All business is human

On the other side of every communication is a human being. A person with a life, family, friends, fears and aspirations.

So why do brands and organizations still flood their channels with corporate speak, complex messaging, acronyms, legalese, jargon and platitudes? Why do the terms B2B and B2C still exist? Do I stop being a consumer of clear information because I work at a technology company? It’s got to stop. We are losing our audiences.

Plain is powerful

Governments and businesses put a lot of effort into understanding their audiences. That research tells communicators how they need to speak to make meaningful connections with the people they want to influence. Many organizations are adopting plain language rules. The Government of Canada, for example, calls for plain language to be used in all internal and external communications. It’s policy.

Unfortunately, plain language lost out in the name department. Plain is intended to mean clear, simple and authentic—not boring and condescending.

Plain language is not easy to achieve. Writing is hard enough. Most organizations struggle to meet baseline measures of clarity and simplicity. And we’re not talking only about marketing and communications teams. Everyone in an organization writes, and everyone should be expected to do it clearly and respectfully.

How deep does it go?

If your organization swears by plain language but it isn’t changing your voice, it’s tokenism. And people hate that. They hate it with the same loathing reserved for, “We’re all in this together.” You want your audience to trust you? Talk to them in a way that shows you give a damn.

Let’s say you’ve put a plain language policy into place and done the training. How can you be sure it’s working? We recommend plain language audits as a way to assess communications and ensure you’re living up to your policy commitment.

Prove it

Imagine you’re a business insurance provider, and the following is your copy. It’s not so bad, is it? It’s logical. Reads well. Doesn’t make any outrageous claims. But do you believe anyone but your agency would read it—or believe it?

Let’s apply the plain language filters and make some judgment calls. Purple indicates Redundant content. Green is Obvious. Magenta is Immaterial.

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We know there’s nothing small about any business.

Businesspeople are a special breed. They have vision, the passion to embrace entrepreneurship or grow family enterprises, the tireless dedication to make a stand in their market. If you’re in business, we want to be your insurance partner.

Whether your business is big or small, well established or still only an idea, our tailored insurance solutions give you the flexibility and control to protect your business your way. Everything from professional and product liability coverage to business interruption and the latest cyber risk products. Tools to help you stay in business and focussed on landing your next great customer. Because business growth starts with business protection.

We’re Cyan Insurance. Experience, commitment and financial strength that have been trusted by Canadian business for more than a century.

Ready to serve you down the street and across the country.

Added benefit

Notice how the plain language filters also reveal verbosity and overstatement, which helps weed out other longwinded and bombastic content.

Your business is big to us.

Mom-and-pop shop or multinational, your business has distinct insurance needs. Let’s talk about meeting them. Because growing your business starts with protecting it.

Cyan. Down the street and across the country.

We are liberated by constraints imposed by time, money and accessibility standards. These swiftly clarify the parameters of our work.

Designing in the absence of direction—without limitations—is to be rudderless. It is to lack purpose. And design without purpose? Well, it may be art, but it ain’t likely to solve the client’s problem. Rookie designers are often initially frustrated by the constraints of a client brief. They yearn for total creative freedom. But they learn quickly that the more stringent the brief, the more there is to problem solve, which leads to much better outcomes.

Freedom in a straightjacket

The challenge of visual design is to effectively convey information—to ensure a direct and uncluttered path between your messages and the people you need to reach. And that means being unobtrusive, too. The best designs succeed not by calling attention to themselves—not by traditional aesthetic alone—but by clearly positioning the client, product or service. To us, utility is the ultimate aesthetic. It connects our client with the greatest possible percentage of their target audience.

Is your brief answering the right questions?

In the commercial design work we undertake at Stiff, the client brief is the main source of constraint. Each brief answers a variety of questions.

We encourage our clients to include these:

• What is the purpose of the design?
• Who is the audience?
• What are the diversity, inclusion and accessibility considerations?
• What content will be used?
• What design products will be in play?
• What tone is required?
• What style will best uphold the purpose?
• What’s the budget?
• What are the design platforms?
• What’s the review/approval process?
• What is the design’s intended shelf-life?
• How much time do we have?

Is your design excluding potential customers?

Are you sure? Check out the “Just throw strikes” sidenote above. Did you notice that we do not refer to pitchers as males? If you didn’t, you now know just how simple (and transparent) inclusivity can be. We made a conscious content-design decision to be inclusive—to respect the fact that there are people of other gender identities who are also pitchers. Look at this another way: referring only to males would potentially exclude virtually half the audience we are trying to reach with this article. Where is the benefit in that?

Another aspect of constraint: accessibility

For brands targeting a broad consumer audience, design accessibility means being inclusive of the largest possible segment of the market. Some brands don’t realize the value of ensuring their print ads, social media posts and websites are accessible to people living with disabilities. According to Statistics Canada, 22 percent of Canadians identify as having a disability^[1]—a number that is expected to increase in the coming decade.

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^[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-654-x/89-654-x2018002-eng.htm

The need for accessible design is everywhere

Next time you’re approaching a major old building—a courthouse, hotel or library, for example—note how front steps were once an architectural mainstay. The notion of climbing to your destination reinforced it as lofty and important.

Today, the entrances to virtually all buildings are either at ground level or at the end of ramps. Why? To ensure they are accessible to as many people as possible. And what is true in architecture is true in graphic design. Don’t expect your user to climb to you.

Good design serves us all

Consider the OXO Swivel potato peeler, part of the company’s Good Grips line. First introduced in 1990, the product was originally designed for people with arthritis who have difficulty gripping simple kitchen tools. Yet the peeler became a market favourite because it’s easy for everyone to use.^[2]

It’s useful to remember that the abilities of any one of us can be impaired to varying degrees and durations. For example, the only difference between being hard of hearing, having an ear infection or being in a very loud environment is the intensity and duration of the impairment.

Does focusing too heavily on accessibility alienate some users or degrade brands? Not if it’s done well. In fact, it’s worth noting that people in traditionally marginalized groups often express great loyalty to brands that make a genuine effort to be as inclusive as possible.

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^[2]Of note, OXO initially included a product endorsement from the American Arthritis Foundation on the packaging. The endorsement was removed when the company learned it stigmatized those with arthritis and made those without the condition think they weren’t a target market.

The takeaway?

Think differently. Find inspiration in constraint. And remember that accessible design is not some misguided symptom of political correctness. It’s good business—and the right thing to do.

Check out our PDF on Designing for Accessibility which looks at five essential considerations for designing inclusive brands.

Genre is one of the most powerful marketing tools available for reaching niche audiences. Yet many people fail to realize that using genre to promote and sell products is not creative. It’s lazy.

Indolent marketers use genre to make assumptions about the success of a product, brand or content, and about the target audience. When marketers rely on genre, they sacrifice creativity; when brands rely on genre, they risk becoming cliché. They unknowingly alienate prospective audiences while pigeonholing existing ones.

Now more than ever, marketers need to pay attention to the genre-less audience of the digital era. The non-conforming. The consumers that refuse to fit in predefined boxes. Genre limits marketers from putting in the effort to keep creativity alive, to generate fresh ideas and to attract new audiences, especially the younger generation. Millennials and Gen Z not only forego genre categories in entertainment, they apply the same approach to other aspects of their lives.

Old-timey brands and marketers must adapt their products and strategies to appeal to a generation of genre-fluid consumers.

Harness the power of reinvention

In June 2006, Swift made her debut with “Tim McGraw,” a single from her eponymous album. In a matter of weeks, the country song went platinum and ranked in the Billboard top 10.

This release also marked the last time Swift released an album that strictly abides to one specific genre. Over the span of five albums, she switched her musical identity from that of the country girl next door to America’s pop sweetheart. Her reinvention did not come easy. In the Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, she points out that beyond changing her musical style, she also needed to shed the “good girl” narrative that she was known for. Breaking her silence on politically charged topics is one way she presented her new, authentic self to the world. Swift was warned by her label and loved ones that all these changes could jeopardize everything she worked so hard for. It was a gamble she was willing to take.

It paid off. Beyond album sales, Swift was able to pave the way for new artists who want to break away from specific genres and experiment with different sounds.

The power of reinvention and the blurring of genres isn’t limited to the entertainment industry. It’s a common trend in politics and culture. Malcolm X is a prime example of how the ability to recreate our own selves can result in a powerful legacy. He wore many hats in his short lifetime––an entertainer, a petty criminal, an intellectual, a minister, a human rights activist––each identity requiring him to transform himself by any means necessary.

During his Detroit Red phase, he played drums at jazz bars under the stage name Jack Carlton. However, to get his political and religious views across, he had to reassess his musician identity. During his incarceration in the 1950s, he spent time working on his transformation. Malcolm’s willingness to pivot his identity is one of the key factors in his designation as one of the most influential figures in history. As Manning Marble writes in his book, The Reinvention of Malcolm X, “Malcolm’s strength was his ability to reinvent himself.”

As a Black man, his message and experiences with poverty and racial injustices resonated with Black people in the U.S. and in Africa. As a Nation of Islam leader, his views on religion connected him with Muslims across the world. Up until his assassination in 1965, Malcolm, later known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, remained a non-conformist who never stopped challenging the status quo.

Swift and Malcolm X are two strikingly different people from different worlds. Yet they share some commonalities. Both of them made deliberate moves to throw off the shackles of genre to become prominent figures in world culture. Even in the face of adversity, they both dared to reinvent themselves by taking risks. In doing so, they were able to reach levels of creativity, passion and authenticity that made them transcend social, cultural and artistic boundaries, further catapulting them to prominence. While there is no special formula for reinvention, creators, brands and marketers can draw inspiration from the way these famous figures challenged the different systems of classification.

Continually adapt, improve and challenge yourself

Breaking from the confines of genre doesn’t necessarily mean one must fully disregard tradition. It just means that one should be willing to break the rules in order to progress, create something novel and be more inclusive.

The topic of ditching genre is more important than ever today. As the world embraces the Black Lives Matter movement, many companies and marketers are shifting away from the archaic structures that have both intentionally and unintentionally sidelined Black creators. Republic Records is an example. The label recently announced it will remove “Urban” from its music categories, because the company no longer wanted to “adhere to the outdated structures of the past.”

Republic Records executives believe that changing the verbiage will open up more opportunities for artists, especially Black musicians, to experiment with different types of sounds like their white counterparts. This change is also expected to give more marketers, promoters and radio stations the freedom to share works by Black artists outside of the R&B and hip-hop realm.

In marketing and communications, genre fluidity can be applied to how we approach strategy, how we design our teams, and how we adopt and exercise tone and style to our writing.

1. Mix up the skills and experiences of teams to break down silos. Encourage collaboration among people with different personalities to generate a blend of approaches and ideas that lead to success. Creating teams of T-shaped people is one solution.

2. Promote a culture of experimentation and challenging tradition. Make it very clear to employees and clients that your teams aren’t afraid to push the limits.

3. Foster an environment of diversity and inclusion. Give women, people of colour, neurodivergent people and people with disabilities a seat at the table and encourage them to contribute ideas. Diversity and inclusion shouldn’t be limited to just HR practices and policies; it should be extended to the day-to-day culture of the workplace.

When we reduce our thinking to fit within the boundaries of genre, we’re supressing our ability to generate original ideas and solutions. After all, conformity kills creativity. As marketers, we need to create spaces where we can push the limits of our creativity, even if it’s risky business.

It worked for Swift and Malcolm X. It’s working for Netflix, Spotify and Republic Records. It can work for you, too.

At one time or another, we have all struggled to find the right word. English users may struggle more than most.

When someone wants to write in English about how something can be both ‘just’—in the sense of justice—and ‘right’—in that is it correct—they need to do the work to show that they mean both of these things, not simply one or the other. To do that well, writers must be concise, clear and leave no room for confusion. It is a balancing act that can be both delicate and maddening.

The obvious choice is to turn to diction to find the precise words to express this idea. Or one could focus less on word choice and more on syntax—the order in which words are used—or on logic or rhetoric, to display truth or to persuade. We call these tools, and two others, the Machinery of Language—read more here.

Writers using Italian, however, have the word ‘giusto’ in their arsenal—a word that means both ‘just’ and ‘right.’ They can do in six letters what an English user will struggle to do in six words.

That’s just one example of dozens, if not hundreds, of instances where a language other than English has a concise—even beautiful—way to say something complicated in as little as a single word.

So why has a language that lacks this level of detail or nuance become the de facto language for worldwide affairs?

The rise of the English (Language) empire

Over the past century or two—give or take a couple of colonial expansions—English has emerged as the primary language of commerce and diplomacy around the globe. This development comes despite English’s comparative paucity of true native speakers and cultures. It is the native language of just under five percent of the Earth’s total population, yet it is the default language of the United Nations, and of business and entertainment the world over.

It is almost ironic. English has become the lingua franca for the entire planet, and yet the term lingua franca itself is Italian.

In 2010, the United Nations established a series of celebratory ‘days’ for each of its six official languages—one each for Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and English. English’s day is on April 23, the day of the birth and the death of arguably the language’s most famous and important figure: William Shakespeare.

As a company that prides itself on expert use of language—and of English primarily—Stiff notes a day like this with reverence. But we also note it with an eye to explore just how and why English’s dominance has come to pass.

Speaking the language

English is a relatively young language and a tremendously flexible one. It’s also an incredible thief.

According to research, between only 20 percent and 33 percent of modern English words derive from Germanic sources—the original root of Old English and Middle English. The rest are attributed to Latin and French—approximately 30 percent apiece—plus Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Indian languages, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, and more. Another factor is that on a technical level, English is often more simplistic than other languages. For instance, English has largely eliminated grammatical case and gender. It is a language based on analytic constructions—such as word order, and simple subject-verb-object structures—rather than on conjugations or inflections. English also has a streamlined pronoun system compared to others.

For inexperienced speakers, English can even accommodate dropping fundamental elements such as articles and prepositions and still maintain legibility. In other languages, improper conjugation or botched syntax can alter or destroy meaning. In English, a sentence can sound crudely constructed or “wrong,” but a speaker can still be understood. We call English unruly—figuratively and literally. It eschews the kind of rules that constrain flexibility and growth, such as those that govern French. That unruliness likely helps adoption by foreign speakers.

Sharpening your linguistic sword

Just because English can, for some, be simpler to learn, does not mean it is easier to master. We’ve already demonstrated how, despite its potential to break down communication barriers, it sometimes lacks the words to simply and elegantly speak to certain ideas.

This is where the Machinery of Language comes in. Six foundational ideas—diction, grammar, syntax, logic, punctuation and rhetoric—that can be variously applied to analyze, refine or repair every sentence, every idea, that one wishes to communicate.

If an English writer struggles to describe their idea, and is becoming so frustrated that they can’t function or finish what they are doing—fisselig, in German, by the way—they could step back and see which part of the Machinery of Language could help.

Perhaps their logic is unclear. Maybe their rhetoric isn’t strong enough to convince their audience. Applying the Machinery—and improving one’s skill with those tools—is essential in getting the most out of our mischievous mother tongue.

By fine-tuning your skills with the Machinery of Language, you can wield English with the precision and flair of a seasoned expert. You can shine with a nonchalance that hides the degree of difficulty behind your words. You can exude that sort of effortless ease, that … sprezzatura.

Damnit.

My beef is not that brand storytellers can’t tell stories—I’m sure many of them are very good at what they do.

What concerns me is whether or not brand narratives can achieve the qualities audiences expect from stories, which are, at their most impactful, inherently personal and human.

To me, the idea of story and storytelling is sacred.

I value the intimacy of story and the connection they secure between parent and child, for example. But stories are sacred also because they are a constant—one of our species’ foundational communications tools. In truly civilized cultures, storytellers are revered as the ultimate archivists and keepers of tradition. A heavy burden, for sure.

Imagine a world without stories.

We’d have no beginning, middle and end. No fiction or fable. No history. No narratives whatsoever. Then what is the point of all this? Suddenly the very arc of our species is flattened. See? As soon as you try to abolish story, you realize how rooted it is in our culture.

You may be familiar with the work of Joseph Campbell. He was an ethnographer, philosopher and teacher. Two of his books in particular have been extremely influential in the realm of storytelling: The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and The Power of Myth. Famously, Campbell characterized myth as part of what Jung referred to as our collective unconscious. Campbell maintained that the mythic concepts of hero and villain and quest and redemption have been central to various, disparate world cultures since homo erectus decided to do something with his hands besides walk on them.

Hollywood took notice.

In the 1970s, motion picture director George Lucas tapped Campbell’s thinking to craft the mythological foundation for the Star Wars franchise. A bell went off in the heads of studio execs and story editors. Mythology suddenly made sense. What better way to connect with audiences than to tell them the stories they already knew—to use the structures and characterizations that have fired in their synapses since birth.

Most brand stories are pretty mundane.

Let’s face it, they’re clinical. They exist solely to prop up a brand rather than breathe life into it.

Most brand stories lack the conflict and drama we associate with our favourite books and movies. This is unfortunate, as many of the brand narratives we encounter behind the scenes are genuinely intriguing. So what can myth teach us to help ensure a brand story is engaging and memorable? Structure is one thing.

Story structure is threaded through our DNA.

Stories have been built virtually the same way for thousands of years. Our lives are stories. We are born, we struggle to survive, we face conflict and emerge battered (older) but victorious, we die and experience heaven’s glory. This existential link is what makes story such a powerful tool. This is why audiences’ expectations must be met. They know story. They couldn’t tell you what the specific building blocks are, but they will let you know when those blocks are missing.

Today’s audiences are infinitely more sophisticated than they were fifty years ago. They are highly literate in the traditional word sense and the contemporary visual sense. They are comfortable with the shortforms of the digital world and eager to know only who the main character is and what the story is about. For them, structure has been reduced to one word.

Stories are about transformation.

A story is a journey—a journey of change. In every good story, the central characters change by the end, for better or worse, undergoing refinement, growth, improvement. Darth Vader finds salvation in his son. Ebenezer Scrooge sees the light. Severus Snape is redeemed.

Transformation is a fundamental—almost primal—story element. From sea creature to land creature, nomad to city-dweller, child to adult, birth to death. The brand at the beginning of its story must be different than the brand at the end. What trials has it endured? How has it turned adversity to advantage? What benefit can it give you that it couldn’t before? If we don’t get a picture of how a brand was different in the beginning, the audience cannot appreciate the value of its transformation.

Breathing life into a brand means it has to be authentic.

Here’s another stumbling block. Authenticity. It’s become the Holy Grail of brand identity. The goal is to be genuine. Hmm. Genuine people are comfortable being themselves. Most brands are not.

Clients don’t necessarily expect their brands to be perfect, but most are unwilling to accept enough of the weight of imperfection to be truly authentic. They are understandably afraid of revealing enough about themselves and their troubles to ensure their stories live up to their potential impact. For all the bluster about wanting and needing to be humanized—to be seen as thinking, feeling, acting entities—most brands simply can’t permit themselves the vulnerability that it takes to be genuine. They collapse under the weight of what it means to be human.

Is it really necessary to anthropomorphize a brand? Necessary? No. Powerful? Yes. After all, most brands represent people—those who own, operate, work for or depend on the brand. The brands with the most audience impact are the ones that are willing to show themselves, warts and all. These are the brands that let us in. The brands that are as fallible as their people—prone to mistakes but quick to apologize and make amends, proud yet able to laugh at themselves, somewhat self-centred but smart enough to cheer for others.

The final mythology takeaway relates to the cast of a brand story.

For a brand story to truly resonate as authentic with audiences, it must present the mythic cast we humans recognize and trust. Traditionally, the brand was the hero—the client, their products and services.^[1] This notion of brand heroism is nothing new. For years, marketers have presented hero brands on quests to achieve business objectives: increase sales and shareholder value, boost recruitment, solve world peace, etc. At Stiff, we consider the hero to have completed its quest when it has found within itself and finally upholds the four key qualities of character: intelligence, conviction, empathy and humility.

What is often most intriguing for audiences is witnessing the brand’s struggle to develop and balance those seminal character traits. This is the struggle each of us lives, and the true evidence of humanity in a brand. The struggle for humans is to know when it is appropriate to show conviction or be intelligent, empathetic or humble. Similarly, brands endeavour daily to express their character in response to the world they inhabit. Everyone knows it’s not easy. The effort, and even the failure, gives brands human dimensions.

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^[1] I believe that the trend is to cast customers as the new heroes, the people who rely on brands for help on the journey to face demons, overcome obstacles, reap the rewards and return home successfully. Today’s brand is often the mentor—the Merlins, Obi-Wan Kenobis and Dumbledores who help guide heroes through thick and thin.

Never to lose your sense of humour.

My personal brand-story cast favourites are the tricksters—Puck in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream; Rafiki, the mandrill shaman in Lion King; and the inimitable Yoda from Star Wars.

Think of them as the court jesters, yet their roles go way beyond comic effect. They’re disruptive in a positive way, to keep the hero from getting too full of itself. And isn’t that always a danger with brands.

Who plays the trickster in a brand story? Most often, it falls to the conscience of the brand, which is self-policing to a certain extent. But employees, customers and fans are more than just extras in a brand story. They too have a role in steering the brand to its ultimate quest, a responsibility to speak up when the brand misspeaks, point the way when it missteps. In mythic tales and brand stories alike, the tricksters remind us of the ultimate impermanence of all things.

There’s that change we’ve been talking about.

I suppose my discomfort with branding’s appropriation of story has something to do with my own duplicity. I worry about story integrity and yet I exploit it my own company’s brand work. I’m not totally comfortable with corporatization but depend on it. It could be that I fear brand stories are bound to become entangled in the myths of our times. It may be hard to argue they have not succeeded already.

Here’s what we think:

Don’t play the algorithm game to the detriment of your end user.

If taken in isolation, no single SEO best practice (used ethically or not) will get you the rankings, traffic or response you desire. But we do believe there’s a foundational element that will not fail you or your target audience. It’s called intelligent content.

But first, some context

In brief, SEO is the collective efforts made by a company to have its website appear in the top results of search engine rankings. There are multiple approaches to SEO. On-site (or on-page) focuses on the content of the web page. Off-site builds credibility for your website through other sites and people. Think of it as someone with authority citing your page.

Some best practices of on-site SEO include thoughtful and well-written copy, the use of relevant keywords, and good user experience. Google says that its systems are designed to “determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” The great hope is that the combination of these practices—as well as others not mentioned, including some technical ones—will land a company’s website in the coveted top five results (the spots that aren’t paid for).

That sounds simple enough. But while we can control the quality of our own website, we can’t do anything about the algorithms. Or can we?

HAL 9000 says…

The best content is intelligent content. Talk human. Stop trying to outthink the machines. Algorithms may be aiding a user’s search, but that user is still a human looking for a human response.

We at Stiff have been defining and refining what intelligent content is for over 30 years. And while the response depends on the client, audience and end product, a few fundamentals never change:

Intelligent content responds to a need. We spend a lot of time getting to know our clients and what they offer. Equally as important, we get to know our clients’ audiences and what they need. A lot of time and research goes into exploring the gap, if there is one, between client and customer expectations. The content we produce in collaboration with our clients bridges the gap and communicates value.

Intelligent content keeps things simple. Don’t overcomplicate the matter. If you want a user to stick around, speak to them in terms they’ll understand. Being the smartest person in the room isn’t a game of who can speak the most jargon, use the biggest words or craft the longest sentences. The smartest person in the room prioritizes the audience.

And remember, you don’t have to explain everything all at once. Your webpages shouldn’t be white papers, research reports or a bucket list of everything you wished your audience knew about you. They should be targeted, tantalizing and provide enough relevant information to keep your user clicking.

Intelligent content is elegant. There is a difference between writing intelligibly and writing elegantly. Elegant writing is free of errors, employs tools of persuasion and incorporates the good habits of writers. It’s invisible to readers who instead only notice the messages, intentions and convictions being conveyed.

Intelligent writing is for everyone

Here’s an exercise from the Machinery of Language we call concision. It will get you thinking about one of the principles of intelligent content: keeping things simple.

After writing down everything relevant that you believe your audience needs to know, put your words through the redundant, obvious and immaterial filters.

1. Delete the redundant. Get rid of repeated ideas, which can be facts needlessly explored from different angles, restated for emphasis or accidentally duplicated.

2. Delete the obvious. If facts are common knowledge, and if arguments can be easily deduced by the reader, remove them.

3. Delete the immaterial. Even relevant research can be immaterial. Spot tangents in your ideas and unneeded padding in your individual sentences.