By
Robert W. Bly
Years
ago, I interviewed Burt Manning to gather information for a book I was writing
on careers in advertising and other industries. In the course of our
conversation, Mr. Manning, who at the time was vice chairman of the J. Walter
Thompson Company, complained of the lack of basic writing skills in the young
people who sought employment with his agency.
“We
get people who have college degrees,” said Manning, “and they can’t write an
English sentence.”
Functional
illiteracy is nothing new, but among advertising people? I was skeptical until
I turned on the television that evening and heard a commercial describing a new
television series as “the most unique show of the season.” This seems a strange
claim to make, since unique means,
“one of a kind” and it is therefore impossible for anything to be the most
unique. Or very unique, or quite unique, or somewhat unique, or even, as one advertising executive used the
phrase modestly, a little unique.
But
the television network is not the only advertiser guilty of turning advertising
copy into what E.B. White, coauthor of The
Elements of Style, called “the language of mutilation.” A Detroit
automobile manufacturer once based an ad campaign around the theme “new
innovations” -- which may lead one to believe that there can be such a thing as
an old innovation.
One
of my clients, normally an articulate and intelligent marketer, changed some ad
copy I had written for one of their products, a wire splint that helps keep
loose teeth in place. The advertiser decided that what the product really did was “to stabilize mobile
dentition.”
Dentition
is what you brush with Crest. And if someone should punch you in the dentition,
my client believes that the dentition may become mobile, but certainly not
loose. (If they fall out, the dentition fairy may deposit some “monetary
compensation” under your pillow.)
“I’m
chagrined at the decline in the writing skills of college graduates,” Hugh
Farrell, then president of Hammond Farrell, Inc., a New York
business-to-business advertising agency, told me in another interview for my
book. “Roughly half of the cover letters accompanying resumes that cross my
desk contain errors, and I don’t think that was true 15 years ago. And good
writing is important, even with account people. If a person can’t write a
lucid, clear, correct report, he or she shouldn’t be in this business.”
Jargon,
double-talk, and weak, watered-down prose proliferate in advertising, but are
nowhere more prevalent than in business-to-business marketing. A brochure for a
storage silo informs us that material is “gravimetrically conveyed” -- not
dumped. Sony’s advertisement for cassette recorders explains that my tape
recorder captured Burt Manning’s voice so perfectly because “a counter-inertial
flywheel keeps the tape speed constant.”
True
perhaps, but did I really need to know this? And, of course, every system,
product, and service now sold to business is said to be “cost-effective” or provide
a lower “total cost of ownership.” How refreshing it would be to read of a
product that was inexpensive, low in price, or just plain cheap!
I’ve
always maintained that good copywriting is clear and conversational … but there
are many marketers who apparently disagree. For instance, here’s an excerpt
from a brochure promoting a conference on Buying and Selling eContent:
“Instead
of building universal, definitive taxonomies, information architects are
finding there is a tremendous benefit to creating un-taxonomized miscellaneous
pools of enriched data objects so that users can sort and organize to suit
their own peculiar needs … [resulting in] information systems that are far more
contextualized.”
I call this example “What did he
say?” It’s pretentious, laden with jargon, and it’s not how people talk. My
fellow copywriter Steve Slaunwhite comments: “This is a case of trying to
impress, rather than express. The problem is, it does neither.”
Certainly,
such obfuscation has not always been embraced by English-speaking people.
Winston Churchill, faced with Hitler's armed forces, said to Americans, “Give
us the tools and we will do the job.” He did not say: “Aid our organization in the procurement of the necessary
equipments and we will in turn implement the program to accomplish its planned
objectives.”
Happily,
academia has now recognized the problem and is working toward a solution. Forbes reports that undergraduate engineering students at MIT will be required to
take a course in English composition. The New
York Times notes that the number of writing courses at colleges throughout
the nation is now on the rise – and that American corporations are now spending
more than $3 billion a year teaching employees how to write clearly.
As
a result of improved education, the next generation of college graduates should
be able to write sales letters and reports that buyers and managers can
understand. Meanwhile, those of us who may never see the inside of a classroom
again would do well to heed this bit of advice from E.B. White: “When you have
said something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it
are only fair."
About the author:
Robert
W. Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of 60 books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Direct
Marketing (Alpha). His e-mail address is rwbly@bly.com and his Web site
address is www.bly.com.
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