'Professor, when did you become so obsessed with voting?' 'The very instant I became old'

My hair is long gone, I can’t drink more than three pints and I can never remember what I came upstairs for. But there are consolations. I do have more disposable income. However, my leisure is limited, so I’m very much interested in ways to exchange cash for time. Which, you might think, makes me a plum target for advertisers.

But whenever I see marketing ostensibly aimed at me, I feel patronised. On TV, the only time I see people living lives similar to mine is on ads for awful, naff suburban brands like Bisto, Ronseal or Vauxhall – normally revolving around some sort of jokey vignette about family life. While I might recognise the situations with a wry smile, I don’t particularly warm to the product.

Contrarian viewpoint

As Bob Hoffman has often noted at Ad Contrarian, advertisers are curiously coy about targeting older consumers, even though people generally attain more spending power as they age. Everything is pitched at the young and the beautiful – even though they’re the least likely to be able to afford it.

Here’s a summary from his excellent free ebook, The Ad Contrarian:

There seems to be an irresistible urge for marketers to target young people despite monumental evidence that older people have far more money, are more willing to change brand loyalties, are far easier to reach, and all-in-all make better customers…

Not only is most advertising not appealing to the people who have and spend most of the money but it’s alienating them with imagery, values, and cultural references that are actively disliked and resented.

Embarrassment and humiliation

I can so relate to Bob’s observations. Video games are a case in point. I enjoy them, but I’m embarrassed by the culture that surrounds them. Despite the self-congratulatory blah about ‘interactive movies’, most games have yet to rise above the sort of setting, narrative and character development that appeals to 15-year-old boys. Even titles like Heavy Rain and LA Noire, which represent the very pinnacle of mainstream sophistication, barely manage to attain the level of an average genre movie. And yet new PS3 games cost £50, and the average age of a US gamer is 33.

Clothes are another good example. Having finally got to the stage where I can afford some decent threads, I’m increasingly intimidated by the experience of buying them. Going into a ‘proper’ fashion outlet means enduring the condescension of a 20-year-old assistant with a 28” waist, but I’m not ready for the unmitigated beigeness of M&S. So I end up in places like French Connection, Gap and Esprit, glumly browsing the light-blue shirts under a huge monochrome image of a pouting twink. And feeling very, very old.

Aspiration and visibility

Why the mismatch between message and reality? One reason might be the impulse to feature beautiful young people, whether for purely aesthetic reasons or because they are ‘aspirational’ for the olds. In areas such as women’s fashion, progress in this area seems painfully slow, having been limited (as far as I can tell) to a few patronisingly labelled ‘real’ models and the occasional 50-year-old with a freakishly youthful body, like Twiggy for M&S.

Relative visibility might be another part of the answer. Young people have enough free time to go online and make a lot of noise about the games, music, films or fashion they like – whether or not they actually pay money to consume them. Inevitably, brands and marketers listen, and end up skewing their messages towards a vocal minority. By the same token, they might fall into the seductive trap of ‘engaging’ young Facebook users who aren’t that likely to buy.

This was Mr Bleaney’s room

Another explanation is that ads (and ‘content’ more widely) are written or approved by people far younger than me, who are trying to think their way into my shoes. Inevitably, the attempt to ‘appeal’ ends up being lame and patronising.

Any junior copywriters reading? Let me give you a pointer, kids. In terms of your inner life, being 40 is exactly like being 20 – but the guy in the mirror doesn’t look like you any more. He looks like your dad.

OK, he thinks a bit like him too. But he still doesn’t want to be reduced to the sum of his lifestyle habits. The 40-year-old is more than the Bisto he ladles on to his sausages, the Ronseal he slaps on his fence or the Vauxhall he uses to take the boys to football. Like Larkin’s Mr Bleaney, he wants to shake off ‘the dread/that how we live measures our own nature’.

Inside the middle-aged man is someone who, against all the odds, still wants to be cool. Or feel cool, at least. And if he’s got half a brain, he doesn’t want to do it in a ludicrous mutton-dressed-as-lamb way, but on his own terms. Midlife Man doesn’t really want to go back in time 25 years. He wants to relive his youth with his knowledge and experience intact – and without giving up the hard-won comforts of middle age.

Clumsy nostalgia

One way to do that is by returning to the films, books and music of yesteryear. Cultural nostalgia should be a powerful weapon for the advertiser, but it’s often wielded in the clumsiest way. Take the much-lauded Christmas advert for John Lewis (excerpt below). For a certain type of person growing up in the 1980s, the music of The Smiths was literally sacred. (When I say ‘literally’, I literally mean literally.) Morrissey’s lyics, attitude and sheer living-signness were a lifeline, making Smiths records a qualitatively different cultural experience from other music.

Used in the right way, and for the right product, such music could have a powerful emotional charge. But a mawkish, wispy cover version is not the right way, and a crushingly middle-class department store is not the right product. Even though I am slap-bang in the middle of John Lewis’ target market, their ad actually eroded the little bit of their brand that lives in my head. The concept of the ad was OK – but you don’t mess about with The Smiths.

A more recent example is Honda’s spot featuring Matthew Broderick reprising his role from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (below). This sparked righteous outrage from some quarters, while others noted that the ad had not really captured the film’s ‘charm, energy and humour’, and that Broderick himself appeared rather stilted and ill at ease (perhaps because of his hesitation at agreeing to the ad in the first place).

Maybe it’s too much to hope for – sincere, considered marketing that connects with my life as I actually live it. But that’s what young people get, all the time. If advertisers want to reach the olds, they might want to ease off the suburban stereotypes and ironic button-pushing, and try treating older people as, well, people.

The post discusses Chelsea lip gloss, made by Chanel, which is described by its maker as follows:

This brilliant pink lipgloss delivers the ultimate pop of colour, along with subtle shimmer and a high-shine glow. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection, its striking hue is named for a thriving artistic and cultural area of London.

Photo by buzzybee

In Holly’s memorable phrase, the gloss is, in reality, ‘weaker than Anthony Worrall Thompson’s resolve in the Tesco cheese aisle’. She ascribes the discrepancy between copy and product to the writer being given little or no information from which to work.

It’s a point well worth making, but what’s most striking for me is the fact that the copy devolves to exaggeration by default – something that happens in many situations, regardless of source material, product, audience or brand. (And I do it myself.)

Here’s a few definitions of some words used in the Chanel description (from Collins):

brilliant adj. 1. shining with light; sparkling. 2. (of a colour) reflecting a considerable amount of light; vivid. 3. outstanding; exceptional… 4. splendid; magnificent…

ultimate adj. 2. the highest or most significant…

glow n. 3. brilliance of colour

striking adj. 1. attracting attention; fine; impressive… 2. conspicuous; noticeable

On one level, these show that the writer did a pretty good job, in the sense that the words chosen have just the right connotations for the concepts they’re trying to convey. But on another level, they describe an idealised version of the product, rather than the physical reality. Why do we write this way?

Why we exaggerate

The main reason, I suppose, is just to put the product in the best possible light: to communicate the benefits in the most powerful way. But this is clearly a question of degree: you can stretch credibility too far.

Another reason is the need to sustain aspirational brand values in descriptive writing. At the level of concepts and slogans, we can aim for something elegant and thought-provoking that dramatises a benefit without having to say that much (show, don’t tell). Slogans like ‘I’m lovin’ it’ and ‘Just do it’ are pure surface, explaining nothing. But when the context or format obliges us to go deeper, problems arise. Describing the physical reality of the product while staying true to the values projected by the headline or brand can lead directly to exaggeration. We can see this very clearly in the Chanel example.

Thirdly, there’s simple force of habit. Copywriters remove or recast negative ideas, elide or gloss over weak points and bend the truth to make the argument as watertight as possible. It’s simply what we do; having acquired the necessary skills, we become unconsciously competent and polish up the message almost without thinking.

And because it’s what copywriters do, there’s an element of cultural or peer pressure; a sort of verbal arms race. When everyone else is exaggerating, we have to exaggerate too, or our message might not prevail. If our lip-gloss shade is ‘bright’, and a competitor’s is ‘brilliant’, who’s going to close that sale?

The effect of exaggeration

I think it’s fair to say that, for most people, outlandish exaggeration is simply the accepted language of commerce. It’s just how adverts talk. We’d be alarmed to hear such words from a real person, but we’ve become completely accustomed to hearing them from brands.

As a result, we’ve become inured to their effect. The currency of marketing communication has been hyperinflated, with marketers shoveling on the hyperbole and audiences ignoring it, seeing through it or perhaps actively rejecting it. Exaggeration is the monosodium glutamate of content, habituating the reader to ever-stronger flavours while also making everything taste the same.

As a sidenote, it’s interesting to consider the implications of this for social-media marketing. While one brand channel (Twitter, Facebook) is saying ‘be my friend’, another one (TV, press) is screaming dementedly in the customer’s earhole about how great the product is. Is that really the best basis for engagement?

In some cases, however, I personally believe that exaggeration is more effective than we might like to admit. I’m thinking about zappy ads for toys aimed at children, scaremongering ads about germs aimed at homemakers or exciting ads for alcoholic drinks aimed at young adults. When the audience is particularly receptive or susceptible, I think the exaggerated idea is, at least partly, taken at face value. It might not lead to a purchase – the child sees the ad and pesters the parent, who says ‘no’ – but it still has an effect. When we hear or read language, we have to respond, even if only in thought.

The Innocent way

Seen in this light, exaggeration is irrelevant or ineffective at best, cynically manipulative at worst. So what else might work?

Well, there’s certainly scope for fresher language – words that are still vivid and forceful, but more precisely attuned to the actual nature of the product and/or less familiar in their effect.

For example, take the word ‘exciting’. It gets pinned to a vast range of products and services, very few of which are, in fact, very exciting. As a result, it has lost all its power in the commercial context. If we want to evoke excitement, we need to find a new way to say it. Other usual suspects include ‘great’, ‘delicious’ and, in B2B, ‘innovative’.

Some brands, such as Innocent, seek to make their words fresh again by taking the road less followed and shaking up the usage. Here’s what they might have done with the Chelsea prod desc:

Cheerful Chelsea is as thrilling as the district that shares her name and pinker than an embarrassed flamingo. Take her along to any party where only the shiniest, most shimmery shades are welcome. Part of the limited-edition Knightsbridge Collection.

It’s still exaggerated – more so, probably – but at least it’s unexpected, and the use of wackywriting takes the edge off the hyperbole. The only problem with this is that it’s pretty labour-intensive, and may simply be too costly if you’ve got 500 product descriptions to create. (Many Innocent-style brands, including Innocent, write a lot of their own copy – killing two birds with one stone by saving costs and keeping a tight grip on their tone.)

The plain way

What about just toning down the writing? If we pull right back from exaggeration, what is the effect?

Chelsea is named after an area of London. It’s pink and shiny, with a sort of sparkle effect.

If exaggeration is monododium glutamate, this is plain boiled rice. In its effect, it’s weirdly point-blank and conversational, pulling you up short by being so totally different from what you expect. It also gives you the feeling of being addressed by a real person instead of a manic shrieking automaton.

However, the price of honesty is eccentricity, as a result of which it may completely miss the target. Exaggeration is so widely used that it’s almost an established style that readers have come to expect – if we take a very unexpected tone, they might be disorientated and just bail out.

Cognitive dissonance

This recent piece by Nick Usborne points out the futility of trying to change the reader’s mind. If you attempt to communicate an idea that is not in tune with your reader’s beliefs, the result is cognitive dissonance – a jarring discrepancy between what the reader already knows and what you are trying to tell them. ‘As you write your copy,’ notes Nick, ‘Your reader needs to be nodding his or her head.’

He’s right, of course. The way to sell is to identify those who are most likely to buy and focus on showing them compelling benefits – to ‘persuade the reader to do something they are already inclined to do,’ as Nick puts it.

When we resort to exaggeration, I think we are showing that we have given up on this goal. Instead of setting out a reasonable case for a purchase, we’ve resorted to turning up the volume in an attempt to browbeat the reader into buying. In a way, exaggeration denotes a loss of faith in the product, or our ability to sell it, or both. That’s why, when it comes to persuasion, less may well be more.

The concept of freedom

For me, it’s striking how the anti-SOPA narrative enlists the concept of ‘freedom’ to its cause. It’s such a contentious word, freighted with multiple meanings.

In China, for example, ‘freedom’ might mean the freedom to own your own property, or to criticise the government.

In the US, the idea of ‘freedom’ is used by thinkers on both left and right to bolster the case for rights or obligations in every area from foreign policy and homeland security to birth control and digital IP. We can see its versatility, and its almost mystical resonance, in classic slogans such as ‘Freedom is not free’ and ‘Information wants to be free’.

Contrasting the ‘free world’ with post-Communist China highlights the fact that freedom is a matter of degree, or historical perspective. The slave’s idea of freedom is different from the millionaire’s.

However, they both share a strong desire to hang on to whatever freedoms they have. Once we have a freedom, of whatever sort, we hate to give it up. And the more emotion or morality we can instil into our concept of freedom, the powerful the case we can make for keeping it.

Digital freedom is recent

Younger readers may need reminding that the freedoms we take for granted on the internet have only existed for a few years. There was a time when social media did not exist, Wikipedia did not exist and ‘sharing’ consisted of downloading Coolio at 1.5k/s through a creaking modem while your partner moaned at you to get off the bloody phone.

The era of which I speak is not the 1750s, but 1995. Digital freedom is very new. We have very quickly got accustomed to it, and naturally now take it for granted. But I would argue that we are only just beginning to see its effects. And they’re not all positive.

Physical and mental freedom

In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki contrasts two sides of freedom: physical and mental.

[Americans] have an idea of freedom which concentrates on physical freedom, on freedom of activity. This idea causes you some mental suffering and loss of freedom. You think that you want to limit your thinking, you think some of your thinking is unnecessary or painful or entangling; but you do not think you want to limit your physical activity.

More cryptically, he reflects:

If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Absolute freedom itself is necessary before you can acquire absolute freedom.

One interpretation of these words is that freedom to do something is not the same as the freedom to be something. Indeed, freedom to do things may hold us back from being what we want to be – or what we should be. This calls into the question the idea that more freedom is always a good thing.

Like children, we may need to have our freedom limited in order to grow up. More subtly, we may need to learn which freedoms are worth having, and which we don’t really need to use, or hang on to – even though we can.

Glutted and clotted

Again, it’s a question of context and degree. For the orphaned child solider in the Congo, more physical freedom is urgently required; the freedom to share screengrabs on Twitter is off the radar. But if you already have more than enough physical freedom, you might want to consider whether grabbing more freedoms will necessarily help you – or anyone else.

SOPA will put a stop to me profiting from Walt Disney's IP, and rightly so

In his book Retromania, Simon Reynolds characterises the modern-day relationship to culture as ‘glutted/clotted’. There is, he argues, simply too much stuff. Thanks to digital media, it’s too readily available and too lightly gained to have any value. Like the Sorceror’s Apprentice, we got what we wished for, but it’s overwhelming us: we’re drowning in content.

And, so far from being warmly appreciative of our new ‘freedoms’, we’re actually more like spoilt children – desultorily flitting from one web page to the next, always skitting over the surface, always going somewhere else. Social media amps everything up even further, adding unwelcome overtones of peer pressure, anxiety and compulsion (see How social media ruined our lives).

Less content, more appreciation

If we want to preserve our mental balance in the face of that onslaught, we need the same thing that a Zen practitioner needs: not more freedom, but more discipline.

For us, navigating the digital sea means choosing a destination and staying on course, or we’ll be tossed about by myriad undercurrents of distraction. For the modern office worker or student, perpetually beset by seductive digital baubles, concentration may be the key skill that separates the achievers from the wasters.

I absolutely don’t endorse the power of Big Media to dictate our private habits. Nor do I place my trust in government as the arbiter of cultural consumption. However, bad actions can sometimes have good consequences. If SOPA does happen, and if it does lead to a lot less content being out there than before, perhaps we’ll rediscover what is really valuable in our culture. And that doesn’t mean the shallow ‘freedom’ to ‘share’ content in ways that we’ve recently grown to like, but its deeper essence – what it really is, always has been and always will be. The medium is not the whole of the message.

Rise & Shine
Begin the day refreshed and recharged with a delicious Millennium & Copthorne Hotels breakfast.

Not spectacular, but I can’t really argue with it. It totally does the job for the brand, the situation and the audience, and I’m sure I would have written something very similar.

On the back of the same menu, however, the tone of voice takes an abrupt left turn:

Items listed on this menu are subject to availability and we reserve the right to change or amend menu items as seasonal variations apply. Guests with allergies are urged to inform their server prior to ordering or selecting food items as full ingredient listings can be provided.

We’re used to seeing different tones of voice for different purposes or situations. After all, real people vary their tone all the time – the tone I take when meeting a client in their office will devolve dramatically if we go out for a drink later on.

And when writing for a brand, it’s completely natural to strike a different tone in ‘selling’ and ‘official’ content – a good example being the contrast between a website’s home page and its terms and conditions.

However, the variation in our desired tone of voice may not map neatly on to the different elements of the customer’s experience. It may be that things we see as separate, or want to treat in different ways, are closely related in terms of user experience, purchase cycle or brand touchpoints.

For example, the hotel guest may be pleased to learn that the breakfast will refresh and recharge them, but immediately anxious for reassurance about their nut allergy. For them, the whole value proposition hinges on the small-print stuff.

If we vary the tone too sharply between areas that are closely linked for readers, we may implicitly undermine trust and what NLP practitioners call congruence. In human terms, our text steps over the line that divides ‘smooth-faced’ from ‘two-faced’.

In my view, this menu is a case in point. It’s all smiles when it wants your money, but when it comes to what’s actually offered in return, it retreats into multisyllabic, passive-case formality. And these two tones are, quite literally, found on the two ‘faces’ of the printed format.

This is a classic instance of language as defence mechanism; of speaking without wanting to communicate. The officious bureaucrat erects spiky word barriers around accountability and commitment that few readers will want to negotiate (or be able to). Sadly, it’s an approach that gets used far too often, particularly in the public sector.

Behind the bluster, the actual message is usually quite simple. Here’s a rewrite of the back-of-menu text:

Some foods aren’t always available. Please tell us if you have a food allergy; we can give you a full list of ingredients.

This reduces the reading age from the original’s 17 down to eight, greatly enhancing the odds that allergy sufferers will actually get the message they need to hear.

My version also makes it much clearer that the menu isn’t a promise – and it’s probably this clarity of obligation that makes people shy away from a simple, straightforward tone. Or maybe it feels like a simple tone just isn’t ‘hard’ or ‘important’ enough. But once you start reaching for the big words, you usually end up with a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I’m not saying that everything should be written in exactly the same tone, regardless of its purpose. Instead, the tone should be as consistent as it can be, while still moving with the audience’s needs. We should write how people want to read.

EACH (East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices) supports families and cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk. They provide care and support wherever the family wishes – in families’ own homes, in hospital or at one of their hospices in Ipswich, Milton and Quidenham.

They are a registered charity (no. 1069284) and need to raise around £4.8 million in public donations to deliver their services this year. This amounts to more than £13,000 a day, every day of the year.

We first heard about EACH (Quidenham) from a nurse at the hospital when Maggie was still in intensive care. I remember thinking then that I’d never be happy taking her there. I didn’t want her mixing with disabled kids because I didn’t want to accept the fact that she was disabled. It’s called wishful thinking.

The first time we took her there I was overwhelmed with sadness. By crossing that threshold it was almost as if we were surrendering her to disability. Everyone was very kind and understanding but I despised them all, including (and maybe especially) the kids. As far as I was concerned Maggie shouldn’t have been there.

Over time, those feelings passed. This was partly as a result of us slowly accepting Maggie’s condition but mainly as a result of realising how fantastic the people at EACH are. They have only ever had Maggie’s best interests at heart. Ours too. More than anyone else we have to deal with, they understand what our lives are like. Not just the day-to-day stuff, or things like the lack of sleep, but the pain and sadness that comes with having a disabled child.

Maggie and Paul

On the surface, what EACH gives us is very simple: they give us a break. They take Maggie and allow us to have a few days and nights off. But more than that – much more than that – they make Maggie’s life richer. The people there aren’t just carers, they’re professionals who are dedicated to making disabled kids’ lives better. So Maggie gets physiotherapy, cognitive support, music therapy, play therapy and all kinds of good stuff that will enable her to have a better chance in life. She also gets love and care and undivided attention.

In this respect, EACH has been, I’m sad to say, more of a friend to us than quite a few of our real friends. A consequence of having a disabled child is that you become isolated. Not simply because of the practicalities associated with caring for a child with a disability, but because people don’t seem to want to know you. Or they just forget you. But with EACH we get help and support and understanding, both at the hospice and here at home when they come out to give us respite or to babysit. As a result of this, Maggie has grown very fond of many of the people there. So much so that these days she even looks forward to her visits.

One of the things I like about EACH is its purity. It’s a charity that looks after disabled kids and their families. Kids and families who, through no fault of their own, lead extremely difficult lives. (I should point out here that there are families who use EACH whose lives are much more difficult, and sadder, than our own: it’s not called a hospice for no reason.) Which is why it’s almost scandalous that it’s a charity, rather than an essential service. If we’re talking about the most vulnerable people in society, the most deserving even, then I’d have thought that disabled children would be the ones most in need of care and attention. I’d think that, by the way, even if I weren’t the father of a disabled child. Yet EACH has to fight it out with all the other charities out there.

Of course, the purpose of this post isn’t just to sing EACH’s praises. Its purpose is to raise a bit of money. So, because it’s Christmas, and because they’re so wonderful, I’d be very grateful if you could donate something to help them out. To help the kids out. And to do that, all you have to do is click the link below.

Thank you. And Merry Christmas.

http://www.each.org.uk/donate

• Paul writes a semi-regular blog about Maggie at http://maggieandalice.blogspot.com/

One thing that struck me while visiting such a cosmopolitan country was the linguistic poverty of the UK. Of course, it is not news that many British people don’t bother to learn another language – everyone speaks English, so why bother? But it’s still genuinely humbling to be restricted to ‘hello’, ‘beer’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when practically everyone you meet speaks both Swiss German and Hochtdeutsch (Standard or ‘German’ German), plus functional French, Italian and English.

Multilingual menu

During my visit, I saw people mixing languages freely, interspersing English words into German sentences and vice versa, or jumping from one language to another at will without throwing their interlocutors.

As far as I can tell from my A-level-French viewpoint, this sort of culture must give advertisers a new, fascinating dimension to their branding decisions: whether to choose the local language or go for English as the lingua franca. Agencies and copywriters must advise their clients on which language to use for which communications, and do the writing in whichever is appropriate.

Presumably, using English shuts out that segment of the population who don’t read it, or at least risks people missing out on some meaning. On a subtler level, I imagine that using English also sends a subtle meta-message about a brand’s values or aspirations.

One step too far

As you might expect, larger and more multinational brands seem more likely to deploy English. For example, Orange’s slogan in Switzerland (and other continental countries) is:

Today changes with Orange

I have to say, that feels a little clunky to me as a native speaker, and I’m far from clear on what it might actually mean. But maybe it’s one of those very high-level brand lines where the literal meaning is less important than the vibe. For Orange, it’s probably enough to drop some cool-sounding English in the vicinity of its already formidable and fully developed brand.

You can see another example in the picture, this time for Nikon:

I am | 1 click ahead

Swiss poster for Nikon

I find this one interesting because you need a fairly advanced understanding of English to get it. You need to know the English idiom ‘one step ahead’, and realise that this is a variation on it. That suggests a certain level of sophistication among the audience – but that sort of targeting might be Nikon’s intention.

More dangerous, in my view, is the demand placed on the audience’s attention. However clever they are, people still might not invest that much thought into a poster they see on the street, particularly if it’s not in their first language. If coolness gets in the way of your meaning, you’ve got problems – whatever language you’re writing in.

Mix and match

I also saw some ads that mixed up English and German. From my limited experience, it seems that English is often chosen for corporate or brand-level taglines, while the local language is more likely to be used for more informational or ‘selling’ content. I’ll leave you to decide what that implies about the relative importance of each type of message.

You can see this in the advert pictured for convenience store chain Aperto. The copy plays it safe by presenting the special offer in German, before switching into English for the tagline:

Fresh · Fast · Friendly

Swiss poster for convenience store chain Aperto

In my view, that line would be plenty good enough for an English-speaking country too – I can well imagine Tesco Express using something like it. The alliteration makes it memorable, the sentiment is appropriately upbeat and the language manages to plant the idea of cheapness in your mind without actually saying so. (This being Switzerland, however, ‘cheap’ is a decidedly relative concept.)

Ways of thinking

All this made me feel a little sad to come back to the UK, with its monochrome lingustic palette. Although English is certainly a rich language in itself, the opportunities for evocation, wordplay and cultural references must be that much deeper when you have more languages to play with.

More profoundly, if words are a way of thinking, then more languages means more ways to examine, discuss or solve a problem. In an industry like advertising, where new ideas are everything, that can only be good. To know other languages is to be more open – linguistically, culturally and intellectually. And that’s how every writer wants to be.

But that’s just ambient irritation. I can deal with that without having to bore you about it in a post. The specific object of my ire, incredibly, is David Attenborough’s recital of ‘What a Wonderful World’, shown after the final episode of the BBC’s Frozen Planet. Watch it below (bearing in mind you’ll never get these two minutes of your life back).

This strange clip seems to have captured the nation’s imagination, with some even calling for it to be released as a Christmas single. Visit it on YouTube and you’ll see people emoting about how beautiful it is, how they were moved to tears by it, etc. Well, each to their own I suppose. My favourite bit is the tagline at the end, which almost (but not quite) redeems the whole venture:

It’s a wonderful world, watch it with us

The comma is a wonderful punctuation mark, don't use it to separate sentences

You can’t use a comma to separate two sentences, but apart from that, nice work. Now, as regards the video preceding the line, I have a number of issues. Stop reading now if you love the clip and don’t want me to ruin the magic.

First off is the fundamental non-viability of the spoken-word cover version. Way out of his element, Attenborough dutifully drags his feet through the lyric, struggling to sound remotely natural while still keeping time with the dinky backing track. He ends up evoking, not the wonders of nature, but William Shatner’s demented cover of ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.

Another stumbling block is the sheer numbing familiarity of the song. It’s been used so often, in so many contexts, that I find it hard to believe anyone can have a ‘clean’, unmediated response to it. It’s every film-maker’s go-to track for slushy, sentimental reverie – a sort of musical shorthand for ‘we’re pushing your emotional buttons, please cry now’. For me (if no one else), the result has been to drain the actual song of whatever expressive impact it might once have had. As a cultural artefact, it’s a pitiful, dried-up husk of a thing.

Moreover, the song’s been crowbarred here into a context where it doesn’t really fit. OK, the first few lines work well, but soon we’re being asked to reconcile the lines about ‘friends shaking hands’ with footage of whales. The remorselessly literal lyric offers precious little metaphorical breathing space.

But my real problem is with, yes, tone of voice. For me, the lyric of ‘What a Wonderful World’ just doesn’t feel like something that a British national treasure like David Attenborough has got any business reciting. (Cue commenters pointing out that it’s his favourite song, probably.)

Attenborough’s popular, but he isn’t populist. He’s not Johnny Morris. The films he’s made, and those he’s narrated, have always been resolutely educational and scientific. He makes things simple, but doesn’t dumb down, and very rarely resorts to anthromorphism. So the choice of this number, with its dopey, Disneyesque chord progression and trite picture-book lyric, just doesn’t ring true for me.

Call me a terrible pseud, but I’d rather have heard him recite an intellectually powerful poem that was more directly about the natural world and our place in it, without ladling ersatz sentiment over everything. Something by Ted Hughes maybe, if there are any that aren’t about death or crows. Or how about these lines from Wordsworth?

…For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth…
From ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’

Now come on, be honest. Wouldn’t that have been better than slop about ‘the rainbow so pretty in the sky’?

Humbug.

But how do you talk to a film?

My first thought was to contact Bryan Singer, the director whose vision brought this taut thriller so vividly to the screen. Unfortunately, he wasn’t available. Apparently he’s a bit busy with Battlestar Galactica.

‘No, you're missing the point. Shut up. I don't want to hear anything you have to say.’

So I moved on to Christopher McQuarrie, whose snappy, streetwise script gave life to the film’s cast of cops and crims. Turns out he’s tied up too, overseeing editing on Mission: Impossible.

Feeling a bit dejected, I moved on to others who, I felt, might be able to share a little of the film’s spirit – stars Gabriel Byrne and Chazz Palminteri, and editor/composer John Ottman. None of them could spare the time.

Finally, I got through to the second-unit assistant caterer. Apparently, she’d placed jalapeños on the wrap-party canapés, among other tasks.

‘Yes? What is it?’ she began, rather testily. It dawned on me that I was speaking to a paid employee associated with the film, rather than the film itself. But since films can’t really talk, that was as close as I was going to get.

‘Well, I’m a big fan of The Usual Suspects,’ I began, hesitantly. ‘And I just wanted to… engage with it somehow. Join the conversation. You know, like on Facebook and that?’

There was a brief pause. ‘Films are one-way, one-to-many cultural communications,’ she said flatly. ‘Interaction adds nothing.’

That wasn’t very social. ‘But I’m the audience!’ I protested. ‘The community. Surely I’m part of the film, in some small way?’

‘Not really,’ she sniffed. ‘It’s true that a film lives in your mind, at least partly. But the more of yourself you pour in, the more you dilute the magic. It’s like scribbling in the margins of a book. You’re just talking to yourself, really. Isn’t that obvious?’

‘No, it isn’t,’ I said sulkily. ‘Can’t you make me a little online game, or let me upload a photo?’

She sighed audibly, as if explaining something to a child. ‘Firstly, your contribution would be embarrassingly gauche and unoriginal. That kind of goes without saying, since you’re a footling amateur with nothing at stake. But the real point is that your input is totally superfluous. A film is already complete in itself. You watch, and that’s it. The end.’

‘Is Kevin Spacey there?’ I asked plaintively, with a slight wobble in my voice.

‘No,’ she replied firmly. ‘And anyway, he’s not Keyser Soze. He’s not even Jack Vincennes. He’s just a feller. Creators are never as cool as their creations.’

I didn’t want to hear that, but I knew she was right. I’d known it ever since I found out Steve Jobs didn’t use deodorant for most of the 1970s.

‘Look, this isn’t really my job, talking to saddoes who want to interact with stuff,’ she said. ‘They just added it on to my job description. So, are we through?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said dejectedly. The line clicked and she was gone.

A couple of days later, I’d pretty much forgotten the whole sorry episode. But when I returned to my desk, something was nagging at me, particularly when I worked on anything to do with social media. I just kept thinking… is a film really any different from a brand?

• This fictional post was inspired by a pub conversation with @paulsaxton.

Click to view/download PDF

‘Committed to’

Saying that you ‘commit’ to something gives the impression of diligence without actually, er, committing you to anything. Commitments sound firm and serious, but without concrete detail they’re just paper promises, making them ideal in situations where you want to give the impression of decisive action without the inconvenience of actually taking it.

‘Committed to’ is a staple of environmental and ethical statements where the firm wants to convey a moral stance without necessarily backing it up with action:

We are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our activities

A close relation is ‘aim to’, which evokes the businesslike setting of targets without actually specifying what those targets are – or explaining what you’ll do to achieve them.

‘Against’

Increasingly, firms feel they have to demonstrate their morality, in line with the perceived values of customers. On packaging, for example, they want to convince people that the product they’re buying is of good origin, and hasn’t been manufactured in an evil or destructive way. Unfortunately, reality sometimes gets in the way, so they have to resort to some slippery writing to muddy the waters. For example:

Against animal testing

Of course you are. Who isn’t? But that’s not the same thing as confirming that you don’t, in fact, do it. This verbless, subjectless sentence fragment cleverly floats the notion of animal testing being bad, and someone being ‘against’ it, without actually saying who that person is, or what real-world action has been taken as a result.

It’s a gamble on the probability that the inattentive customer – who’s probably reading this while they lather up the shampoo – isn’t going to think too deeply about what’s really being said. And it almost certainly works.

‘See if you can’

‘See if you can’ is a way of positioning an eye-catching outcome as inevitable, when in fact it’s all down to the reader to achieve it.

I haven’t been able to find it online, but I’m pretty sure a slogan along these lines was used to promote a ‘healthy’ breakfast cereal (possibly Special K):

See if you can lose 5lb in two months

The ads were carefully designed to foreground the desired outcome while soft-pedalling the obligations on the reader. ‘See if you can’ was set in relatively small type, while ‘Lose 5lbs in two months’ was absolutely colossal. The obvious, cynical aim was to make people think they’d lose that weight just by eating the product – rather than just see whether they could, which is something else entirely.

‘Helps to’

‘Helps to’ is a way to make a relative or partial claim in terms that make it sound absolute or total. For example, here’s a line from the packaging for Vick’s First Defence, a cold medicine:

Helps stop a cold in its tracks

As with the ‘lose weight’ line above, typography plays a part in managing the message. ‘Helps’ is fairly small, while ‘stop’ takes up the whole width of the box.

Because stopping something in its tracks is a metaphor for bringing it to a complete and final stop, that’s the impression we take away from the line. But in fact it’s completely undermined by the ‘helps to’, which only promises that the product will make some undefined, unquantified contribution to stopping a cold. Which, when you think about it, isn’t really much of a promise at all – what else needs to occur in order for the cold to be ‘stopped in its tracks’, and how do I make it happen?

The faux-scientific ‘clinically proven’ is the icing on the cake, giving the line a nice touch of men-in-white-coats authority. I’d be surprised if many OTC drugs reached the market without being clinically tested to validate their claims, so citing this to impress customers is disingenuous at best. It’s rather like Don Draper’s use of ‘it’s toasted’ to promote Lucky Strikes – taking the unavoidable and making it desirable.