Take a look at the quote in this blog that gets girls to cook stuff wearing J-Crew clothes.
It’s the kind of thing that would have Darwin spinning in his grave. The man who spent years analysing animals and plants all over the world and eventually coining the theory of natural selection would now find that cooking blogs are using his name to describe laziness in washing-up.
It’s symptomatic of many corporate blogs, and corporate writing in general. I was once employed by a big multinational company and asked to produce research for them – thoughts and ideas about where their industry is heading.
When I delivered my initial papers they were all rejected for being too simple. I wasn’t sure what they meant so I asked for some clarification – I was told they just don’t sound like an executive would have written them. I was using titles such as the FT and Economist as guidance for my own style – journals that can explain complex subjects using clear English.
I tried again only to be rebuffed once more, so I went to the other extreme and filled my report with acronyms, jargon, and ridiculous corporate expressions that no “real” person would ever use. “We love it!” was the message from my client and that set the tone of my writing work for them.
I was thinking of this when listening to the FT ‘Gongs for the Greatest Guff’ awards for 2013 – as presented by Lucy Kellaway. Have a listen and see if you can think of a bottle of water (suitable for vegetarians) in the same way ever again?
mark hillary 