For anyone frustrated by the process of creating high quality content as part of their marketing campaigns - or abhors the unthinking gobbledegook churned out by so many corporate communications departments and agencies - a column by Financial Times’ columnist Lucy Kellaway is a real treat.
In her 2013 piece "The first word in mangled meanings" she first sticks it to corporate bosses, opining that the year 2012 turned out to be "yet another bumper year for guff, cliché, euphemism and verbal stupidity."
There were so many prizes to award in her 'Golden Flannel Awards' that she decided to supplement the prizes for 'Bull' with an award for COC. This, according to Kellaway, stands for Chief Obfuscation Champion, and is open to chief executives whose over-zealous public relations accidentally backfire.
Kellaway apparently got the idea earlier in the year from Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts’ torturous use of the English language. It’s laid bare in the fashion house’ annual report, where she is quoted as saying:
“In the wholesale channel, Burberry exited doors not aligned with brand status and invested in presentation through both enhanced assortments and dedicated, customised real estate in key doors.”
As a result, Kellaway went on to damn Ahrendts with faint praise, delivering the following linguistic laceration;
"I realise this will be disappointing to the Burberry boss, so I’m putting her in for another new award: The Door Gong. I was certain she would win this for her outstanding effort in pretending her company sells doors, when really it makes super-pricey raincoats."
And when is a door not a door? When it is a-jar-ring Burberry-esque word jumble.
Clearly not content with a mere supercilious smirk, Kellaway firmly twisted the knife;
"But in the closing days of the year I found a company called Record, which actually makes folding aluminium doors but has elected to describe itself as a supplier of "entrance solutions"
That’s cringe worthy enough, but not a patch on my favourite bit of corporate gobbledegook which moves up and down our motorways daily on the sides BOC’s trucks. The supremely vacuous slogan reads "Delivering Innovative Solutions." Yeah, right, "Transporting Compressed Gases" too tame for you then?
Kellaway then went on to nail some more truly queasy corruptions, giving the next prize to the Martin Lukes Creovation Cup "for combining two words to make something less effective than either."
This sublime bit of nonsense was judged to be competing in a crowded field of marketing manure that contained such preposterous poo as “solutioneering” from Yanmar, “innovalue” from the Taiwanese government and “sustainagility” from Atos Origin as well as Momentum UK, for claiming we live in a “phygital™” world. This could probably have been improved by emphasising the letters `GIT` in capitals. And just don’t get me started on TMs.
And then there is Dow Chemicals’ “solutionism” that graced the London taxis queuing in the rank outside Chameleon’s London office throughout the Olympics. I know it may come as a shock to many PRs, marketers and advertising copywriters but there are words other than 'solution' that are available to describe the benefits of a product or service.
Not content with pointing out the Emperor’s New Clothes of outrageous corporate-speak, prepositions got Kellaway’s attention. First, a statement from high street bank LloydsTSB:
“We have made substantial progress against our strategic objectives,” which actually suggests the bank is moving in the wrong direction. That’s the thing about corporate-speak, it can sometimes inadvertently reveal the truth.
But Kellaway's winner is the use of the formerly `innocuous word' “to” which has crept across the Atlantic like so many nonsensical nasties as in: “I’ve got some slides to talk to” – the unfortunate implication, according to Kellaway, being "that the speaker has to talk to the slides because no one else is listening." See my comment above.
Her next award, 'Most Extravagant Job Title', produced a clear winner. Dr Amantha Imber is Head Inventiologist at Inventium, where her job description is: “to turn people into innovation dynamos.” You can almost feel the flash of pearly white dentition and see the sugary flow of insincerity. Pass the bucket…
Now, onto one of my favourites, the Best Euphemism For Firing People. Lots of companies sacked people last year by “consolidating leadership”, but only Citibank clumsily attempted to hide the fact that it was giving 1,100 people their P45s by claiming in a press release that it was “optimising the customer footprint across geographies”.
This makes the usual sacking euphemism of “right-sizing” look positively open and direct. Abuse of the word “right” also gets a special prize. The recipient is Oliver Wyman, which in a report on the Future of Asian Banking came up with not only “right-spacing” but “right-culturing”. Wrong, just wrong, in so many ways.
One of the perennial PR challenges is to position the negative as a positive, and this year’s prize-winner is one of the finest examples Kellaway claimed she’d ever seen. An analyst at Religare describing a big fall in profits at United Spirits as: “Ebitda de-grew by 23.3 per cent”. That puts the usual `negative growth` clunker into perspective then...
And finally, a classic, so often produced when a rather-pleased-with-themself CEO is in full flow and not paying attention - the magnificently mixed metaphor. Kellaway went onto described something overheard in a project management meeting at a big company: “You have to appreciate that the milestones we have set in these swim lanes provide a road map for this flow chart. When we get to toll gates, we’ll assess where you sit in the waterfall . . . ”
Kellaway's overall 2012 Golden Flannel Award’s "runaway winner" was Citigroup. Not only did they produce the best euphemism, they also won a prize for jargon that, like some of the earlier examples, completely gives the real game away. It declared from now on it would offer “client-centric advice.” Presumably, then, the advice it offered previously was otherwise directed?
You can now finish squirming as, much like the best satire, while it’s funny we know there’s a little bit of us that’s probably a bit guilty of similar sins. But the function of communications and public relations (PR) in general is that clarity is paramount – that means releasing your inner Hemingway in all your content generation.
That need not involve grinding out words whilst chomping on Cuban cigars and big game fishing. No, in fact it’s rather more his other passion - bull-fighting. It means writing short sentences, Anglo-Saxon words (if writing in English), no turning nouns into verbs, striking out superfluous verbiage (sorry, spare words) and bags of self-criticism. Ask whether the text actually says what you intend it to mean, or is simply a cacophony of extravagant sounds. Whether you are writing a book, a website, a presentation or a Tweet - the same rules apply.
There were so many prizes to award in her 'Golden Flannel Awards' that she decided to supplement the prizes for 'Bull' with an award for COC. This, according to Kellaway, stands for Chief Obfuscation Champion, and is open to chief executives whose over-zealous public relations accidentally backfire.
Kellaway apparently got the idea earlier in the year from Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts’ torturous use of the English language. It’s laid bare in the fashion house’ annual report, where she is quoted as saying:
“In the wholesale channel, Burberry exited doors not aligned with brand status and invested in presentation through both enhanced assortments and dedicated, customised real estate in key doors.”
As a result, Kellaway went on to damn Ahrendts with faint praise, delivering the following linguistic laceration;
"I realise this will be disappointing to the Burberry boss, so I’m putting her in for another new award: The Door Gong. I was certain she would win this for her outstanding effort in pretending her company sells doors, when really it makes super-pricey raincoats."
And when is a door not a door? When it is a-jar-ring Burberry-esque word jumble.
Clearly not content with a mere supercilious smirk, Kellaway firmly twisted the knife;
"But in the closing days of the year I found a company called Record, which actually makes folding aluminium doors but has elected to describe itself as a supplier of "entrance solutions"
That’s cringe worthy enough, but not a patch on my favourite bit of corporate gobbledegook which moves up and down our motorways daily on the sides BOC’s trucks. The supremely vacuous slogan reads "Delivering Innovative Solutions." Yeah, right, "Transporting Compressed Gases" too tame for you then?
Kellaway then went on to nail some more truly queasy corruptions, giving the next prize to the Martin Lukes Creovation Cup "for combining two words to make something less effective than either."
This sublime bit of nonsense was judged to be competing in a crowded field of marketing manure that contained such preposterous poo as “solutioneering” from Yanmar, “innovalue” from the Taiwanese government and “sustainagility” from Atos Origin as well as Momentum UK, for claiming we live in a “phygital™” world. This could probably have been improved by emphasising the letters `GIT` in capitals. And just don’t get me started on TMs.
And then there is Dow Chemicals’ “solutionism” that graced the London taxis queuing in the rank outside Chameleon’s London office throughout the Olympics. I know it may come as a shock to many PRs, marketers and advertising copywriters but there are words other than 'solution' that are available to describe the benefits of a product or service.
Not content with pointing out the Emperor’s New Clothes of outrageous corporate-speak, prepositions got Kellaway’s attention. First, a statement from high street bank LloydsTSB:
“We have made substantial progress against our strategic objectives,” which actually suggests the bank is moving in the wrong direction. That’s the thing about corporate-speak, it can sometimes inadvertently reveal the truth.
But Kellaway's winner is the use of the formerly `innocuous word' “to” which has crept across the Atlantic like so many nonsensical nasties as in: “I’ve got some slides to talk to” – the unfortunate implication, according to Kellaway, being "that the speaker has to talk to the slides because no one else is listening." See my comment above.
Her next award, 'Most Extravagant Job Title', produced a clear winner. Dr Amantha Imber is Head Inventiologist at Inventium, where her job description is: “to turn people into innovation dynamos.” You can almost feel the flash of pearly white dentition and see the sugary flow of insincerity. Pass the bucket…
Now, onto one of my favourites, the Best Euphemism For Firing People. Lots of companies sacked people last year by “consolidating leadership”, but only Citibank clumsily attempted to hide the fact that it was giving 1,100 people their P45s by claiming in a press release that it was “optimising the customer footprint across geographies”.
This makes the usual sacking euphemism of “right-sizing” look positively open and direct. Abuse of the word “right” also gets a special prize. The recipient is Oliver Wyman, which in a report on the Future of Asian Banking came up with not only “right-spacing” but “right-culturing”. Wrong, just wrong, in so many ways.
One of the perennial PR challenges is to position the negative as a positive, and this year’s prize-winner is one of the finest examples Kellaway claimed she’d ever seen. An analyst at Religare describing a big fall in profits at United Spirits as: “Ebitda de-grew by 23.3 per cent”. That puts the usual `negative growth` clunker into perspective then...
And finally, a classic, so often produced when a rather-pleased-with-themself CEO is in full flow and not paying attention - the magnificently mixed metaphor. Kellaway went onto described something overheard in a project management meeting at a big company: “You have to appreciate that the milestones we have set in these swim lanes provide a road map for this flow chart. When we get to toll gates, we’ll assess where you sit in the waterfall . . . ”
Kellaway's overall 2012 Golden Flannel Award’s "runaway winner" was Citigroup. Not only did they produce the best euphemism, they also won a prize for jargon that, like some of the earlier examples, completely gives the real game away. It declared from now on it would offer “client-centric advice.” Presumably, then, the advice it offered previously was otherwise directed?
You can now finish squirming as, much like the best satire, while it’s funny we know there’s a little bit of us that’s probably a bit guilty of similar sins. But the function of communications and public relations (PR) in general is that clarity is paramount – that means releasing your inner Hemingway in all your content generation.
That need not involve grinding out words whilst chomping on Cuban cigars and big game fishing. No, in fact it’s rather more his other passion - bull-fighting. It means writing short sentences, Anglo-Saxon words (if writing in English), no turning nouns into verbs, striking out superfluous verbiage (sorry, spare words) and bags of self-criticism. Ask whether the text actually says what you intend it to mean, or is simply a cacophony of extravagant sounds. Whether you are writing a book, a website, a presentation or a Tweet - the same rules apply.
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