You can unlock what you like. But expect only to find emptiness.

 In Gordon Brown's day, we would bear down on things we didn't like. Unemployment. Inflation. Corruption. Or we would drive things. The economy. Change. Progress.

They're super-active verbs. Politicians love them. Bearing down and driving are actions of strength. Ruggedness. Robustness. (Robust was an adjective they were very keen on, and I've already grizzled about that, but we'll stick to the verbs here). They're verbs of grim determination, too, which is what Gordon Brown was all about.

These verbs get picked-up by the followers, the sycophants, the unimaginative or lazy. Used so casually and so often, they become meaningless.

'Unlock' is the latest mot du jour. It's been flogged to death by the Tories. It implies there's something there to be let out, liberated, fulfilled. It's thrillingly positive. Something good is on the way. We have politicians running around unlocking this that and the other. Brexit would unlock Britain's potential in global markets. Housing development will unlock the value of agricultural land. HS2 will unlock Birmingham. Freeports will unlock the potential of rustbelt scrapyards. Schools targets will unlock the talents of millions of dim children.

More often than not, unlocking is an action you propose when you haven't any real good reason to do something, or you simply haven't a clue what the the outcomes of your proposed action will be.

It's exciting. Things that are locked-in, or locked-up, are either criminals or the things criminals want to steal. We have an excellent prisons policy which is so successful it's overflowing into hotels, campsites and caravan parks, with more ankle bracelets than a Milton Keynes disco ladies night. So, obviously, we're unlocking the good stuff, the great prizes, the huge rewards. Oh! They've been locked way for so long, everyone's forgotten all about them! It's like finding a fat roll of tenners down the back of the sofa!

Unlocking is the last resort of the desperate, which is probably why Tory MPs are instructed to use the word liberally and often.

    Sunak to Braverman:     Talk more about unlocking, will you?      It's dynamic and positive, ad makes us  look better than we     really are.

    Braverman to Sunak:     Can't sweetie. I'm supposed to be         locking up. People, mainly.

    Sunak to Braverman:     Try harder. How about 'locking             people up will unlock the true potential of  our Border Force     to, er...'

    Bravermam to Sunak:     '...lock people up?' OK. Love it.           Cool.

If a politician talks about unlocking something, they're either talking about flogging something at a knock-down price, or frantically trying to justify an insanely over-priced project. Often, it's just another word for plundering. But the inate ineptitude of politicians means it's most likely that once whatever it is is unlocked, there will be little, if anything, to show for it.

And some things, as Pandora will tell you, are better left locked.

The little-known, but awful, story of Volvo’s attempt at a brand update.

In 2012, industry gossip that Volvo was migrating their branding towards a more gender-neutral position was welcomed. Given that most men believe that being seen behind the wheel of a Volvo is a kind of public shaming, we can assume that most Volvo drivers must be women. Few can understand how Sweden’s sole surviving carmaker had come that far without being handbagged senseless for its blatant male-oriented branding. But attempts to appease the #metoo movement went badly wrong.

Jens Guntersstrom, head of branding for Volvo, said ‘The long-established Volvo symbol wasn’t anything to do with masculinity or male dominance. It’s the ancient sign for Mars, the god of war, a heroic protector, a figure of overwhelming strength, who impugns weakness. We strenuously deny any associations with manliness or any kind of sexism.’ Guntersstrom did admit, however, that the male gender indicator adopted by the company as its brand symbol could be seen by some (mostly men) to attach Volvo’s long tradition of safety and passenger protection to rugged masculinity. But that was incidental, he maintains.

Aware that equality campaigners were loading social media with increasingly negative comment on the company’s established symbol, Volvo opted for change. The car-maker tasked the Stockholm office of design house Centoptica  with a ‘symbol refresh that would de-gender the historic branding, reinforcing the company’s global social awareness, and raising its acceptability threshold.’  With a 5 million SK budget Centoptica (whose other clients include H&M, Swedish Tourism Authority, Ericsson and ABB) worked through hundreds of iterations of the new design, some evolutionary, some radical.

Ola Skarsgard, Volvo account director at the design house said ‘We spent a lot of time working with a hybrid of the two gender indicators. It was a way of appealing to both genders through an unbiased visual. But it just kept looking like an apple with an arrow through it. Great for a Swiss arms manufacturer maybe, but it didn’t say ‘progressive Sweden’ or ‘you’re in safe hands’ or  ‘this brand is yours’ enough.'

Before Centoptica could reach the finish line with anything half woke-enough, the problem was solved (or created), by the daughter of a Volvo employee. Studying art at school, she’d come up with a solution that was so liked by her father, Valter Holmberg, Volvo’s Vice President (Marketing), RAD was tasked with implementing it.

‘We should have run some focus groups first. But the Board just loved it. They trusted their gut, and before you knew it, cars were coming off the line with the new branding,’ said Skarsgard. An instant hit? Maybe not...

‘The first we knew of any problems was when the newly-branded cars hit the showrooms.  People felt it was even more masculine, even more male-dominant than before. Somehow it looked less like the Volvo symbol, and more like a penis.’

Guntersstrom said ‘We hadn’t realised the upset it would cause. We didn’t want to change the arrow for a cross, That would make Volvo look like a brand for women. And that would upset people of both, I mean, every, gender.’  He explained, ‘Taking the point off the arrow just meant you could attach any gender identity you wished. It seemed like a great idea to us.’

Leading Swedish feminist Gudrun Schyman said ‘ I couldn't believe they did that. It was bad enough already. Then they changed it into a picture of a dick. What were they thinking?’

One Volvo dealer’s flagship showroom in Gotheburg was overrun by a  feminist group, who screwdrivered the badges off all the radiator grilles and steering wheels. In Trelleborg, a womens’ equality group launched a billboard campaign featuring the new symbol, with the headline ‘Upp din, Volvo – inte min.’ ( ‘Up Yours, Volvo, not mine.’). In Stockholm, Ulla Lindstrom, Minister for Gender Equality, made a statement in parliament decrying Volvo for ‘a giant leap backwards for equality,’ and called for the Swedish Stock Exchange to suspend trading in the company’s shares.

Within days, the old branding was reintroduced. Hundreds of thousands of product brochures were pulped, hundreds of 800-page corporate identity manuals were hastily withdrawn, and a planned 12-month brand identity migration programme was scrapped just days before inception. Estimates of the cost of the cancelled programme run as high as 200 million SK. It was the shortest identity-refresh in marketing history. Buried swiftly and buried deep, the project leaves two lessons. Always test, and never hire the marketing director’s daughter.

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No, it’s not iconic.

It’s just famous. It might be symbolic. Or it might just simply be readily recognised.  We might agree that double-decker buses or red telephone boxes are iconic. To tourists, they signify London

The Tower of Pisa or the London Eye, though, don’t really signify anything but themselves. So let’s stop calling them, and anything else well-known, easily-recognised or just momentarily high-profile, iconic. Famous will do, and is probably more than most of them deserve.

It’s not what you expect. It’s surprising.

Except, nobody would say that. They’d say it’s counter-intuitive. Over and over again. All the time. Nothing surprises me any more. Just about everything is counter-intuitive.

Don’t think about it. Do it.

While we’re at it, let’s stop re-imagining things. The upstart film director has not re-imagined The Taming of the Shrew. He just directed it a different way. The twittish architect has not re-imagined the public space. He just designed the market square a different way.

Indeed, these overblown creative diddlers may have used their imaginations to find a different way to present the same old thing. But imagining things is just a way of thinking about things. Personal thought processes, no more. What we then do, as a result of our imaginings, is what counts. If we change things, revise them, renew or refresh them, we’ve turned ideas into action.  That’s the bit that matters.

I don’t much care if Milord Rogers has re-imagined the built environment. I’d be more interested to know that he’s created a very different kind of office building. I’m un-moved by the news that Baz Filmdirector has re-imagined Casablanca. Tell me he’s directed a new version of the famous (not iconic) movie, and I might like to know more.

After this moment in time

Last for today, let’s not go forward.  ‘ Our strategy, going forward.’ ‘Going forward, we’ll be changing things.’ And ‘What are your plans, going forward?’

In every single case, ‘going forward’ is unnecessary. Superfluous. Redundant. Another piece of  meaningless filler, now in heavy use amongst managers and politicians who think wordiness means value. It doesn’t.

If you want to be understood, if you want to be believed, plain words work best. And if you want to impress, especially in these days of  counter-intuitive strategies going forward at this moment in time, use plain words.

Walter Annenberg was appointed US Ambassador to the UK. Queen Elizabeth II asked him how he found his new quarters in the embassy residence. He said he was ‘suffering some discomfiture as a result of a need for, uh, elements of refurbishment and rehabilitation’.

That was in 1969. They’re still smirking, today.

Who wrote this?

I worked in one ad agency whose corridors were prowled by a bearish creative director. Carrying the proof of an ad only minutes away from its absolute drop-dead copy deadline, he’d yell ‘Who wrote this?’.

The unspoken last word of his question was ‘nonsense?’. Or more likely, ‘crap?’, or ‘rubbish?’, or ‘bollocks?’. The culprit would be a writer who’d fumbled the ad’s proposition, or garbled its message, fudged its promise. Or just written plain bad English.

There was no defence in ‘but it’s just about to go to press…’ or the cowardly ‘but it’s been signed-off by the client’. The ad would be rewritten, or you’d end up working on Co-op grocery Special Offer ads for the rest of your career.

Getting it right mattered. First, there was the quite proper and simple assumption that, if it was a press ad, the audience could probably read. If the ad was in a national broadsheet, the audience might be well-educated and very literate.  That’s an audience amongst whom bad copy does most to taint the product on offer.

Second, ad agency clients are usually good at making the products they make, not at producing polished communications about those products. It’s part of the ad agency’s job to bridge the often wide gap between the clever but mumbling makers, and the critical customer. It’s the agency’s job to get it right, for the client.

More than 30 years ago, I worked at BMW’s first UK ad agency. We struggled with the account. We were better at selling corrugated asbestos and industrial pumps. But we worked hard to produce polished communications, worthy of a remarkable product trying to break out of a niche.

It was a brave effort, hobbled by our strictly rationalist view of car-buying motivations, and a gift for turning up at Munich airport sans passports.

We lost the account to the already excellent WCRS, the thinking client’s agency, founded by Robin Wight, a thinking writer.

Yesterday, more than three decades later, I found this in The Independent. It’s the copy from a current BMW ad, almost in its entirety.

A new form of space  
The BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo makes compromise a thing of the past. With strong flowing lines and sculpted surfaces, the sporty exterior is contrasted by an interior that offers maximum comfort and versatility. The dynamic design delivers the presence of The Ultimate Driving Machine whilst the luxurious and spacious cabin delivers everything you’d expect once inside. It’s a combination that allows desirability and practicality to live in perfect harmony.

You may be thinking that these are possibly the four worst-written sentences you have ever encountered in an ad for a major international brand's product.  You’d be right. Nearly.

Here’s another ad from the same campaign:

A new form of space

There is more to the new BMW 3 Series Gran Turismo than meets the eye. The flowing lines and sleek surfaces of the sporty exterior disguise the luxurious levels of comfort and space that lies (sic) inside. Delivering the dynamic handling and powerful performance you’d expect from The Ultimate Driving Machine it also offers a level or practicality and versatility that defies expectation. All of which makes this car demand a closer look.

Four slightly different sentences, all of them just as dreadful, but with the thumping bonus of a who-gives-a-damn grammatical error of sub-schoolboy wrongness.

I could spend time deconstructing these ads, line by line, teasing out clichés, lameness, dullness, sameness, limpness, laziness, hackney. So could you.

Given the continuing remarkableness of the product, it wouldn’t be hard to rewrite these ads in a way that makes the subject look interesting, different, special and desirable. None of which aims they currently achieve. Good grief, they both use the phrase ‘everything you’d expect’.  Surely, the car would be an even more rewarding acquisition if it delivered things you didn’t expect.

The one thing you don't expect, and certainly don't deserve, is the slapdash insult of 'luxurious levels - that lies inside.'

The BMW account is still with WCRS. Robin Wight is still President of the agency. I hope the man in the bow tie is, at this very moment, ploughing the corridors, waving proofs of the latest campaign, yelling ‘Who wrote this?’

Note 1: before posting this knocking piece, I did try to tell WCRS that their slip was showing. Pointless approaching anyone with creative responsibilities, or in account management – they are all complicit. Instead, I asked politely if I might email their CEO, a very youthful Matt Edwards. No, they said, we don’t give Mr Edwards’ email address to people. I asked for his PA. His lofty PA appears only ever to communicate through voicemail.

Ah. I forgot. They’re in the communications business.

Note 2: the answer to the question ‘Who wrote this?’ is in this case, of course, an estate agent.

Trying too hard, Parts 1, 2 and 3

Trying too hard (part one)

Balfour Beatty, our biggest construction firm, are building some offices in central London. A construction company in Rome or Paris or Barcelona would display a little dignity and style, and screen their scaffolding  with an unadorned illustration of the finished project behind. Maybe it goes with being the country’s biggest construction company, but BB have chosen instead to make some important corporate statements.

The first is about safety on site. Every construction site has a sign of some kind on that topic, warning of hazards, counselling against risk. This one is displayed in two-metre high type. It says:

WE WILL ACHIEVE ZERO HARM.

ZERO DEATHS.

ZERO INJURIES TO THE PUBLIC.

ZERO RUINED LIVES AMONG ALL OUR PEOPLE.

What? To whom did they delegate the task of writing this? The Workers’ Safety Committee? The Department of Corporate Anguish? You hardly need to close your eyes to hear Martin Luther King pounding it out on some angry Southern rostrum.

It’s supposed to be reassuring. To confirm in us a feeling of confidence in their dedication to safety. But it does the opposite.

It raises in us the cold fear of the possible. We all knew construction accidents were unpleasant, at best. But the news that they can affect the public, as well as the guys who forgot to don their hard hats, is novel and alarming. And the notion that they can be bad enough to Ruin the Lives Among All Our People strikes a deadly chord of plague, pestilence and war.

Yes. I know they mean what they say. They write from the heart. But there are times when it’s best to temper the message. We all fear for our loved ones at times. Travelling alone. Walking in the dark. But we just say ‘keep safe, love.’ We don’t add ‘because you might be grabbed around the throat by a crazed half-man-half-ape, raped, strangled, then beheaded with a blunt spoon before being hurled into a septic whirlpool full of starving killer whales.’

When I see the Balfour Beatty sign, I cross to the other side of the road, until I’m safely past. I hope All Our People do the same.

Trying too hard (part two)

Adjacent to their Martin Luther King speech, Balfour Beatty have given in to the wretched impulse to spill the corporate mission statement, or vision, or whatever they call it these days. It says ‘How we’ll get there’. There, presumably, is the place where zero lives are ruined among all our people. A kind of corporate promised land. The process involves: Leading, Simplifying, Rethinking, Involving, Learning and Tracking.

What a mess. Everybody can’t lead. You can’t simplify something as necessarily complex as a construction project (you’re paid to cope with the complexity, guys). Please don’t rethink the bloody thing when it’s half built. Don’t involve any more people than you absolutely have to. If you must learn on the job, make sure it’s on somebody else’s job, not mine, please. And as for tracking, well. Three white men went that way. About an hour ago. One of them is wounded in the leg.

Trying too hard (part three)

These civil engineers with a compulsion to communicate also proudly claim that they are ‘committed to preserving heritage within (sic) the creation of an inspiring new office environment’.  A picture captioned Project Start shows a dignified and elegant four-storey late Victorian commercial terrace, in good shape. Alongside it, a picture captioned ‘Project Finish’ shows the terrace replaced by a brutalist lump of piggy-eyed grey concrete.

They may possibly achieve Zero Harm on the construction site. If the finished job demonstrates their commitment to preserving heritage, Maximum Harm springs to mind.

Keep it simple, your honour.

Why is Judge Judy one of America’s highest-rated TV shows? Why is her show so popular with viewers all over the English-speaking world?

The plaintiffs and defendants are very ordinary people. Some of them would appear to be naturally delinquent, to some degree. Few of them seem to be the beneficiaries of higher education, and doubtless none of them would claim to be intellectuals. In truth, they’re not really very interesting people.

The cases are trivial. He stole my TV. She owes me a hundred bucks. We wonder if these matters would ever have come before a real court in the first place. Are they really proper court material, we ask?

And Judge Judy herself is not someone you’d want to appear before – or maybe even sit beside on a bus.

Dull cases, brought by ordinary, sometimes rather dull, people. Cases determined in summary style, often perversely, by a generally unlikeable judge.  What makes it such compelling viewing?

Simplicity. There are goodies and baddies. We can quickly decide who’s which, and take sides.

We can try and predict  for whom the judge will find, and why. And it’s all over in a relative flash. Three or four cases in half an hour?

People like justice. Of course we do. In a world where we sometimes doubt such a quality exists, we can watch Judge Judy dispense it rapid-fire. When we agree with her, we’re reassured. When we disagree, we can relish our righteous indignation.

And this isn’t play stuff. Scheindlin’s findin’s are bindin’. As far as the participants are concerned, this is as good as a real court of law.

But, by golly, it’s so simple. Unlike a real court of law, we can understand it. Because Judge Judy speaks not only like hizonner, but – you remember that junior school teacher? In fact, you remember how that junior school teacher treated you almost like another parent?  In language we could – and still can – clearly understand. That made it very clear who was wrong, and who was right, and what ought to be. There’s no mistaking Judge Judy. If you done wrong, you’ll know all about it. If you bin wronged, she may not like you, but she’ll look after you.

And don’t you dare answer back…

Judge Judy is about as authoritative as one could wish to be. Everyone listening to her knows where they stand. Everyone listening knows exactly what she means. The way Judge Judy delivers it, even though you may not like it, you know she’s right. At worst, you suspect she’s right.

And she does it without long speeches, without long words, without pompous oratory.

Come on guys, there’s a lesson here. Keep it simple. Keep it short. And keep it in plain language. Easy Understanding Wins Followers.

You may be a businessman, or an official, or a politician. But if you can engage your audience the way Judge Judy does, they’ll keep coming back for more. Even if they don’t like you.

They really wouldn't like it

The aggrieved family are interviewed outside the courthouse, asked about the reaction to the acquittal of the man who set fire to their house.

They say ‘ We’d just like to say how angry we are…’

A senior Army officer is interviewed on the radio.  Some of his troops had got carried away with war, and had abused a prisoner. The regiment was ashamed.

He says ‘ I’d like to apologise, most sincerely…’

The CEO of the oil company is asked about spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico. He says ‘ I’d like to say how sorry we are…’

None of them mean it.

They certainly don’t like saying these things. They don’t enjoy it, and there’s no pleasure in making their statements.

The aggrieved family can be forgiven. They almost certainly don’t have helpers experienced in the matters of media interviews and public statements.

The army officer does, though. And the CEO. They should know better. They should pick their words more carefully.

‘I have to say how sorry we are…’

‘I must apologise…’

Or even ‘We regret. We are sorry. We apologise.’

It’s not that listeners forensically examine such statements, looking for poorly-chosen words and phrases. We hear – and listen – very quickly these days. On the run, on the fly. We don’t remember the exact words. Rather, we absorb a sense of someone’s meaning. On the way, we unconsciously calculate their sincerity.

Everyday words and phrases slip by us un-noted. Speakers often introduce a statement with ‘I’d like to say – this or that.’  It’s commonplace.

But something happens with a change of words. Phrases such as ‘We regret’ or ‘We’re sorry’ or ‘We apologise’ are much less commonplace. They trigger that little extra recognition that turns a statement away from the glib, toward the genuine. All without the listener really knowing it’s happening.

Just a few better-chosen words can change a message from one that people hear – into one to which they listen.