Welcome to the wonderful world of behavioural placement, where actions speak louder than words. Product placement has been in vogue in various incarnations and degrees of crassness for aeons now but its kid brother is really still in its infancy. The phrase behavioural placement has been coined by US channel NBC Universal, which is the first of the major networks there to admit openly using it to attract marketing money from companies who want to be associated with right-on TV shows.

The idea is that a fast-food giant, for example, may just want to associate itself with a stick-thin actor who happens to like the odd burger or three. The message is “burgers are ok in moderation” in a world worried about the seemingly inexorable rise in obesity. And by the way, we have also added salads and other healthier options to our menu options.

And in case you haven’t realised green is the new black, doing your bit to help save the planet is considered the best corporate message with which to be associated. Even big bad oil companies whose main income derives from er, oil, want consumers to know they’re leading the recyclables charge when it comes to saving the world’s scarce resources.

Mind you, the oil companies have a lot of hard yards to catch up when it comes to overhauling their image. Those of you who remember the long-running TV series Dallas will recall the first thing JR Ewing did when he got home to the plush hacienda after a hard day at the office was break open the decanter. Back in the day the message was clear: liquid black gold meant a life of good booze, fast cars and even faster women. This is probably not the kind of message any big business would now be comfortable with – better the lovely Kathryn.

The difference with behavioural placement compared with product placement is its relative subtlety. The whole idea is that it should be practically subliminal – nobody likes being preached at, particularly when they are sitting down to enjoy their favourite shows.

“People don’t want to be hit over the head with it,” said NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker. “Putting it in programming is what makes it resonate with viewers.”

But is behavioural placement really that new or merely an extension of techniques that pre-date Mad Men? After all, before it was legislated out of existence, actors had been swanning around for decades with cigarettes hanging from the corner of their mouths. The viewer couldn’t see the brand in most cases but that hardly mattered – the tobacco barons can only have been all too delighted with role models who portrayed their products in such a positive light.

Will it catch on here? I don’t believe so.

The worry for marketing departments in Ireland will be that the actual message might be so subtle it will soar over the heads of the vast majority of the intended audience. Short of sporting Toyota livery on her car, an ESB logo at the Juice Point and letting viewers know her coffee is Fair Trade, her cup is made by Royal Doulton and her solar panels are courtesy of Kingspan, viewers may simply not notice the feel-good branding effort. This may make the advertisers feel better but would it increase sales?

When it comes to using behavioural placement in Ireland, I wouldn’t bet on any level of enthusiasm from marketing executives who now operate in a world where measurability is increasingly key. Also, marketing in Ireland is hardly known for its subtlety: given a choice between crude and likely effective or subtle and here’s hoping, the former would win out ever time.   

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that at least half the audience will look no further than Kathryn’s wholesome charm and disregard the rest – there would be a real danger the only outcome would be zero emissions from viewers’ pockets.

(originally appeared as Strong Language column, Irish Marketing Journal)

Margaret E. Ward is a journalist and managing director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists. www.clearink.ie

Miley Cyrus’ (of Hannah Montana fame) kid sister and her parents allegedly signalled clear clothing line intent at a Halloween party last year when Noah appeared decked out in a black lace-up mini dress with matching PVC knee-high boots. Some heavy make-up and bright red lipstick complemented the outfit, leading to some commentators to coin the word ‘prostitot’ to describe her look. Remember, the kid is nine-years-old.

Far from being lauded as an entrepreneurial prodigy, Noah and her parents have become the latest lightning rods for those who blame marketing for the premature sexualisation of children, particularly young girls.

It would be all too easy to dismiss these pre-pubescent beauty queens as some sort of irrelevant Americana freak shows but that would belittle the considerable influence celebrities (manufactured or otherwise) have in marketing products. Time magazine last year named big sis Miley Cyrus among its 100 most influential people on the planet.

Targeting the tween influencers
Tweens have traditionally been classified as pre-teens from eight years up. These young ones have left Dora the Explorer behind and are starting to identify more with, gulp, Lindsay Lohan. No longer small children, tweens are starting to develop their own sense of identity and there is a lot of money to be made by tapping into their search for identity.

Children – particularly young girls – as young as six now seem to be fair game for marketing techniques focused on beauty, sexuality, relationships, and consumerism. Unlike many of their parents, tweens have never had to learn about computers and the Internet has always been here. Social networking is a natural part of their lives and a popular way for advertisers to reach them.

When it comes to viral marketing, some of the techniques employed by marketing experts to target tweens are nothing short of insidious. A Los Angeles firm GIA – short for Girls Intelligence Agency (www.girlgames.com) has registered up to 50,000 eight-year-old “secret agents” to influence their friends to buy certain products, such as mobile phones, clothes and beauty products. The girls who receive the products from GIA client companies are chosen for their persuasive personalities – alpha females or tween queens – whom their friends will want to be like.

“Her peers trust her opinion … We have to approve them. You know, important strategic business decisions are being made off of this eight-year-old and her friends, so we have to make sure she’s the right one,” said GIA CEO Laura Groppe, who estimates the global tween market is worth $335 billion.

The whole idea, Groppe says, is “seeding the market with these girls and their close crew of friends, and getting that information (about their preferences) back to the client and, at the same time, these girls are feeling it’s a privilege … to share this among their peers.”

This is a long way from a product endorsement by girl next door Hannah Montana, replete with baggy jeans and checked shirts.

Parent power vs. pester power
Marketing to tweens is a minefield and some executives seem hell-bent on self-destruction by ignoring the salient point that parent power will always triumph over pester power.

Wholesome Hannah is one thing, slutty Noah quite another. Regardless of who tweens want to emulate, parents of this age group will still have the final say when it comes to purchase. It is highly unlikely that little would-be Noahs’ will be strutting their stuff across Ireland. Even if they could afford the gear, tweens, unlike their elder teen siblings, cannot change in the car on the way to the party.

Parental concern for their children’s welfare will win every time. Marketing to tweens means keeping parents onside. Even Miley Cyrus is having trouble developing her post-Hannah career.

Look at the hordes of mostly early teen and tween girls who dragged their mothers to the sold-out Miley Cyrus concerts at the 02 last year.  Miley traded on her Hannah Montana persona to sell tickets but served up a raunchy set that had jaws dropping and media phone lines hopping as irate mothers vented their anger at the inappropriate nature of the performance.

As Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus may have made the Time magazine list but it is the nature of Disney’s Hannah Montana character that is influential, not Miley herself.

Marketers should remember that tweens don’t hold the purse-strings. If they want to tap a lucrative tween audience, they will have to keep responsible adults happy too.

Margaret E. Ward is a journalist and managing director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists. Her daughter is a tween.
www.clearink.ie

But this is exactly the kind of humorous initiative we should be welcoming. In fact, the more of its ilk we foster, the better chance our economy will recover and we and our children will be able to earn a living in Ireland. The cognoscenti may hate it but we should embrace it.

Living up to the promises
Now that the ashes of the Celtic Tiger lie strewn beneath empty housing developments across the land, it’s time we examined every bit of the €155m marketing budget we as taxpayers have made available to Tourism Ireland this year and make sure we do our part to live up to the billing.

Considerable wads of dosh were spent ‘greening’ The London Eye, The Empire State Building and other iconic landmarks for St Patrick’s Day but what exactly is the image of Ireland most likely to attract overseas visitors? Personally, give me a theme park over a technology park any day.

I would love to visit a country replete with blue-eyed, dark-haired men with mischievous twinkles in their eyes, comely maidens dancing at the crossroads, freckle-faced children with mops of red hair and auld wans sinking foaming pints of the black stuff as they play traditional music and sing of days gone by.

In fact, I wouldn’t mind living there either! A bit of paddywhackery wouldn’t do us any harm – imagine an Ireland minus drugs (other than alcohol and tobacco of course), street crime, daily gang shootings and filthy cities and beaches? But I digress.

Greening of the economy
I am not getting all maudlin about the so-called good old days with pigs in the parlour but if we want to make sure mass emigration remains firmly rooted in the past, attracting tourists here is fundamental. Tourism was worth an estimated €5.2 billion to the economy last year, despite a 17% fall on the 2008 figure. That translates to a lot of jobs.

That’s why it is absolutely crucial we get this country right as a product – we can’t afford to get it wrong. I challenge those who rise their eyes to heaven when they read about the National Leprechaun Museum to think again. So what if Darby O’Gill and the Little People and Finian’s Rainbow are a lot of tosh – they sell Ireland just as apple pie, white picket fences and Sex in the City sell America. And when many Americans visit here they find a little of what the heritage they are seeking in the fairy forts dotted around the country, in the Celtic crosses, in the folklore and in the friendliness they encounter from time to time. It’s just nostalgia for a simpler time.

Ireland is an original place, known around the world for its people. So, get those tourists in here – even if they only see a glimmer of what they are looking for we can sort it out afterwards. We won’t do it by trying to sell something that everyone else has. The prospect of the magical and mystical has sustained generations of tourists – it’s time to park the cultural cringe in favour of boosting the numbers.

A wink and a nod
Despite perceptions to the contrary, Americans in particular are not the naive creatures many of us believe them to be. Really…they don’t actually believe that they will encounter leprechauns when they visit Ireland. They do believe though they will experience a unique brand of history and culture complemented by friendliness, gorgeous scenery and all the mod cons. They expect to have a good time – after all, they are paying top dollar for it.

The problem is, of course, that the tourist is about as likely to find a pot of gold as he is to find the kind of country promoted by Tourism Ireland. At best we are currently pushing a mirage and it’s time we sorted it out – and quickly.

Overpriced restaurants, poor service, litter, ribbon development, ubiquitous begging and lack of public transport are all part of the reality of visiting modern Ireland. Marketing will always put the best foot forward when it comes to selling a product but it cannot operate in a vacuum. 

Cyclists, for example, attracted here by Tourism Ireland’s push to encourage activity holidays will certainly be very active trying to stay upright on crumbling roads replete with speeding motorists seemingly intent on making sure they gain a first-hand Irish experience with the old country. Irish drivers seem to regard those on two wheels as fair game and when I see cyclists abroad towing their kids behind in trailers I ask myself ‘would I feel safe doing the same at home?’ The answer is of course: not on my children’s lives!

We have to sort it out – marrying the mythological with the present shouldn’t be so hard.  Personally, I hope the National Leprechaun Museum applies for a pub licence with a bar exemption for next year – I would look forward to bringing visitors there on Good Friday for a great night’s craic.

“Do you have an iPhone?” and “Have you seen this cool new app?” are phrases that have the relentless pester power of the childhood mantra “Are we there yet?” That kind of ongoing consumer validation is a marketer’s dream, but it comes at a price. A product that has as much power for a love-in, also has that same opportunity to become a target of downright hatred.

Many iPhone users are positively evangelical in their praise of the phone. Haven’t you heard through the grapevine and news reports that this brand of mobile phone can save your life, help when you’re lost, make you laugh and communicate all of life’s most important events?

When a happy slappy iPhone user takes out their iPhone to show their latest app I roll my eyes, sigh and watch the parental glee in their eyes. I feel like screaming but I’m also tempted to go buy one because apparently, iPhone-a-phobes like me are really bad people.

Saving lives one app at a time
American filmmaker Dan Woolley claims that an iPhone medical app saved his life after the Haitian earthquake disaster. He was in the country shooting a documentary about Haitian poverty. When the quake struck, he was buried in rubble. Luckily, the iPhone first-aid app he’d downloaded showed him how to make a tourniquet for this leg and stop the bleeding from his head. It also led him to a safe place and allowed rescuers find him.

For some, it’s love at first sight. There’s a guy on twitter who uses the @iphone moniker and says he’s just “a dude with an iPhone who likes stuff from Apple”. What have they put into this phone that makes people become slaves to its charms?

Some people can’t stand touchscreen functionality. My non-touchscreen business phone and I are really quite happy together. It’s easy to use for phone calls, email and internet access. It doesn’t demand that I caress its screen or zoom in to view photos of other people’s babies. I never use the music or camera functions and I’m quite happy with my uncomplicated relationship.

But now that iPhone app save lives my stance is a bit like despising Lassie and Florence Nightingale. In word of mouth marketing though there’s always a place for the haters and, on the flipside, you can read Twitter postings from @ihateiphone.

This seminal phone from Apple has also been targeted for satire. American comedy site landlinetv.com has a spoof ad claiming Google released a new f*** you iPhone app that drives iPhone users crazy.

No matter where you fall in this debate, the recently-released Vitrue Social Media Index 2009, the iPhone was the most talked-about brand on the social web last year.

The internet has revolutionised word of mouth. Not only can brands benefit from positive buzz online – Daft.ie became one of the most visited sites in Ireland despite spending almost nothing on advertising and marketing – but they can also produce viral media, such as videos or Flash games, that is specifically designed to get people talking on email, Facebook, Twitter and so on.

But it can take a brave brand to push word-of-mouth marketing. Viral campaigns and customer-generated reviews can work wonders for a brand, but they’re risky. Recent research by information management firm Convergys found that a negative review or comment on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube can lose companies as many as 30 other customers.

And that could be an under-estimate. When Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Bruno opened in July 2009, it made $14.2m on its first night, but ticket sales fell drastically the following day, leaving overall sales for its first weekend as much as $20m down on expectations. What happened? Negative word of mouth. Time magazine said the following week, “Bruno could be the first movie defeated by the Twitter effect”.

Be credible, not clumsy
So you want to use social media to generate word-of-mouth marketing? Use social media first. Understand it. Do your research. It’s not enough to jump in, pushing a company’s product or services. That’s just annoying and intrusive to other users.

You have to be properly involved, discussing relevant issues, making special offers and helping customers. The tone must also be right. It must be honest and credible, not patronising or “sales-y”.

Notoriously, Habitat got Twitter very wrong. It began to tweet last year, but instead of using relevant hashtags (words preceded by a ‘#’ to help users track topics on Twitter) such as #furnituresale or #homefurnishings , it used popular hashtags, such as #iranelection and #iphone. Twitter users were outraged and much negative press followed, leaving the company to apologise profusely and reassess its social media use.

Using social media is a high-risk strategy. If you get it wrong, the online world can quickly turn on your brand, heaping scorn upon it and ripping it to shreds. Almost worse, it might just ignore you.

Success comes from engagement
You can encourage it and facilitate positive word of mouth. Give customers something good to talk about , listen to what they have to say and engage with them. In the US, blue-chip companies like Ford and Coca-Cola have teams that monitor what is being said about them online and, crucially, respond personally to that feedback. As Andy Sernowitz, recognised as the leading American word-of-mouth guru , says:  “People are already talking. Your only option is to join the conversation.”

Haiti survivor praises iPhone app:
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/haiti-survivor-iphone/

“Google” releases new f u iPhone app: http://landlinetv.com/?p=189

 Today, family-sized and snack-size packaging and health benefit claims are the cornerstones of international food marketing. Harmless, right? Well, maybe not.  A growing body of international research says that food marketing to kids may actually contribute to obesity and illness.

Expanding waistlines
It used to be fun to laugh at the tubby Americans and their kids who visited these shore on their vacations but now our waistlines – and packaging sizes – are catching up with theirs.

Why? In the last 30 years we’ve morphed from a nation raised on the limited food we (or our neighbours) grew ourselves  – vegetables, milk, eggs, meats – to convenience food reliant, supermarket-loving consumers.

Sugary treats are now a birthright for many children and their size is growing. Recently, new “family-sized” bigger packs of M&Ms, Revels and Malteasers were launched here.

It’s no surprise that one out of every five Irish kids is overweight or obese. If those 20% of kids maintain their current eating and low activity patterns they’re possibly heading for a fat adulthood, a good chance at type two diabetes and lifelong behavioural problems.

Big business
Food marketing to children and youth is big business. International spending estimates range from $1.2 to $2 billion a year. In 2007, Kellogg’s spent a staggering $32.8 million on marketing Cheezits, a mini cheese cracker, according to the author of Food Politics, Professor of Nutrition and Food Policy at New York University, Marion Nestle.

In Ireland, around €130 million is spent on food and drink advertising. The vast majority of these products – 88 percent – are high in fat, sugar, salt, or all of the above. Obviously, food producers are not spending their cash on marketing fruit and vegetables but that may be changing as more ethical marketing practices are being forced upon them.

Health claims
Consumers are confused by nutritional labelling but strongly influenced by health claims. In 2004, sales of probiotic yoghurts and drinks alone were worth about €46 million in the Republic. Figures have risen steadily since then.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has doubts about some foods claims and is now clamping down on unproven health benefit claims by marketers. The body is targeting nutritionals, or “better for you products” whose supposed benefits are determined by the company itself and not independent researchers. For example, Sugar Puffs are promoted as a source of fibre, vitamins and iron but contain 35% sugar.

The EFSA recently studied almost 50 of the most common nutritionals – from cranberry juice and black tea to fish oil supplements and probiotic drinks – and rejected most of the claimed health benefits. For example, fish oil supplements were not found to improve brain growth and probiotic yogurt drinks did not help gut health.

Parents want to do right by their kids and many look for health claims on packaging – rather than the nutritional labels – before placing it in the trolley.  Even the most health conscious parent may be disappointed to find what’s really in their child’s lunchbox. SafeFood Ireland research found that smoothies are worth only one fruit a day, not the two claimed by the company.  Cheese Strings, clearly marketed at kids, have 24g of fat per 100g and far more salt than recommended for children. Bord Bia’s nutrition literature does not recommend the sweetened fruit drinks popular with kids but milk or water.

Ethical marketing
Do we have a responsibility to children when we market to them? Currently, food marketing to children relies on three basic rules – get them young, rely on pester power and differentiate kids’ food from adult food says Professor Marion Nestle. 

The Institute of Medicine (IOM), in the US, says children are targeted too young and they believe its “worth considering restrictions or bans on the use of cartoon characters, celebrity endorsements, health claims on food packages, stealth marketing, and marketing in schools, along with federal actions that promote media literacy, better school meals, and consumption of fruits and vegetables.”

 That message seems unlikely to filter through here any time soon. Over one-fifth of the population in Ireland is under 14 and their buying power is significant.  According to Shelflife, the retail industry website: “A 2008 report by Mintel states that the increasing influence these children and teenagers have over home mealtimes makes them a demographic worth pursuing. At the same time, due to the alarming increase in obesity among young people in recent years, pressures from the government and other groups has made many food and snack manufacturers wary of how they market their products. In spite of this, new products aimed at teens and kids abound in the snack and food aisles, and all evidence shows that this will continue to be the case.”

 Margaret E. Ward is a journalist and managing director, Clear Ink.

Creators take control

It was 1986; more than halfway through the decade that taste forgot. Young Janet Jackson was swivelling her hips, slapping her knees and crooning about control.

“This is a story about control. My control. Control of what I say and control of what I do and this time I’m gonna do it my way…” she wrote.

Control was Jackson’s coming of age: the first album on which she obtained co-writing credits and, in turn, intellectual property rights over both the songs and their performance.  

Little did she know that her catchy, danceable sentiments would become the central question for artists, musicians, writers and other content providers more than 20 years later.

Creative chains

Before the 1990s, artists were largely reliant on marketing, sales and production teams to get their recorded music out to the public. The creative chain connecting artists to their fans linked from the agent and publisher to the distributor and retailer with many minor links in between. Along the way, everyone took a cut of the profits.

Artists were generally happy to spend their time creating new content rather than focusing on the business of selling it.

Fast forward a few years and digital technologies, especially the Internet, have changed the way artists create, distribute and promote their work.

In 2003, the University of Southern California dedicated an entire conference to the subject called Artists, technology and the ownership of creative content, creative control in the digital age.

The introductory conference material said: “Creators in virtually all fields are finding that new digital technologies provide new tools for creativity as well as new ways to sell their works directly to the audience, bypassing intermediaries. This is fuelling new struggles between creators and major media corporations over the control of creative expression – and the economic rewards and market power that such control entails.”

The money and the power

The recent Pirate Bay case and Eircom’s new role as copyright policeman show just how desperate the big media companies have become in trying to control, and make money from, their artists’ content copyright.
Although their actions make financial sense, they reflect a complete lack of understanding of how the new digital information world operates.

Colin Hetherington from Zoo Digital in Dublin believes that those who understand that the new technologies are about sharing content, not controlling it, are the ones who will prosper. “The people who are embracing the technologies, using them on a day to day basis and integrating it into their communications that are smart enough to understand the channel and extract value from it.”

British comedy troupe Monty Python recently posted much of their best video content on YouTube – for free. The video also included an ad for their DVDs on Amazon.com. The results? A 23,000% increase in their online sales through Amazon.

The bands Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails also discovered that giving some content away for free actually increases audience and sales numbers. Two years ago, Radiohead allowed people to decide how much they wanted to pay – from £0 to £5 – for the new album online. Nine Inch Nails also put the first volume of their album Ghosts up online under a creative commons license. If listeners wanted the whole 36 track multi-volume album they were invited to go to the band’s official site to download it for $5.

Image management

Hetherington thinks the new technologies are a double-edged sword for artists. “On the one hand, it provides them with a distribution channel for their work to a greater audience and on the other hand once it is unleashed/ posted onto the web they are handing over control to communities of fans and people.”

Britney Spears’ management tried to exercise some control over the star’s image by attempting to shut down fan sites that were using copyrighted photos. Online communities were outraged and her own fan base felt persecuted and alienated.

It’s not uncommon to see films, television shows, music and art creatively remixed or dubbed on the Internet. In most cases, the original artist has no control over the final hybrid content. For example, it’s unlikely that a YouTube video of Star Wars dubbed with the voice of an East London film gangster was passed to George Lucas for approval.

Even so, it may have gained the film a wider audience and spread goodwill for the latest Star Wars franchise, the Clone Wars.

Digital technologies have done more than just democratised creativity, they have sparked a renaissance in the way creative people communicate with the outside world.

In this new age, content creators must think about which need is greater – total control over passive listeners or an engaged, enthusiastic audience?

Margaret E. Ward is an Irish Times business columnist, blogger margaretward.ie and managing director of Clear Ink. 

POQ

Monty Python recently posted much of their best video content on YouTube – for free. The video also included an ad for their DVDs on Amazon.com. The results? A 23,000% increase in their online sales

My post-box is jammed with letters that say things like: “I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated September 1, 2008. Please send your remittance.” Who talks like that – a computer? What is a remittance and why should I send it anyway?

Things get even more confusing if I contact customer service people directly. Two weeks ago, my roof sprang a leak and I naturally emailed my insurance company. They asked me whether the damage was from the rain or from a storm? I wrote back saying, “there’s just water pouring in from the roof and I’m not sure what caused it.”

They said they’d cover for storm damage but not rain damage. What does that mean? Is a storm just rain with a bit more wind? Who decides if it’s a storm rather than just a rainy, windy day? I mean, is there some guy in the insurance company who decides or do they call the guy on the RTE weather slot? They haven’t told me what to do so the water is still pouring in.

With all this bad weather – and stress – my stomach’s been bothering me more than usual. My doctor has scheduled a procedure to test for ulcers. I hesitantly rang my healthcare provider to see if I’m covered. They started talking generally about deductibles and how it all depends on the hospital and the plan I’ve chosen. I don’t care about all that. I just want to know – specifically – how much it’s going to cost me. Is that too much to ask?

I always thought I was smart – I have an MA in philosophy for goodness sake – but the phrases these companies use are, well, just a mystery to me.

Don’t get me started on the emails I get from my solicitor. What planet is she on? The first time I met her she was great. She totally understood the needs of my growing business. Then I received their “terms of engagement” letter! I’ll tell you, diary, it was scary. I thought I was in the principal’s office after school. It was all “If you do this, then we’ll do that. If you cross the line then we’ll do blah.” Needless to say, I won’t be using that law firm.

Why can’t the companies that I have to deal with on a regular basis – the bank, the insurance company, the healthcare organisation, the government and my law firm – talk to me in language I understand?

Dear Reader,
What a terrible ordeal. It must be frustrating to feel like a teenager again. Nobody understood how you felt then and, unfortunately, many companies aren’t interested in speaking their customers’ language now.

The corporate ego has got in the way. Companies are so busy thinking about their targets, deadlines and profit margins that they’ve forgotten the reason they are in business – to service the needs of their customers.

Talking to the customer is old-fashioned – and to be avoided – so companies don’t know who you are, they don’t bother to find out and their word choices can make you feel stupid.

Language is simply a tool to communicate a message. Yet, many professions have smashed the most valuable item in their toolbox with a jargon hammer.

Doctors speak of myocardial infarctions rather than heart attacks; bankers talk about compound interest instead of making money on money already saved; solicitors use archaic language that no one understands. Customers simply scratch their heads.

Lingo that only people “in the know” understand is dangerous. It allows vague phrases – like collateral damage rather than murder – to fill our minds with noise rather than information.

Good writers know that copy – direct mail, email, brochures and web copy – should never be about them. It must be about the reader. To get the message across they have to put themselves in the reader’s shoes.

Somewhere along a gobbledegook-strewn path, the business owner’s empathy for the customer morphed into blatant self-interest. The solution? Move your business to someone who speaks your language.

Margaret E. Ward is an Irish Times business columnist and a director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists. Margaret@clearink.ie