, " George Orwell says in "Politics and the English Language."

Latin and Greek words are grand, but their use in business is dreadful.

Just look at this balderdash from Accenture:

Insurers will need to open up to their ecosystem partners, sharing not only customer data, but customers themselves. To encourage and support such ecosystems, IT architectures will need to evolve, ensuring flexibility and interoperability with external partners and providers. A key challenge will be to orchestrate innovation and legacy evolutions while simultaneously managing security threats and changing IT processes to roll out and manage new products and services faster and cheaper.

Acccenture means:

Insurance companies need to upgrade their IT systems so suppliers can use their customer data. But they can't let the changes interrupt routine business.

This morning's lesson: short and easy.

Now, what about lunch?

Technicians

Bill Bernbach, named by AdAge the most influential adman of the 20th century, had a beef with technicians.

Before quitting Grey to start his own agency in the late 1940s, Bernbach sent a one-page letter to his colleague that creatives, to this day, love to reproduce.

Bernbach told them he worried Grey, by ceding the agency to technicians, would "follow history instead of making it."

"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising," he wrote. "And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact."

Bernbach admitted technicians can help—a bit.

"Superior technical skill will make a good ad better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability."

Bernbach pled with Grey to shun "routinized men who have a formula for advertising." His parting advice became his eventual battle cry—and a mantra of creatives everywhere.

"If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.

"Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling."

What's in a Name?

Your name speaks volumes about your brand's personality.

Brand names can be descriptive ("Toys 'R' Us"), abstract ("Aloxi") or evocative ("Uber").

Rational brand names ("IBM") appeal to our inner accountant. 

But brand names can also pack emotional punch—positive or negative—as wordsmith Nancy Friedman says.

Friedman lumps emotionally charged names into six categories:

Old words. The right Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman or Norse word "makes us feel warm and welcomed," Friedman says. "Kindle" is an example. "Many successful brand names draw on this old-word resonance to soften a new idea."

Sense words. "Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are direct routes to an emotional response," Friedman says. "Bevel," for example, names a brand of men's shaving supplies.

Nature words. A name plucked from nature "inspires and soothes, challenges and restores." "Sequoia" names a venture capital firm.

Art words. The language of the arts "can remind us of pleasurable, even transcendent experiences." "Allegra" is a prime example.

Adventure words. Pirate a word from an adventure tale and you'll stir feelings of excitement and exoticism. "Mandalay Bay" is an example.

Personal names. Real and fictional people's names can evoke "friendliness and reassurance." "Lynda" names an e-learning company.

Consider your band name carefully, but don't tear out your hair over the choice.

Remember the words of W.C. Fields: “It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”

Other People’s Audiences

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

"OPA" is often what a Greek restaurant waiter will shout when lighting up a plate of saganaki.

For me these days, OPA means "Other People's Audiences."

I've borrowed the term a bit from Jeffrey Hayzlett, who talks about using OPM (Other People's Money) to do really efficient marketing.

As much as we encourage clients to create their own media platforms—and publish great original content on them—the reality is most B2B marketers will reach and influence far greater numbers of customers, prospects and influencers by tapping and leveraging OPA.

In fact, too many B2B marketers, in our opinion, have it backward.

While they should be investing in and experimenting with their own media platforms, they often are over-investing time and money here and under-investing in getting their messages across through OPA.

What do I mean by Other People's Audiences? It includes:

• Guest columns or posts in widely followed external blogs
• Commentary posted on discussion boards at relevant B2B news and media sites
• Commentary posted on online B2B community sites and LinkedIn Groups
• Quotes folded into news and feature stories
• Media interviews
• External speaking engagements, panels

If some of the above bullets sound like PR, it's intended.

How do you identify the right OPA? It's really pretty easy—or at least straightforward.

You investigate and audit where large numbers of the people you want to reach, influence and motivate—at any stage of the buy cycle—are congregating and spending their time both online and offline.

Actually, it's pretty classic media pathway and channel analysis —the stuff you should be doing anyway in building integrated marketing communications (IMC) plans.

Some B2B marketers have built huge audiences for their own media. Adobe is one. Even so, they still tap OPA big time.

But most B2B marketers aren't where Adobe is, and they should consider redoubling their efforts to better tap OPA.

And have some delicious saganaki while at it!