English is a magnificent language. It bends. It twists. It tries on different costumes, different hairstyles, different shoes, different ties, different glasses – and yet we always are speaking English.
There are so many different, unique, ear-bending ways to say something. There are so many ways to reach out via the word – be that word be sent to an audience through broadcast channels, over social media, or in print. Each requires a different way of communicating. Yet, for the last decade and a half, I’ve noticed we seem hell-bent on making things as cold and as sterile and as uniform as possible.
This generation of communicators — my generation — is at a point where we do not write with an audience in mind. In my last ten years as a journalist, pitches and press releases by the bucketful have crossed my desk, and increasingly, they’ve all sounded the same. Whether it’s an offer to interview a CEO ahead of quarterly profits being announced, or pitch to work a new health product into a story, or a new study a university wants to promote, I’m seeing the same words over and over and over again. I’m hearing the same things in the PR seminars and classes I’ve been attending over the past 18 months as I transition careers from news to public relations.
When it comes to communicating – be with a mass audience, be it via broadcast news, be pitching a concept to a reporter, or be it talking directly to a consumer via social media, I prefer straightforward talking and writing, weeded of clichés, and tailored to my audience. As a reporter, I switched personalities like something out of a bad psychological thriller — I talked to a politician one way, the guy running the snowplow another way, the nurse on strike another way. I almost always got what I wanted.
In this era of the consumer being constantly bombarded with messages, it’s imperative we learn how to think like the consumer. We need to stop cranking out copy and pitches filled with the same words and phrases, over and over again.
Here is my partial list of terms that should be banned forever:
Facilitate. One does not facilitate something. A person does something. A company uses something. A group arranges something. They do not facilitate.
Making an impact. If a meteor were to fall from the heavens, and slam into a cornfield, it would make an impact. You would see the impact! A giant gouge carved in the earth! If you are releasing a superawesome thingamabob that will rock the worlds of many, it will not make an impact upon anything. It will affect people!
Journey. When I get on a plane at LaGuardia and fly away from New York, I am taking a journey. If your company is not doing that, it not taking a journey. Newsbunny’s Flying Monkeys International is not taking a journey into a future of facilitating sustainable business practices or whatever. No more journeys. The journey is over.
Experts. Please start using this far more sparingly. When everyone is an expert, no one has anything special to say.
Dialogue, and/or Opening a Dialogue. What a terribly sterile way to say…”we are talking!” Have you ever called up a friend and said “I would like to open a dialogue about facilitating a journey into experiencing new garments at the mall?” No? Then don’t do it here.
User-Generated Content. Again, with the sterility. Say what you mean. Do you want consumers to upload videos to your YouTube page? Do you want people to tweet questions at you? Do you want active participation on your Facebook page? What, exactly, do you want? Say that.
Team. It has increasingly become my experience that companies that most often toss around the word team are least likely to put in the effort to ensure its employees feel like a team. The rest of us in the trenches are well aware of this. The only people who like the term ‘team effort’ are in the C-suite. Show me the action behind the word.
Powerful. Anytime a someone tells me something is powerful, I’m pretty sure it is not. Show the power. Don’t just say it’s powerful.
The thesaurus is not an extinct dinosaur. It can make you sound fabulous! Go on, and cliché no more.
