Happy Halloween - or why content strategies needn't be scary

I woke up this morning to a deluge on Twitter of things vaguely related to Halloween. Once I’d got over the photo of a pumpkin carved to look like Yoda, (and retweeted it, obviously) I noticed a couple of scary-themed tweets from some more serious-minded companies like Mintel, Penguin and Salter Baxter. The latter, a corporate reporting agency, announced it planned to tweet scary sustainability facts throughout the day.

Really? you might say. And yes, this kind of thing only works if it’s done properly. But it did remind me of a conversation the previous week: a big B2B brand, the kind that tends to make money rather than headlines, who announced to me, “we know we need to say more but we just don’t have very much news”.

On the one level, their comment was right – few people want to read about deals signed between companies in a specialist field. On another level they were totally wrong – they have a lot to say, because what this company does has a direct impact on most people’s lives. They just need to find the right format to say it – and the right hook to get people reading.

This company is not alone. Lots of companies have things to say on themes that people find interesting, without necessarily having ready-made news hooks like an acquisition, a brand new product or an event.

There are ways to get round this, and PR professionals have been working some of the formulae for years. But in the era of social media and webzines, even B2B brands, have an opportunity to engage with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders directly, on specific subjects that interest them. Take data security, which has become extremely newsworthy as a result of the NSA debacle, and Adobe’s embarrassing admission that as many as 38 million of its customer accounts may have been hacked. Traditionally unglamorous IT companies can use the spike in interest to promote their own views in an engaging way, direct existing customers towards white papers, feature the issue in a webzine…

This is not to say you can create news where there is none. Tweets, blogposts and articles must remain relevant to their audience. But thinking in terms of themes rather than one-off events provides a solid foundation for a content strategy- and has the additional advantage of encouraging brands to focus on the core story rather than disparate events.

Of course if you got this far, you will have spotted the trick. I used the Halloween hook to get you to read about content strategies. However, as you’ve got this far, here’s a reward. That pumpkin carved to look like Yoda.

Translate the desired effect, not the words

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the limits of translation. I don’t mean those moments where you realise there isn’t the right word for something in the other language. Rather, I mean those times when you come across a whole phrase that is so imbued with one country’s culture that its translation into the other will result in something that is frankly bizarre.

Take educational attainment. In France, most people will begin their CV or corporate bio with which business school or grande école they attended. Little matter that they subsequently became the chief exec of a CAC 40 company / prize-winning novelist / President of the Republic. No, the important thing is that they graduated from ENA or HEC.

This speaks reams about the French system and how it works. But if you try to translate it into English, those cultural references don’t carry across. Over the age of 25, beginning your English corporate bio with where you went to university is at best slightly odd, and at worst, tacitly implies you’ve achieved very little since.

This is why, every time I have been confronted with the issue, I have advised French executives to move any reference to what they did when they were doing when they were 20 to the end in the English version, but keep it at the beginning in the French. For me this results in an accurate translation, one that is based on a ranking by value of what the person has achieved in the eyes of each country’s readers.

This is a very simple example, but you can take the idea much further. Take speechwriting, for example. A British or American executive, for example, needs to speak in short, clear sentences to be authoritative. Ideally, there should be humour, to show his “human side” and to convey the impression that he is sufficiently at ease to joke in front of the audience. In France, excessively short sentences make you sound cold, and jokes are definitely an optional extra.

I’m a big fan of translation that raises its hat to cultural assumptions. In fact I practice it myself. My English CV begins with the fact I have 15 years’ experience in corporate communications. The French? “Diplomée de l’Université d’Oxford…”

The art of Anglification Part 2: dare to avoid the borderline

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post on "strategic reflections on transversal actions" – the art of turning dreadfully mangled Franglish into something resembling real English without offending the French colleague who's asked you to read their carefully crafted prose. Having spent the last couple of days reviewing a particularly dire translation as a favour to a friend, I thought I’d add a new “borderline” category to the danger list.

“Borderline” is all the stuff you can just about get away with. Used once, it’s ok. Used several times and the underlying French becomes immediately noticeable, the verbal equivalent of discovering a pile of steak-frites hidden behind the Chesterfield.

So here goes: the ultimate guide to borderline Franglais, and how to avoid it:

• Au service de. As in, une expertise pointue au service d’une approche opérationnelle. The sort of phrase that used to inspire panic in me when I first started writing French. How lofty. How elegant. But really, how utterly, totally meaningless – and, as it turns out upon closer inspection, lazy. In English, stringing together random ideas is considered perfectly normal. Because French finds this horrifyingly non-Cartesian, links are created where there are none. So be daring. Replace au service de with a simple and. Should anyone take umbrage, embark on a smug and lengthy explanation of the relationship between Descartes’ thinking and the structure of the French language.

• Atout. As in un atout culturel, un atout précieux. Frequently preceded by constitue as in X constitue un atout important. Most translators plump for asset, but really, how often do you talk about assets in English, other than when making out your will? Time to be daring again! Replace the whole lot with a single adjective. E.g. La famille et les amis peuvent souvent constituer un atout important - Family and friends are often vital 

• (…) In French, you can write long lists of examples in brackets, followed by “…” at the end when you run out of inspiration. In English, you can’t. It really is that simple. Of course, this being a fairly innocuous difference between the two languages, you can definitely get away with it the odd time, should your life, or relationship with your French boss depend on it. However, where possible, replace with (for example x, x and x).

• Adjectival phrases. Hard to describe, easy to spot. All those sentences in French corporate literature that start out with something like Véritable spécialiste des…., nous… The ultimate borderline, because used once or twice, they’re perfectly English. The problem is overuse. Used over and over again in English, it’s a structure that sounds – well, like French.

Now I’ve started, I could go on for hours. (In fact véritable, in the point above, has just made it onto the next list – a real specialist, a real asset… as if the reader would otherwise expect a load of fakes). Uncomfortably, you will find that the worst overuse of borderline words and phrases is in bad French, but it’s generally safer to avoid tackling that one head-on. Just take pride in the fact your English “translation” ends up being better than the véritable thing. 

What language does the EU really speak? (or how French won in the end)

France has been terrified for several decades now that its cherished national language may be losing influence in the European Union.

In fact a recent publication issued by the European Court of Auditors proves they may have won a surprising coup: not by insisting on use of French, but by introducing a swathe of Frenchisms into “EU English”.

Snappily titled “A brief list of misused English terms in EU publications” (as an aside, the document is 58 pages long, which gives you an interesting illustration of what the EU thinks of as “brief”), it sets out English native speakers’ bête noires in terms of EU gobbledegook.

Most, if not all, have more than a hint of French about them. They include some of my personal bugbears – the kind of words that make me want to whip out a mug of earl grey and some soggy sandwiches and stage a one-woman protest in defence of the English language. “Actors” for “people who do things”, “axis” to describe an idea for developing something, or a priority, “important” to mean big (although I have always found something rather refreshing about the French willingness to admit something deserves attention by virtue of nothing other than it being large). It’s English, but not as we know it.

Of course the real danger is that some of these words will start to sound normal. Some of these words by themselves, read very quickly, at arms length, sound just about OK. UK civil servants now apparently talk about “externalisation”. (Actually, that’s a bad example. I can’t think of a single context in which the word externalisation would pass muster).

English has always thrived on new additions to the language. French struggles, before disdainfully adopting le weekend and le smartphone as linguistic embarrassments. But using existing words to mean something completely different causes confusion: if the EU wants to join my reactionary protest against this particular set of additions, they're welcome. Cucumber sandwich, anyone?

Internal comms - are you talking to me?

As every marketer worth their salt will tell you, you have a limited number of windows each week to email promotional material, the top one being Thursday afternoon. Even then, most recipients will immediately press the delete button.

What they don't tell you is, the same pretty much applies to internal communications.

Internal communications is generally the most misguided of corporate comms activities, for the simple reason that few chief executives are willing to admit that their employees may not actually like them, and even fewer comms executives are willing to contradict the chief executive. The result is generally a deluge of intranet newsflashes on the latest raft of senior management promotions, corporate jollies, and initiatives dreamed up by head office. Unsurprisingly, hardly anyone reads this stuff.

How to fix the problem? The main answer lies in approach.

Put simply, you need to work out who your audience is, what they're interested in, and how they want to find out about it. You wouldn't dream of producing external communications without knowing the answers to these questions, so why should it be acceptable to do this for an internal audience?

Write with your most cynical audience in mind. Most senior managers think that the majority of employees are satisfied with their jobs, and with the way the company is run. Conversations around the water cooler in offices around the world demonstrate this is simply not true. Information on a new initiative is likely to be better received if you explain in concrete terms why you are introducing it - perhaps because a competitor is increasing sales in a specific product line, or because you think it will help you attract a new type of customer. Reach for a string of clichés and abstractions and employees will switch off - or worse still, roll their eyes.

   

Recognise that your employees are your number one external communications channel- and really believe it. Acknowledging that bad communications with employees leads to lost sales tends to focus the mind. No one has "reading the intranet" as part of their job description, so when you publish news, you're competing with a whole host of other distractions, not least the employee's work! This means you need to bring the same level of imagination and rigour to the production of internal comms as you bring to external comms. It really isn't the poor relation of communications- it's the most important part.

Employees need to feel internal comms supports their ability to do their jobs. They need to be able to find the information they need, quickly, and connect with the people they need to move projects forward. This takes internal comms to a strategic crossroads of comms, HR, knowledge management and, increasingly, IT: collaborative portals that help people work better. It's a far cry from programming emails for a Thursday afternoon.

The Garbageometer

I have a new gadget. It’s entertaining and can be used in most situations. It’s in my head, but I’m working on a physical prototype. Ladies and gentlemen I bring you: the Garbageometer^TM

It’s simple to operate. Basically you open the lid and stuff in whatever material you want to analyse – comments by Government ministers, a memo from your boss on why bonuses have gone down, other companies’ results announcements – and press the button. The Garbageometer^TM  will generate a score based on a complex algorithm designed to evaluate level of style over substance, before going on to index it against similar garbage produced in the past 12 months. In this way, you can compare the garbage level of, say, your children’s assurance that they don’t have any homework on the sunniest day of the year, with a major bank’s corporate responsibility report.

It works a treat, but it has one major flaw: it needs a new button for international settings. Because there is a stark fact: while a lot of garbage is produced in English, the tolerance level on the Garbageometer^TM is set pretty low. English does not like abstraction. It thrives on concrete examples that prove something specific.

In French, by contrast, you can just about get away with having nothing to say as long as you say it elegantly. I wouldn’t dare to criticise 60 million people, so I haven’t put any original French texts through the Garbageometer^TM , only translations of French text into English. That said, many of them ended up in the top quartile.

Incidentally, this is not a gratuitous whinge about the floweriness of the French language. If I ended up here, it’s in part because I like the fact that mundane features of life such as the weather forecast, or a patisserie counter, can be made poetic.

But it does have big implications for French companies trying to communicate in anything other than French. Put simply: they need to think what the final Garbageometer^TM score in English is likely to be before finalising the French. Take the following sentence, straight from the HR section in a well-known corporate’s CR report:

“Qu’il s’agisse de recruter, de développer les talents, de fidéliser les collaborateurs ou de faire partager à tous les salariés le projet industriel et social du Groupe, les démarches mises en œuvre par X témoignent d’une volonté constante de dialogue, de progrès continu, de partage des meilleures pratiques et d’adaptation à un environnement en constante évolution. “

Pretty, yes. But at nearly 60 words, the reader finishes gasping for breath. Not only that, but what does it actually say? Garbageometer^TM score: around 90.

I’ve also had fun with link labels on websites. So phrases like “A l’écoute de ses collaborateurs” and “L’humain au cœur des préoccupations du Groupe” have gone through the Garbageometer^TM, with scores hovering predictably around the 80-mark.

I need to stop there. Otherwise I’ll damage my own score. But my new aim is finding a way of stopping the garbage production in its tracks. If you have a short idea, preferably involving a  concrete example, please let me know.

"Looking forward with confidence" or how to write a results announcement

A former boss once told me that I shouldn’t sweat blood and tears over producing a resounding quote for the annual results announcement: it should always end with the words, “I look forward with confidence to the future”.

This might sound lazy, but is in fact genius. Just won a pile of new contracts? Try: “We grew our business significantly in 2012, earning major contracts and improving profitability. I look forward with confidence to the future”. Ta-dah! Cue applause.

Alternatively, your sales and profits have sky-dived and you’ve had to fire half your staff: “Following a year marked by difficult conditions in our principal markets, we have put in place a restructuring plan designed to improve profitability. As such, I look forward with confidence to the future”. In other words, things can only get better.

It doesn’t end there. A spot survey of 2012 results announcements from the FTSE shows you could conceivably write a results announcement from a pre-defined list of words and phrases, simply swapping in the words “bank” or “mining company” depending on who you’re writing for.

2012 wasn’t a great year for most companies, so there was a lot about “foundations” (Barclays, BP) and “building” (the latter featuring particularly heavily at Rio Tinto, which was building on strengths as well as building focus – that’s quite a lot of building work for a company whose underlying earnings were down 40%). “Solid” was probably the most overused adjective: Aviva made “solid progress”, despite losing £3 billion, and BP even managed to lay a “solid foundation for growth in the long-term” (unlike the short-term, which is about “delivering operational milestones”). There were lots of “difficult economic backdrops” and “challenging economic conditions”, although most companies were “well-positioned to deliver future growth”.

No-one’s seen an “outstanding” progress since the heady days of 2007, although Unilever, which seemed almost embarrassed at producing some decent results amid a sea of FTSE red, ventured a “good”. “Substantial progress”, by contrast, seems to be reserved for companies that were doing particularly badly before, or who are hated by the general public because they pay their employees too much (i.e. banks).

What to take out of this? I can’t really criticise: not only have I written endless announcements where my company is looking forward with confidence to the future, but when I’ve tried to write anything else, it’s generally been changed by the chairman or one of his myriad advisors. In fact, originality is perhaps best left out of results announcements, if Barclays’ attempt this year is anything to go by. Its Chief Executive ended his statement by explaining the bank had a common purpose, which would be delivered by embedding five core values, and that by building this culture (bear with me) he is confident that Barclays “will become the ‘Go-To’ bank for all our stakeholders”. I sincerely hope that next year, it will have made substantial progress.