Can I have a small word?

I've been meaning to write this post for months. In fact, ever since I first read about it last August. And once again, I have The Writer to thank, a specialist writing agency in London.

Here's what they had to say.

Long words make you sound thick. Fact.

We’re always banging on in workshops about picking simple words whenever you can. Occasionally, though, someone will pipe up, ‘But I like using long words. They make me look clever, don’t they?’ No, they don’t. And you don’t just have to take our word for it. It’s been scientifically proven – by psychologist Daniel M Oppenheimer, of Princeton University, no less.

A couple of years ago Oppenheimer designed several experiments to test how people reacted to various styles of writing – some straightforward, some complicated. He was particularly interested in trying to find out which writers sounded the cleverest.

And guess what? The writers of clear and simple words were judged as smart, whereas those who used needlessly long words came across as less intelligent and less confident.

His conclusion is emphatic: ‘Write clearly and simply if you can, and you’ll be more likely to be thought of as intelligent.’

If you fancy reading the study yourself, it’s here. It’s rather splendidly called Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.

A brilliant insight, if you ask me. And I'd expect nothing less than that from The Writer, who seem to take as much time over the long words as they do the fine details.

To show exactly what I mean, here's the email signature from their newsletter (double-click on it to see a larger version).

So many people struggle to describe what makes their business or brand different, but here it is, laid out for all to read in something as basic as an email signature.

No multi-million dollar advertising campaign, exhaustive packaging redesign, or public relations crusade required.

Just a few small words say it all.

Hello, is there anybody there?

A little over a fortnight ago, I had a very curious phone call.

It was the Managing Director of a packaging agency calling for a quick hello and my email address so he could invite me for a coffee. Nothing too unusual about that, although I did feel a little uncomfortable as I've never really met this person for more than 60 seconds or so – and even that was more than 5 years ago.

Nonetheless, I quickly drew up a list of possible reasons for why he'd want to meet.

1. He wants to hire me.

2. He wants me to hire him.

3. He wants to see how much competitive information he can get out of me about our own agency's plans.

4. He's read my blog and wants me to ghostwrite his autobiography.

But the sad thing is that we'll never know, because he never did send me that email invite afterall.

Sending customers into a spin

Customers all over Australia have been sent into a bit of a spin this week – in pretty much every sense of the word.

It was Westpac who launched the downward spiral with an interest rate rise almost double that of the Reserve Bank, but things then plummeted to new lows with an animation emailed to customers that was a journalist's wet dream in the otherwise quiet pre-Christmas season.

Twitter was also abuzz, with my favourite being @bigriveroz who wrote: "hey westpac, last time i checked, the local cafe selling banana smoothies didn't make $3.4b while in a cosy cartel protected by the govt".

And it didn't end there. CEO Gail Kelly hit the press the next day to spruik the importance of customer service and the bank's commitment to relationships and reliability. But it was sheer folly for Westpac to try to promote the positive side of the bank sharing their problems with customers, especially as most of the positives seem to have taken the shape of profits sprinkled with the odd bonus. In the same week, reports from the Fairfax stables were suggesting an annual $2.6m cash bonus for Kelly's efforts alone. It's often said that money makes the world go round, but by now the insensitivity was making most people a little dizzy.

However, insensitivity seems to be a popular character trait for most customer service departments around Australia. In my case, it was Foxtel, the 900-pound gorilla of subscription TV, trying to cosy up to me with some sweet talk this week.

Let me give you the background. After months of frustration, I'd finally decided to send a short email to Foxtel to complain about a problem with my service. To be perfectly honest, it was more of a quibble than a problem. However, Foxtel's holier-than-thou advertising paints a vivid portrait of suburban delight, which only serves to grate on me even more when things go wrong.

The return call from customer services started well – the female voice at the other end of the phone seemed helpful and happy to talk.

However, when it quickly became obvious that the best she could do was a paltry "Yes, it's annoying for me too!", I started to wonder whether the point of her call was to sympathise with me, but not actually do anything.

I responded with a polite pitch for service not sympathy, but she immediately hit me out of the park with another gem: "If I help you, I have to help 1.7 million people".

And when I touched a couple of light volleys over the net to see if she would even acknowledge some level of responsibility, she gamely responded with a barrage of cross-court forehands that offered tips but no fix, and I found myself pinned at the back of the court, waving my racket in vain as the ball quite literally spun out of control.

Taking pity on me for a fleeting moment, she did offer a free copy of the Foxtel magazine. However, when I suggested that Foxtel might want to consider making this a monthly occurrence, she threw her racket to the ground in frustration, telling me that she simply didn't have the time to be able to make that happen.

I finally teed up another ball, only for her to shout at the top of my backswing that "I could downgrade my subscription if I wanted". I looked up for a split second in sheer astonishment – how could getting even less possibly be a helpful solution? Needless to say, I completely missed the ball, and my humiliation at the hands of Foxtel's customer service was complete.

I'm not quite certain at what point the phone call became more about Foxtel than me, but it reminded me that businesses like Foxtel and the banks appear to be more about profit than people. I'm all for success in commerce, but surely customers should be the linchpin of that success, rather than have it come at their cost.

I still don't know when Foxtel plan to fix my little quibble.

But maybe that's because there are obviously much bigger problems facing their customers which they need to fix first.

Logos, literally

Logos look great, but they rarely tell the whole story. Often they don't quite know what they really want to say, or they can't find the words to say it. And this is a missed opportunity on a massive scale, given that language lives within each of us. However, all too often, its voice lies smothered under a dull blanket of senselessness – its lips are moving, but we feel little connection to the words and what they really mean.

Decades of being taught at school to end letters "Yours sincerely" have only succeeded in forging generations of insincerity, albeit delivered in the most polite manner. Letter writing is now, for better or for worse, a lost art, replaced by letter writing 2.0. Politeness has now been replaced with the blunt force of the email and its brutal attack on nuance and tone. And we are left in a world where people no longer understand the difference between information and conversation, fact and insight, idiom and idiot.

Thousands of years ago, language evolved to become the intelligent aspect of life that set us apart from other living things. And storytelling evolved to provide the means by which knowledge was passed from one generation to the next. The group dynamic to storytelling was incredibly important as this passage of knowledge provided a vital social bond. I can only imagine what the elders would make of the relative hubris of iPods and earphones, the modern day equivalent of learning a new language from cassette tapes, a poor (and very isolating) cousin to the more rewarding act of actually visiting the country in question to immerse yourself in the people and the culture.

I remember my first son being incredibly frustrated around the age of 18 months as he struggled to find the words to express himself. Now that he can express his thoughts and ideas and emotions, he is much happier. Not only for the act of self-expression but also the experience of sharing with those around him. His words connect himself to his world, he says what he sees and he sees what he says. His language and his life are inextricably interwoven.

All of which brings me to my point.

Language is an incredibly powerful device (to use the modern day vernacular). It has the unique ability to pinpoint your exact meaning, thought or emotion in a way that is simply not possible without the power of speech. It brings us together as the uniting force for sharing stories, knowledge and experience. And it gives us the opportunity to reach out beyond ourselves and touch the world around us.

My point is that a logo is not a brand. A brand can tell a story. A logo can barely spell.