Posts Tagged ‘communication style’

Open-Ended, Short Questions Elicit Insightful Answers

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

Adam Bryant of the New York Times regularly interviews CEOs and other business leaders for his column, Corner Office. I’ve long admired his interviewing style. He asks short, pointed, open-ended questions that get his subjects thinking — and opening up to him.

Lately, I’ve been noticing how he gets in a one- or two-word follow-up question and draws out more insights from a source. Anyone who has conducted interviews will appreciate the beauty of questions like:

  • “What else?”
  • “Any others?”
  • “How?”

Because it’s questions like these that take a source to places they weren’t expecting. And the interviewer uncovers new layers to a previous answer.

Read a few of Adam Bryant’s interviews; watch a master at work.

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Good Translations Are Important

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Given the global nature of business, marketing and communications pieces written in one country are often consumed in another. Sometimes, it becomes necessary to translate documents. Other times, the document is used as is.

A marcom document created abroad and used in the U.S. without change may still work. For example, an American reading a website written in British English may stumble a bit at certain words and phrases, but he’ll understand what the writer intended.

Even if  he reads a halfway-decent translation from a foreign language, he’ll get the gist of the piece.

But if the marketer wants the communication to have an impact, the translation must be perfect. Here’s why:

In any writing, you want the words to be “invisible.” By that I mean, you want the reader to get the effect of the words rather than have him or her think, “This is a wonderful/terrible piece of writing.”

Non-standard English on a website or brochure draws attention to the words. Instead of absorbing the meaning of the words, the reader gets distracted by thoughts like, “Ah, this seems to be written by someone whose first language isn’t American English.” That adds an extra, unnecessary step between your text and its comprehension.

For best results, the translation should be done by someone who is more fluent in the language being translated into.

To be sure, many foreign companies with badly-written marketing materials sell their goods and services in America every day. It may be that when we know we’re dealing with a seller whose first language is not English, we make allowances.

But everything else being equal, the company with the brochure that has fewer language mistakes will get the business first.

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“I Never Said She Stole My Money” – 7 Words, 7 Meanings

Monday, May 4th, 2009

This story in the New York Times has a great example of a sentence that has 7 different meanings depending on which word is stressed.

The sentence is: “I never said she stole my money.”

Here are the 7 ways to say it, and their meanings:

I never said she stole my money. (Meaning: Someone else may have said so.)

I never said she stole my money. (She may or may not have stolen it. The only thing you can say with surety is I didn’t accuse her of the theft.)

I never said she stole my money. (I may have pointed at her or written it somewhere.)

I never said she stole my money. (I said her sister did it. You don’t listen too good, do you?)

I never said she stole my money. (She merely found it on the floor and thought it was hers.)

I never said she stole my money. (Better check your wallet pronto.)

I never said she stole my money. (But did you notice the Degas is missing?)

What other meanings can you think of?

P.S.: The Times story is about an IBM computer that will compete with humans in a real game of Jeopardy! It’s quite interesting; check it out.

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Posted in Advertising, Communications, Technical communications, Writing | No Comments »

End jargon, says UK government body

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Impenetrable Jargon

"Impenetrable Jargon"

With the recession driving more people to using government services, it’s time the public sector abolished its incomprehensible jargon, says the UK’s Local Government Association.

The association is a lobbying organization that speaks for local governments in the national arena.

It wants government employees to stop saying things like coterninous, stakeholder engagement. When consumed by the urge to utter such words, staffers should just say talk to people instead.

The object is to get citizens to understand clearly what the government can do for them.

Some 200 words have been put on the “terminate with extreme prejudice” list. The list includes gems like holistic governance and predictors of beaconicity.

That last one has me flummoxed. Does anyone know what it means?

I’m all in favor of cutting out jargon and being clear, so I wish the LGA success in its efforts.

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Email open rates

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Email marketers occasionally start fretting over their email open rates. They ask aloud if an open rate of 15% is too little. Or they obsess over raising it from 32% to 35%.

The answer is, relax. Your email open rate is higher than what your email service provider is reporting.

If you’re emailing in the B2B world, odds are your email is being read in a Blackberry or other smartphone that only reads text emails, not HTML emails. And this keeps your reported email open rate low.

Here’s why. When your email service provider dispatches your email, it places a single graphic pixel in the email. This pixel is only visible to HTML readers. When a recipient clicks open the text version of the email, it doesn’t register as an “open.” In fact, I often get replies and clickthroughs from readers who technically never opened my email.

So like I said, relax. Your email open rate is higher than you think.

How much higher? Nobody knows.

Which is why it’s pointless to spend your time worrying about your email open rate. Instead, improve your email campaign’s performance by looking at other activities generated by the emails, such as responses, clickthroughs and conversions.

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Communication style

Friday, February 6th, 2009

Words matter. Communication style matters. Especially when the communication is an e-newsletter whose recipient doesn’t know you. Because then, the recipient makes up a mental image of you based on the only things he has to go by — your words and your style.

Take, for instance, the effect of the footnotes in the e-newsletter I recently started receiving from a large software company. A newsletter, by the way, I hadn’t signed up for.

This multinational firm sells PLM and CAD software. Here’s the text of the footnote:

“We urge you to add info@example.com to your email address book now to avoid the possibility of filtering out important product updates, offers and news.

“You received this email because our systems indicate that you wish to receive the Example.com Express newsletter. To change the types of communications you receive or to discontinue receiving email from Multinational Firm Example Corporation please go to www.example.com/preferences.“

Clicking on that link takes me to a web page that thanks me for my interest in Multinational Firm Example Corporation. Not that I had ever evinced any interest in this company, but we’ll ignore that for now.

The page also asks me to enter my email address in a box. That will presumably take me to another page whence I can finally get off their list.

Talk about foisting yourself on someone and not letting go. Their systems indicate I wish to receive their newsletter? Eeep. You couldn’t get more Big Brother-like in your language if you tried.

These e-newsletters have left me with an image of a self-important, inwardly focused and unresponsive company.

The next time I want PLM or any kind of CAD software, guess whom I won’t be calling?

The moral of the story: watch what you say, and how you say it.

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