In his case it seems to be harking back to a time when we were all tucked up in bed by a nice radio presenter who spoke “like thet” and when regional accents, in the acting world at least, denoted some sort of deviation from the ideal. You know the clichés: Birmingham – bit thick but nonetheless trustworthy; Liverpool – amusing but dodgy; London – also a bit dense,  possibly lovable but maybe a spiv; Northern – unsophisticated and almost certainly a bit aggressive.

Language, as it always does, has moved on — this time for the better. The fact that Brummies, Scousers, Cockneys and Woollybacks can all get acting jobs — and ones in which their accents no longer pigeonhole them — is something to be applauded. 007 should go back to fighting supervillains: better to be the dashing secret agent than another whingeing old git.

And when the luck deserted him, even Rolling Stone appeared unaware that it had a career-busting piece for its bumper summer issue. Instead an almost-naked Lady Gaga displaced blurb for the Afghan story almost entirely from the cover.

Although General McChrysal paid for the publicity with his job, he appears to have understood what he was doing, not during the time he enjoyed the company of a journalist, but in the days before publication. Neither he nor his staff objected when the profile was fact checked, a kindness that not all publications offer, of course. That means General McChrystal knew what he was saying and he was happy with it. Although he couldn’t unsay what had been said, he appears to have offered no clarification. No extra words that showed he was under pressure when he said what he shouldn’t have about his colleagues and allies.

And that’s what cost him his job.

Whilst we’re a copywriting agency, our clients don’t always want just the words. Sometimes they need us to help deliver them in the most compelling and appropriate way possible: and not everyone has easy access to reliable design, print or audio-visual capability. So this time we feature two projects in which we worked with our partners to produce short films; and a glossy report.

Read on – and please get in touch if you’d like to discuss writing with us. And of course feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might find it of interest.

Contents
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• Condensing a conference: Merryck & Co
• Making a compelling argument in double-quick time: Wherry Housing Association
• Introducing Brave
• And presenting the new-look Plain Text website

Condensing a conference: Merryck & Co
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How do you best capture the many thousands of often important words exchanged in a two-day conference? CEO-mentoring organisation Merryck & Co invited Plain Text to do just this at its Business Leaders’ Forum at Bagshot in May.

Together with our AV partner SAV Media, we worked with the speakers to summarise their themes in a series of short films called ‘The five-minute mentor’. These give delegates and Merryck clients a lively and interesting reminder of the main points made at the conference – more effective than pages of PowerPoint handouts! We’ll post links to the pieces when they are published.

Making a compelling argument in double-quick time: Wherry Housing Association
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Sometimes you only have a short window of time in which to make your point. For Wherry Housing Association, an upcoming conference provided the perfect platform to promote a radical new way of financing the ‘greening up’ of social housing. Having just been instrumental in transforming an old, fuel-guzzling house into a state-of-the art ecohome, Wherry had a great case study that would help to make its argument. The challenge was to create a report that told the story in just the right way: enough detail to prove the case, but delivered in a way that would resonate with a broad audience.

Referred to Plain Text by our client the Energy Saving Trust, Wherry knew we understood the environmental issues and arguments involved. Marshalling a great deal of technical background information and working with our contact Mark Jones and design partner Brave (see below), we delivered an accessible, attractive 16-page printed report on deadline. The result, Mark assures us, was “very well received at the conference and generated a great deal of interest”.

Take a look at the report, ‘Greening the Box‘.

Introducing Brave
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For the Wherry project we worked with our design partner Brave, a new branding and design agency whose fast, accurate and diligent work ensured our client had their printed report well in time for their conference.

So if you need the finished, artfully designed article instead of just the copywriting, or need a second opinion or a quote on design, please get in touch.

Browse Brave’s portfolio to see more examples of their work.

And presenting the new-look Plain Text website
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And finally – we’ve recently dragged the Plain Text website into the 21st century. From your point of view, the main difference is that we blog, occasionally, with language- and copywriting-related stuff that piques our interest. You can subscribe via RSS (bottom right of the page) if you wish. We don’t tweet yet, but it’s on the todo list, perhaps.

Contact Plain Text
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If you have questions or would like to discuss a writing project, please get in touch.

“Skid-lid bonk-stink crack tech cracked in Germany”

Connoisseurs may take issue with the repetition of ‘crack/cracked’ but I reckon it’s sheer headline genius. Just as good if not better than famous tabloid newsletter efforts such as The Sun’s “Obama Lama ding-dong”, fronting an article which implied a geopolitical rift over the US president’s meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Although that was surely a headline that had been sitting in a drawer somewhere just waiting for the flimsiest pretext to be used.

Has the Times fallen victim to a cunning internet wind-up akin to the superb Yu Wan Mei website? Heaven help the English language if the Queen’s English Society is setting the clarity standards. Check out this text from the  home page:

“Our language faces a number of challenges, as it becomes ever more widely used by people with ever less knowledge of it and respect for it.”

Or this humdinger of a sentence, which suffers from a condition that can only be described as ‘commaohrrea’

“The Queen’s English Society will always welcome new members who have some sympathy with our aims, but we also hope this website and, in particular, The English Academy, will benefit all who wish to improve their own use of the language and also those who teach English, professionally, or indeed, as parents.”

Give me a witty 140-character tweet or text message any day.

And this time we’re offering free copies of Paul Waddington’s book ‘Shades of Green’ to anyone who can correctly answer two tricky green questions.

Read on – and please get in touch if you’d like to discuss writing with us. And of course feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might find it of interest.

Contents:
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* Transforming a Hay Group website
* A 100-word email challenge from the Energy Saving Trust
* What Plain Text does in its spare time #2: Exeter FM
* Answer a tricky green question and win a book

Transforming a Hay Group website
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Hay Group’s ‘transforming learning’ website is the place where this global management consulting firm sells its training tools and programs direct to businesses. The writing challenge was to create compelling, benefit-led copy that matched a refreshed site design – and fitted the firm’s new brand voice. We helped Hay Group to develop templates for different types of pages and then re-wrote the words.

In commenting on the project, Hay Group product design consultant Sam Guise also illustrates one of the reasons why outsourcing writing is sometimes necessary. “In an ideal world, every company would do its own writing. But writing is always part of a bigger project – and you have to deliver the whole project, not just the words. Working with Plain Text took the pressure off. They ‘got’ what we were about really quickly and gave us a voice we were comfortable with. And they produced all the content we needed elegantly, on budget and on time. Plain Text were easy to work with, relaxed about changes, happy to give advice and always reliable.”

Take a look at the new website.

A 100-word email challenge from the Energy Saving Trust
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We love writing longer, more involved pieces, like the white paper featured in our last email update. But we like a brevity challenge too. So a recent email from the Energy Saving Trust’s transport division was just the ticket: promote and prove the benefits of ’smart driving’ to local authorities in 100 words. We were proud to have the final email – which packs costs, savings, benefits, proof points, a headline, two subheads and a call to action into precisely 106 words – called ‘brilliant’ by our client. Read the smarter driving email.

What Plain Text does in its spare time #2: Exeter FM
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Plain Text’s Paul Nero doesn’t just write – he hones his skills with broadcasting too, every weekend on radio station Exeter FM. Paul presents the Sunday breakfast show, a mix of music, news and conversation that includes the station’s main incisive interview of the week.

Paul has been broadcasting since the age of 15 – and in the intervening decades, he’s nearly got the hang of it. His guests have included stars of major theatre production, cabinet ministers and influential businesspeople, as well as ordinary people who have something to say. Add to Paul’s listening figures by tuning in online on Sundays from 7.00 to 11.00 a.m. — or check out his attractive station photos.

Answer a tricky green question and win a book
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Paul Waddington’s third book ‘Shades of Green‘  is an A-Z guide which gives an informal ‘green rating’ to the things we do — from air travel to wine — presenting options from ‘deep green’ to ‘not even a little bit green’. While backpacking might clearly be the greenest holiday and taking a private jet to a desert golf resort unarguably the least green, some of the ’shades’ are not always what you might think. We’ve got a few copies to give away to the first correct answers to these two questions:

1) Which is more eco-friendly – a) washing up by hand b) using a dishwasher?
2) What uses more energy a) organic chicken b) intensively farmed chicken?

Email your answers via our contacts page.

Contact Plain Text
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If you have questions or would like to discuss a writing project, please get in touch.

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* Cloud computing ‘out of the box’
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You had me well before the eighth bullet point. I just don’t want any more. And these scream-inducingly unnecessary final words also of course beg the question: “and more” what? Bananas? Trilobites? Cuddly toys? It’s as if the writer planned to use ‘etc.’ but decided at the last minute to be a little more formal.

Apply the “and more” test to real life and it’s clear what a waste of words it is:

“I love you. I need you. I want you. And more.”
“And more what?”
“I dunno, just… more stuff, y’know?”

“Hey kids, we’re going to the seaside tomorrow. And more.”
“Hurray! And more what, daddy?”
“Just more, OK? Now go to your room.”

In copywriting as in life, “and more” is just two words too much.

According to reports following Mr Blair’s evidence, “To Kofi” means “to encourage the [then] United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan with easy promises.” Simple.

Whilst its origins lie with the Ghanaian-born diplomat, its application – within the coterie of Downing Street aides, is reported to be broad. Anyone who needed to be influenced was Kofied. From whole nations, the French or the Scots, for instance, to members of the government or opposition, to individuals in consistencies. Never since “You’ve been Tangoed” has a snappy verb possessed so much latent aggression. So have you been Kofied?

This surely calls for a spoof video.  Anyone?

OK, so we once thought otherwise (that post actually dates back to 2002) and had fun at its expense. But it’s time to take a fresh look. Particularly because the annual procession of flimsy PR campaigns built on lazy digs at the latest business phrase (see here, and  here for examples) is getting really dull.

And also because it’s a bit like the Dawkinsian view of religion, with its unavoidable subtext that all practitioners are stupid. Yes, there are some daft people in corporate life — but no more so than anywhere else.

Why should we now embrace office jargon? Because it’s nothing more than useful shorthand, ensuring that things are quickly communicated and understood. Take ‘reach out’, as in ‘I’ll reach out to Jim about this’. *God* I hate that phrase. However it means a lot more than just ‘contact’; and a little bit more than ‘get in touch with’. It’s actually quite handy, if you can bear to use it – and in a largeish organisation, once everyone’s accepted it, it no longer grates. Only when such terms escape into the outside world do they cause alarm.

Check out this list of business-speak terms, found in an idle Google search. The ‘translations’ clearly show that many of the dreaded buzzphrases are pretty efficient at conveying meaning. Whilst I’m no fan of ‘low-hanging fruit’, it’s surely preferable to ‘the bits that can be done quickly and easily but still have an effect.’

Are we jumping the shark? Net net, I’d say we’re just going forward.

The university says that such an analysis can be used to predict reading ability and that children who text a lot have high levels of phonological awareness, a skill that refers to the ability to detect, isolate and manipulate patterns of speech.

All well and good. All very interesting – although asking a child to read a book could perhaps test the same skills. The really admirable thing about the publication of this research today, and the resulting press coverage, is that Coventry University seems to do the story, or a variation on it, every year. Check out this Register story, Texting: Good for Kids, from last year, or this Guardian piece from 2006. Congratulations to Coventry’s PR team.