We’ve recently been treated to the Australian TV series “Rake” about a well-meaning, but hopelessly ill-fated criminal lawyer. One of the episodes is about a retired English school teacher who laments the abuse and loss of meaning in the English language in modern times. Defending the teacher on serious charges, Cleaver Greene (our ill-fated criminal lawyer), refers to recent (real-life) incidents where meaning has been sacrificed for novelty:
- In a report on interrogation activities at Abu Ghraib, the CIA referred to a “diminished verbal response capability”. When asked for clarification on what this term meant, the answer was: a whimper!
- The Pentagon described a plane crash as an “unintentional flight into the ground”! Duh!
We may laugh, but these are sad and extreme examples of how we use language to spin what is actually a very simple, clear concept. Why would we want to blow smoke up our clients’ sit-upons? Actually, on this matter (the blowing of smoke), you may start to think that I watch an ENORMOUS amount of TV, but I happened to catch an episode of QI in passing and they were talking about a medically-accepted Victorian cure for drowning: literally, blowing smoke up the bottom of a person who had drowned! Apparently, there was sufficient empirical evidence to prove that this cured drowning!
But back to the subject at hand: when crafting our marketing message, when identifying our niche, it is essential that we keep the language and message clear and simple. As Winston Churchill said:
“Tell them what you want to tell them; then tell them; then tell them what you have told them.”
