Can I change your mind?

Last post

2007-11-09T08:12:00.000Z

I find the subject of persuasive communication endlessly fascinating, so I'm pretty sure I could go on writing this blog for as long as I'm capable of tapping away at a keyboard. But I've decided to bring it to a full stop. This will be my last post. I wonder, though, if I can persuade you to stay with me for just a few more paragraphs while I explain why I've reached this decision?

I suppose the main reason is the obvious one: I think I'm starting to repeat myself. Of course, there's nothing wrong with a bit of repetition in persuasive writing; quite often, it's actually necessary to say the same thing in a number of slightly different ways in order to win someone round to your way of seeing things. But, after a certain point, the law of diminishing returns comes into force, and you start to bore your reader - which, as you'll know if you've read my book, is the second worst crime a persuasive writer can commit. And I'm afraid I may be rapidly approaching that point (if I haven't passed it already).

My other reason for becoming an ex-blogger is, I think, more interesting, since it concerns the medium itself. I've enjoyed writing here very much over the last 15 months or so, but I've never been able to shake off my reservations about the form. Blogging is, for me, just a bit too easy. Take three minutes to get set up, and you're away: no need to think before you write; no quality control; no time to reflect on what you've written before sending it out into the world. No discipline, in fact, of any kind: if I chose, I could interrupt myself right now to give you my mother's famous flapjack recipe, or to share with you the poem I wrote last week. (Don't worry, I'm not going to.)

I'm sure some would say that these are blogging's best attributes; that it's this unboundaried immediacy that gives the best examples of the form their snap, crackle and pop. But, for me, it just feels a bit self-indulgent. And I'm pretty sure I do my best work when there are constraints: a brief to be met, a deadline, a sharply defined objective.

Anyway, I'm clear in my own mind that, in a world where there is way too much information - and where everyone has a vehemently held opinion and the means to express it - one of the biggest courtesies we can show our fellow human-beings is not to communicate with them, unless we feel an overwhelming need to do so, combined with a sincere belief that at least some of them will find what we have to communicate useful, interesting or enjoyable.

Which, of course, brings me back to the main theme of my book: that in persuasive writing, the reader's interests must come first. And right now, my considered professional opinion is that yours will best be served by me shutting up for a bit.

So thanks very much for calling by, and for your interesting comments (I haven't had very many, but their rarity has made those I have received all the more thrilling). Who knows, I might write another book one day, in which case I hope you'll buy multiple copies and give them to all your friends. Meanwhile, if you'd like to get in touch for any reason, I'd be very happy to hear from: just drop me an email from the main Can I Change Your Mind? website (www.canichangeyourmind.co.uk)

Bye for now.

Clever stuff, Christians!

2007-11-07T17:53:00.000Z

Saw this on a sign outside a church today:

GODISNOWHERE
(NOW READ THAT AGAIN.)

Quite clever, no? But I'm not convinced that a word search, however ingenious, is ever going to change a single non-believer's mind.

Beauty for blokes

2007-11-06T16:21:00.000Z

I'm a huge fan of the language used by the male cosmetics industry. I love the way it tries to reassure us blokes that there's nothing remotely soft or wussy about wanting to take care of our rough horny skin, and generally look our best.

I came across a Logistics range the other day, which has a nice truck-driver-ish ring to it. And words like system and strategy crop up a lot, to emphasise that personal grooming is very much a science rather than an art. My all-time favourite, though, was a bar of soap my wife gave me from a male cosmetics range called Activist - which, for me, conjures up pictures of unkempt protest marchers, or even grimy tree-dwelling eco-warriors, rather than smooth-skinned metrosexuals.

Anyway, I'm still waiting for someone to have the courage to come right out with it and launch a male beauty brand called Absolutely-Definitely-Not-Gay.

The ethics of persuasion

2007-11-05T17:33:00.000Z

Tell a stranger at a party that you work in the field of persuasive communications, and there's a good chance he or she will ask you how you can sleep at night, when you make your living telling lies on behalf of evil corporations.

Perhaps it sounds naive, but - even after all these years - I'm still always a little surprised to be reminded that so many people feel this way. So let's tackle both halves of the accusation, one at a time.

There's no doubt, unfortunately, that some persuasive communications do tell lies. I'm thinking, for example, of Penelope Cruz and her amazing (but, sadly, fake) eye-lashes. I've never had much time for philosophical debate over what exactly constitutes a lie: if you set out to communicate with people in a way that's clearly intended to deceive them, then, for me, your pants are definitely on fire - whether you're advertising a revolutionary new mascara or talking a nation into an illegal war.

But here's my defence. Actually, very little business communication does deliberately set out to deceive. As persuasive communicators, we're paid to tell the most compelling story possible on behalf of our clients, which will, of course, mean accentuating the positive, focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. But that isn't the same as deliberately trying to deceive people. In fact, far from imagining our readers are so stupid that we can easily dupe them, we're crediting them with the intelligence to listen to the case that we are presenting as sceptically as they wish, and to reject it if they feel it isn't strong enough.

And there, in that last sentence, is why good persuasive communicators don't lie. It isn't because we are unusually virtuous people. It's because we know that trying to deceive people is too risky. We may get away with it in the short term; but, sooner or late, we'll be found out; trust will be destroyed; and with it our chances of building a lasting relationship with our audience.

So let's spell it out: persuasive communications that lie are bad persuasive communications. They don't work.

As for the evil corporations, my view is that this charge can only really be made to stick if the person levelling it is a hard-line anti-capitalist, living a subsistence lifestyle and eschewing all the temptations waved temptingly under our noses in a modern consumer society.

Unless that describes you (and much respect if it does), I honestly don't think you have any right to take issue with the principle that any business (or other organisation) engaged in legal activities must be entitled to communicate with its customers, or anyone else who might be interested in what they have to say.

Of course, you absolutely have the right (see above) to be unpersuaded by such communications; to be annoyed or offended by them; or to ignore them completely. But would you, if you had the power, make it illegal for the florist's shop opposite your office to put a sign in their window on Mother's Day? Or for your dentist to take an ad in Yellow Pages? Or for your local pizza place to take orders online via their website? No? Then you really can't deny that Nike or Starbucks or Esso or NatWest - or even those tossers at Barclays - should be allowed the same freedom, on a rather bigger scale.

I hope what I've said doesn't sound amoral. I may accept in principle that any legitimate business has a right to tell its story (within any relevant regulatory constraints), but that doesn't mean that I necessarily want to help them find the right words. And, over the years, I have occasionally turned down work for "ethical" reasons.

I've refused work from tobacco manufacturers, on the grounds that there is nothing at all to be said for cigarettes (unlike alcohol, which I have occasionally helped to sell). I said no when I was approached by the tourist board of a country whose government, I felt very strongly, had no respect for the human rights of a sizeable minority of its population. And quite recently, I declined the opportunity to write a series of ads persuading teenagers to spend large amounts of their parents' money on a service sending them texts allegedly from Hollywood A list celebrities (on the grounds that I have teenage children and would be seriously pissed off if anyone tried to flog them such a thing).

To be honest, none of the above demanded any great moral resolve on my part. I didn't want to do the work, and I was probably busy working for other less ethically dubious clients. But a few years ago, I did make one much harder decision.

Having done an enormous amout of work for car manufacturers over 15 year or more, I decided to withdraw completely from the automotive market. Part of the reason, if I'm honest, was boredom: I'd written several thousand ads, mailers, brochures, web banners and radio scripts featuring exhilarating performance, head-turning looks and super-glue handling, and I was in serious danger of becoming jaded. (All right, perhaps I had become jaded.)

But there was an ethical dimension to my decision, too. No, I don't think motor manufacturers are evil and, yes, I do own a car (although it's very, very old and I try not to use it more than I have to). But, generally, my strong feeling is that there are more than enough cars on the roads of this small, polluted island; and, more specifically, I think that communications heavily featuring exhilarating performance, head-turning looks and super-glue handling tend to increase the likelihood of people driving like sociopathic dickheads.

Anyway, these days I won't touch anything on four wheels (or two, for that matter) - and I feel better for it, though also quite a bit poorer since cars used to account for a big chunk of my income. But, then, as the great Bill Bernbach observed, "a principle isn't a principle until it costs you something".

I hope what I've said here doesn't sound smug. I'm certainy not suggesting that my ethical standards are particularly high, or that anyone else should adopt them. My only point is that, as grown-ups earning our living in the business of persuasion, it's up to each of us to decide what we feel comfortable with, and what we don't - and to draw the line accordingly.

The poetry of persuasion

2007-10-31T08:31:00.000Z

I seem to remember writing somewhere - quite possibly in the opening chapter of my book - that persuasive writing and true creative writing have nothing in common. But it occurs to me that one of the best known poems in the English language has a very persuasive look about it.

So how do I get out of that, then? Not easily. But I think I can just about extricate myself from this apparent self-contradiction. Because I don't believe that Andrew Marvell really wrote To His Coy Mistress with the aim of getting his girlfriend to go all the way, as I believe they used to say in the 17th century. In fact, I don't believe that he necessarily even had a girlfriend at the time. I think he was writing the poem to capture in words something he felt about the fleeting nature of human longings and pleasures in the face of mortality. His main motive, in other words, was not to influence another person, but to express himself.

Anyway, I think it's worth taking the risk of undermining my own argument if it gives me a pretext for including this gorgeous-but-in-my-view-not-truly-persuasive piece of writing:

From To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Sunday Worst?

2007-10-22T18:37:00.000+01:00

I can't decide which of two ads in yesterday's Observer magazine depresses/enrages me more.

The first shows a shiny black car, with a headline that reads:

"attract plenty of interest (without paying any)"

Can the agency really not have seen that play on the two senses of "interest" in a car ad several thousand times before? No, they must have done; in which case, did they think, "Sod it, it's good enough for another crappy finance ad. And the kind of punter who spends 18 grand on a car isn't going to notice if we flog them a retread."

And here's exhibit 2. A gormless and unshaven bloke, helpfully identified by a caption as Joe Cole, holds a camera. A handwritten headline reads:

"My world is all about great shots"

Would it, theoretically, be possible to deliberately create a worse celebrity testimonial ad than this? I really don't think so. What credibility does Joe Cole have in the world of digital photography? Why, conceivably, might anyone other than a rabid Chelsea fan be impressed by the fact that he apparently endorses this particular camera?

And just how astoundingly limp is the attempt at a verbal link between endorser and product? I'm not a huge football enthusiast, but even I know that Joe Cole is a midfielder who only very occasionally shoots at goal, and mostly attempts to create scoring opportunities for his strikers. So, no, his world isn't all about great shots - and even if it was, that would still be an utterly useless and unengaging line.

So which is my Sunday Worst? I think the sheer can't-be-arsed laziness of the first just shades it over the dinosaur-dumb stupidity of the second. But only by the length of Joe Cole's perfectly art directed stubble.

Is it breezy?

2007-10-19T16:51:00.000+01:00

Have you come across a book called The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E B White? It's long held classic status in the US, but I only stumbled on it recently, and I'd very warmly recommend it. Just 100 pages long, it's a guide to writing muscular, flab-free English prose, densely packed with rather ferociously expressed advice, most of which I strongly agree with.

To take just one of many examples, Strunk and White are hotly opposed to nouns being used as verbs, which I also rage against in CICYM. (We were tasked with assessing how this initiative impacts the business . . .") It's interesting and a little sobering to note, though, how quickly usage turns unacceptable barbarisms into everyday language. Writing in the late 50s, Strunk and White strongly objected to both host (as in hosting an event) and chair (as in chairing a meeting), which I'd suggest even the most fastidious prose stylist would use without hesitation today.

Anyway, to the point of this piece, which is that out of all S&W's suggestions and strictures, the one that struck me most forcefully was this:

"Do not affect a breezy style."

Breezy? For some reason, the word sent a little tremor of guilty recognition through me. Without needing to read any further, I felt pretty sure that breeziness was a sin I had sometimes indulged in.

And here, when I did read on, is how the magisterial S&W described a breezy writer: " . . . he obviously has nothing to say, he is showing off and directing the attention of the reader to himself, he is using slang with neither provocation nor ingenuity . . . he is humorless (though full of fun), dull and empty. He has not done his work."

Well, I hope I don't often write in a way that would leave me open to that damning catalogue of charges. And I think it's also worth noting that we live in a different age, where drawing attention to oneself - failing to be self-effacing - is no longer considered quite such a manifest virtue as it was half a century ago.

But, that said, I think it's undeniably true that a huge amount of commercial persuasive writing (including, I'm afraid, some produced by me) could justifiably be accused of breeziness; that's to say, of adopting a light-hearted and jokily facetious style in an attempt to conceal a lack of true substance.

Hello, Kazakhstan

2007-10-15T16:57:00.000+01:00

I've got a wonderful new piece of software that tells me everything I could possibly want to know about you, the reader of this blog. It tells me where you are, when you call by, how you get here, how long you stay for, and what you look at while you're here.

It's fascinating stuff. It's also, if I'm honest, just slightly depressing. Because, as long as a writer doesn't know for sure how big his audience is, he can delude himself that there are thousands of readers out there, hanging on his every word. Whereas I now know for certain that the average number of visitors to this blog day each day is - well, I think I'll keep that to myself. But let's just say that you belong to a very exclusive group of highly discriminating individuals.

On the other hand, there is an upside to the knowledge I've acquired. I love knowing, for example, that I've had visitors here from Australia, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, India and, yes, Borat's beloved homeland. (Even if, in many cases, it's perfectly possible - as my wife suggests - that they actually came here by mistake, having searched on my surname in pursuit of gay erotica.)

And here's the really interesting thing. Learning that I do have readers, however few, has increased my sense of obligation and made me try harder to be a better, more productive blogger. Because I hate the idea of you taking three minutes out of your busy day to come here and then being disappointed to find nothing new to amuse, stimulate or infuriate you.

The lesson? Whatever and whenever we write, we urgently need to make the effort to imagine real, flesh and blood individuals reading our words - and just a click or a turn of the page from something more engaging.

Anyway, I hope you'll come back soon. If you don't, I'll know.

Passionate about delivering laundry solutions

2007-10-08T10:37:00.000+01:00

Never describe yourself, or your business, as being passionate about anything. It's one of those claims that always sounds hollow.

If you want me to believe that what you feel amounts to a passion, then you'll have to find words that - through their freshness and energy - convey to me a sense of your fervour, your excitement, your willingness to die for the cause.

It's the only way. And if you doubt it, just cast your eyes upward to the heading of this piece - which I swear on my children's lives I really did see on the back of a van that I overtook on the M4 recently.

Talk about a passion-killer.

Parking Rage vs persuasive words

2007-10-05T12:10:00.000+01:00

The other day, I was involved in a Parking Rage incident. Well, I say involved in, but "an innocent victim of" would be more accurate.

Without going into boring detail, what happened was that I parked in a space to which another driver - a tradesman working nearby - felt that he was more entitled. Veins bulging, he shouted at me to move my car. I reasoned with him, pointing out the flaws in his argument. He shouted louder and threatened me with violence if I didn't move my car. I moved my car.

Afterwards, I felt upset and ashamed - as men will when they allow themselves to be physically intimidated. I tried to convince myself that, actually, I'd done the right thing. It was, in fact, very easy to move my car; and by doing so, I'd defused a potentially nasty situation, in which I could easily have been hurt. (I'd love to pretend that my adversary was two metres high and built like a prop forward; he wasn't, but he did have a slightly unhinged air about him that made him quite scary to a herbivore like me.) But, a couple of weeks on, I still feel unhappy about the incident.

And it's easy to see why. Persuasive words got their backside kicked by violence (or, strictly speaking, the threat of violence). My best efforts to argue my case and to establish a rapport with my "reader" were utterly unsuccessful. The pen (or, in this case, the Mac user) turned out to be considerably less mighty than the sword (or, in this case, Mr Angry's fists and his willingness to employ them).

So what is my face-saving response to that? I suppose it must be something to the effect that while force can win short term victories, it can never win hearts and minds, without which - as President Bush and that ghastly swivel-eyed bloke who used to be our Prime Minister have so brilliantly demonstrated in Iraq - a victory is worth less than nothing. And yes, I think I do genuinely believe that.

But I still rather wish I'd had the courage to head-butt him.

Why I hate Innocent

2007-09-29T13:22:00.000+01:00

OK, so I only wrote the heading above out of a childish desire to shock. And, of course, it isn't true: like everyone else, I love delicious Innocent smoothies, and warmly admire their witty way with words, especially on their packaging. But I can think of three reasons why those cheery folk from Fruit Towers don't inspire quite as much warmth in me as they once did.

First, I'm fed up with hearing people talk about the desirability of "doing an Innocent". What do they actually mean? If all they are trying to say is that it's a good idea for businesses to use words in a way that helps to set them apart from their competitors, then I couldn't agree more. But I suspect that, more often, the Innocent wannabes don't really understand what it is they are aspiring to.

So let's be clear: Innocent haven't pulled off some clever marketing trick. Their much loved "tone of voice" wasn't devised by highly paid teams of branding specialists, armed with pie charts and research findings. It was, I'm 99.9% certain, simply how the founders of the business talked among themselves about what they were doing.

Of course, I don't mean to suggest that there isn't any art involved. All that lovely stuff about squishing loads of fruit and bunging it in bottles is beautifully crafted. But my point is that the distinctive way in which Innocent communicate is intrinsic: a near-perfect expression of who they are and what they believe in. And, crucially, it's been there since the start, when three blokes came up with a brilliantly simple business idea (squish loads of fruit and bung it in bottles).

So how could, say, a High Street bank or a car manufacturer or an airline ever hope to "do an Innocent"? Simple: they couldn't. And if they were ill advised enough to try, they would end up looking very foolish indeed. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Barclays.)

The second thing I'm less than thrilled about is the apparently widespread belief that Innocent have invented an entirely new way of using words. Not true. Yes, they do it outstandingly well; but there's nothing ground-breaking about a jokey, highly colloquial style of writing that engages chummily with the reader and happily veers off into apparent (but not actual) irrelevance. I could show you quite a few bits and pieces I've written that show a strong "Innocent influence" - or would do, if it wasn't the fact they I wrote them a decade or two before the first smoothie was blended. (And yes, I'm perfectly aware I sound like a grumpy old fart.)

What Innocent have done that is unique is to build a major brand on this style of verbal communication; and that, I freely concede, is a huge achievement in its own right. Because, normally, as businesses grow they lose the ability to talk with a distinctive voice - especially the kind that can make people laugh. All those "Innocent style" communications I've written over the years have been for small-to-minuscule-businesses: start-up design consultancies, a two woman creative recruitment company, a designer of crazy golf courses, and so on.

Third, and this is the really sacrilegious bit, I just ever so slightly wonder if they might be losing it a bit? I have to say that when I say their new "This water" brand extension, I found something vaguely smug and irritating about it. And just the other day, my 22 year old daughter remarked (unprompted by me) on how annoying she now finds Innocent. If cool recent graduates are starting to fall out of love with the brand (a big if, admittedly, since my observation is based on a sample of one). I wonder if Innocent might be reaching the point where it's just a little too big and successful to retain its fabled sense of humour? I, for one, find it harder to share a laugh with a business that's recently got into bed with McDonald's, however convincingly it argues the ethical case for doing so.

Anyway, those are my reservations. And I know that, since Innocent have made zillions of pounds as well as winning several thousand top creative awards, that this little rant of mine is sure to sound like sour grapes; a kind of fruit, incidentally, that Innocent would never dream of squishing and bunging in a bottle.

World of Chicken, anyone?

2007-09-26T17:19:00.000+01:00

A long time ago, my wife Anna, our friend Philipa and I spent a happy half hour coming up with foolproof restaurant concepts. The only one we all agreed was a solid gold winner was World of Chicken: a place where chicken-lovers - i.e. every non-vegetarian on earth - could enjoy the finest chicken dishes from the four corners of the planet.

For some reason (no money, no relevant expertise - and, oh yes, it was just semi-drunken conversational noodling), our brilliant idea came to nothing. But I was glad to learn the other day that Nando's was originally called Chicken Land, which suggests that its founders were thinking along the same lines as us, though perhaps without our truly global perspective.

I also like the message chalked on the blackboard outside their branch in Park Street, Bristol:

"Man cannot live by chicken alone. But he can enjoy trying."

Why good writers are like Raymond Blanc

2007-09-24T07:19:00.000+01:00

Here’s the headline of a car ad I saw the other day:

It turns heads as easily as it turns corners.

I don’t know about you, but I’d expect a car that cost me nearly 25 grand to be pretty good at going round bends. And I hate ads that tell me how good looking the product is, rather than just showing me and letting me make up my own mind. But, for once, let’s consider form separately from content. Let’s see if, without altering the sense, we can improve the headline:

Turns heads as easily as corners.

Easy. But why is the six word version such an improvement on the original nine word headline? Despite what any designer or art director might say, it’s not simply because a shorter headline is always better than a longer one. (Absolutely not true: a 15 word line may encapsulate a thought with perfect economy, while three words can be two – or even three – too many.)

No, the important point illustrated by this rather piffling example is about the way that good writing condenses meaning.

Good chefs reduce their sauces to make them richer and more intense; good writers reduce what they have written – straining off a redundant adjective here, boiling down a paragraph of padding there – until all that is left is the meaty, nutritious essence of what they set out to say.

Northern Rock: when "don't" means "do".

2007-09-17T08:23:00.000+01:00

As I write, my mother-in-law is queuing outside Northern Rock's branch in Dorking, waiting to withdraw the money she recently invested with them. Why? Because everybody involved in the bank's lending crisis - chief executive, Chancellor, FSA - has been telling her and her fellow Northern Rock investors that there is absolutely no reason to panic.

In this context, persuasive words like these are directly counter-productive: the very assurance of there being to cause for alarm implies that there may indeed be cause for alarm.

Slippery customers, words. Sometimes they just won't do what we want them to.

So 85% of all communication is non-verbal. (Frankly, I’m speechless.)

2007-09-07T12:23:00.000+01:00

Or is it 93%? I think I've heard both figures quoted recently. But, either way, I know a bogus statistic when I see one. To appreciate the breathtaking meaninglessness of this alleged scientific fact, let's consider it in relation to real life. Mine, for example.

Right now, I'm writing this, which I hope you will read avidly. So that would be 100% verbal communication, then.

A little earlier, I had a chat with my mum on the phone. I did roll my eyes a bit, and once I mimed shooting myself in the head - but, since she didn't see these gestures, they don't really count as communication. Once again, then, 100% verbal.

Before that, I saw my daughter off to school. I asked her if she'd remembered her swimming things - to which she replied by pointing at her swimming bag. I then suggested that she might like to give her father a kiss, which made her sigh and glance heavenwards before rushing out of the door. So, harder to score, but maybe we could call it a draw: 50% verbal, 50% non-verbal.

My point? Only that, as a writer and one who believes passionately in the power of words, I'm not going to just shrug my shoulders and let the mime artists and body language experts take over the world.

And you can take that look off your face right now.

The trouble with brand values

2007-08-31T16:47:00.000+01:00

I've never been a big fan of brand values, feeling that, in the vast majority of cases, they fail the Opposite Test. (Look dispassionately at what you've just written. Ask yourself would anyone, in any circumstances, ever state or claim the opposite? If the answer is no, then what you've said is a waste of space. Do all those companies describing themselves as innovative, committed or open-minded imagine that, among their competitors, there are businesses which would fearlessly claim to be imitative, half-arsed or blinkered?)

But a more specific grievance is the way that when people compile lists of brand values (a minimum of four, a maximum of six), they recklessly combine abstract nouns and adjectives - as for example:

"Our brand values are teamwork, flexible, trust and entrepreneurial."

Make up your mind. Are your values the qualities you want your brand to be seen to possess, or words that describe your brand? They really can't be both.

Jesus saves! Christians hang on for a draw . . .

2007-08-24T11:09:00.000+01:00

Enjoyable piece in the Guardian a couple of days ago featuring photos of the billboard slogans that appear outside many churches and chapels in the American Deep South (and, increasingly, also in this country). A few of the more striking lines included:

TO BE ALMOST SAVED IS TO BE TOTALLY LOST

YOU'RE ON HEAVEN'S MOST WANTED LIST

WALMART ISN'T THE ONLY SAVING PLACE IN TOWN

YOU MAY PARTY IN HELL BUT YOU WILL BE THE BARBEQUE

DON'T GIVE UP! MOSES WAS ONCE A BASKET CASE!

IF GOD HAD A REFRIGERATOR, YOUR PICTURE WOULD BE ON IT

I wonder how effective these communications are? I suppose that, realistically, they are not aimed at persuading pagans like me to pop in and pray. Their main purpose, I'd say, is clearly to prevent back-sliding, and to boost Sunday attendance figures by pulling in a few lapsed users, as we say in the business. And perhaps, if that is the goal, the better ones may do a decent job.

Incidentally, for me, the last line quoted above is by some distance the best. As it happens, I find the idea of a personal god, who watches over me and helps me achieve worldly success if I pray hard enough, bizarre and distasteful. But, if the intended reader is a believer who knows he hasn't been a good boy lately, I think the image of god as a loving parent, saddened perhaps by his offspring's misdemeanours but ready to forgive, is a powerful one.

Minding our mannerisms

2007-08-23T10:32:00.000+01:00

All writers have mannerisms; little verbal tricks and tics that may seem engaging when we first encounter them, but tend to grow wearisome with over-familiarity.

I'm no exception. One of mine is a tendency to over-use brackets (I swear I'm trying to cut down). Another is littering my writing with phrases like "as you've read", or "as we mentioned earlier".

I know it must be annoying. I'm aware, too, that the obvious response to "as we mentioned earlier", is "then why tell me again?". So it's definitely a bad habit, and I need to keep an eye on it. But, at the same time, I think there is a sense in which it's a "good bad habit" for a persuasive writer to have.

Let me explain. When I write - and in conversation too, actually - I have a dread of boring the other person. I hate the idea that I'm telling them something that they already know, or that has no interest or relevance for them. So when I write "as you know" or "as we mentioned earlier", I'm trying to pre-empt this terrible possibility - and, in doing so, I'm acknowledging the reader's presence and showing recognition of the fact that her agenda may not be the same as mine.

A really bad writer would never think to do this. He'd just drone on, ticking off the points he'd planned to make, without the slightest concern about how they might strike his reader, or whether he was repeating himself.

But OK, I admit, it's still a bad habit which I need to keep in check. (As I think I may have mentioned earlier.)

Some thoughts on the language of the Oldest Profession

2007-08-13T16:49:00.000+01:00

I'm always amused by the media's use of the phrase "high class prostitute". It brings to mind that anecdote about Winston Churchill asking a respectable female acquaintance whether she would spend the night with a male stranger in return for a million pounds. Well, yes, she conceded, for such an enormous sum, she would certainly give it serious consideration. In that case, went on the Greatest Ever Briton, would she do it for a fiver? "Certainly not," the outraged lady replied. "What do you think I am?" To which Churchill responded, "We've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over your price."

A high class prostitute means one who charges high prices, nothing more, nothing less.

For slightly different reasons, I also trip over that fairly recent coinage, "sex worker". Of course, you can see the intention here: old fashioned words like tart, hooker, trollop and so on have an undeniably judgemental, moralistic tone about them - which, understandably, those who make their living by selling sexual services feel uncomfortable with.

Usually, I take the view that if members of a minority group want to be referred to in a particular way, it's simple courtesy for the rest of us to respect their wishes. But, in this case, I find the approved term makes a demand on me that I don't feel entirely happy to meet. What "sex worker" asks of me is to accept that making a living by selling sex is just a job like any other - no different from driving a taxi, training as a tree surgeon or working in Top Shop.

And actually, I don't accept this. I don't think I'm exceptionally prudish; and I'm certainly willing to believe that the vast majority of people who work as prostitutes deserve our sympathy (and, if they want it, our help and support), rather than our condemnation. But would I feel happy if my recently graduated daughter came home and announced that she'd decided on a career in sex work? Well, no, I rather decidedly wouldn't (though I would console myself with the thought that at least she'd managed to steer clear of estate agency).

When we use words that carry an agenda like this, we're hoping that they will persuade others to agree us. But if we misjudge it, they can just as easily have the opposite effect.

As good as it gets?

2007-08-07T16:18:00.000+01:00

Normally, I rant and scold, but sometimes you see something so punishingly bad that it hardly seems worth the effort. Throwing your apron over your head and having a good old chuckle seems the only appropriate reaction.

A case in point? The ads that have recently appeared on bus shelters all over Bristol, showing a group of (male) Big Brother housemate-types out on the very depressing looking razzle, under the following headline:

LADS' NIGHT OUT/AMAZING WAITRESS SERVING YOU DRINKS ALL NIGHT LONG/MATES TOGETHER/XYZ CIDER OVER ICE . . . AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

Actually, it looks like the kind of evening when someone is almost certainly going to end up in hospital and/or police custody, so the poverty of an imaganation which really couldn't conjure up anything better doesn't bear thinking about. But the unintended comedy is too life-enhancing to quibble over. I think we should just stand back in awe and enjoy the moment - though obviously not as much as our hair-gelled young friends experiencing the very best that life has to offer.

A genuine expert writes . . .

2007-07-23T16:34:00.000+01:00

My friend David Stuart has a friend called Marty Neumeier who is one of the two people on the planet who writes about brands in a way that I find exciting. (Jeremy Bullmore: shame on you for asking.)

Through David, I sent a copy of Can I Change Your Mind to Marty, who was kind enough to email me, saying how much he'd enjoyed it. But he also included some not entirely positive feedback on the book's title - and some thoughts on the general principles of naming books - which I thought you might find interesting. So here's a chunk of his email:

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"I figure the title accounts for roughlyhalf of a book's success, so if you can get it right without spending half your time on it, you're ahead of the game. You can think of titling as a combination of positioning and advertising: first, you position the book in its category, and against the competition; second, you make a compelling promise to the reader.

"So, as a reader, when I see the title CAN I CHANGE YOUR MIND?, I'm not sure how to react. I can't quickly figure out what kind of book it is, why it's better than competing books on the subject, or why I should buy it. In fact, I'm not sure that I want my mind changed, and I can avoid the whole painful subject by not buying the book. I'm exaggerating, of course, because there IS something fun and clever in the existing title, especially with the second-reading graphics.

"I don't know what the title should be, but as a quick exercise, let's compare the existing oblique title with a more explicit one such as WRITE TO THE HEART. With this title, I can easily figure out that the book is about helping me to write better. Next I can guess that it's about writing to the emotions, or getting to heart of the matter, two things I probably could use help with. Finally, I might find the graphic presentation of this title to be more sexy, clear, and memorable than the existing one. Imagine a bullseye with a pen stuck in it, or a target with a heart-shaped bullseye, or some other symbol for writing and emotions or writing and persuasion. If the straightforward approach seems a bit boring, consider the experience of my friend Alina Wheeler, who titled her book DESIGNING BRAND IDENTITY. Despite this purely descriptive title---or maybe because of it---her book consistently outsells mine.

"The other kind of title that sometimes works is a blind title like John Kao's JAMMING. JAMMING doesn't immediately answer any of the obvious questions, but it does give a catchy name to the concept behind the book---that business collaboration should be more like jazz than classical music. My latest book ZAG uses this technique. It's riskier, but if people start using your "word" to describe the concept whenever they need to talk about it, then you're home free. Malcolm Gladwell's THE TIPPING POINT is a good example of a title that puts a new name to a concept. Now everyone is using the phrase "tipping point", and book sales have reacted accordingly."

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I'm not sure I agree with everything Marty says. I still quite like the direct and engaging quality of Can I Change Your Mind? And, in any case, I've always tended to be sceptical about how important names and titles actually are. But when a world authority on a subject gives you free advice, you'd be a fool to disregard it. And I'll certainly think differently when it comes to titling my next book, if I ever get round to writing one.

Incidentally, before it was Can I Change Your Mind? my book was called No Milk Today, Thanks Dave! (If you'd like to know why, pick up the well thumbed copy you keep next to your computer, and turn to page 14.) And I'm pretty sure Marty wouldn't improve of that.

I wish I knew how to do links so that I could send you directly to the website for Marty's brilliant book, Zag: www.zagbook.com

A word out of place

2007-07-18T15:56:00.000+01:00

I wonder if you read a piece in The Guardian on Monday by Shimon Peres, the new president of Israel? He didn't promise to withdraw from the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, but he did commit himself to pursuing peace with Israel's neighbours. What really jumped out at me, though, was a single word in the following sentence:

"As president I intend to service with courage and kindness . . ."

Kindness? That just isn't a political word, is it? Politicians of the right occasionally talk about compassionate conservatism, at least when they are trying to get elected (after which they turn out to be Dick Cheney). And those to the left of centre are more than happy to use words like equality, opportunity and justice. But I can no more imagine a Blair, a Brown or a Cameron talking about kindness than the Pope turning out to be a former member of the Hitler Youth. (Sorry, bad example.)

The lesson here: the power of a word in a place where your reader wouldn't expect to encounter it.

An apology for an opening line

2007-07-17T11:06:00.000+01:00

A young woman tried to sell me something in the street today. She wasn't wearing charity insignia, so she can't have been a chugger. But she did have a clipboard and a predatory look in her eyes, so I'm guessing she was hoping to persuade me to switch gas suppliers or consider some surprisingly affordable form of insurance. But I never found out, because here's what she said as she zeroed in on me: "Sorry to bother you."

Sorry to bother me? Then why virtually rugby tackle me as I'm scurrying past, staring at my shoes, obviously trying to avoid eye contact?

A textbook example, I'd suggest, of how not to engage the reader - or, in this case, passer-by - with your opening line.

Blair out: another triumph for persuasive writing

2007-07-04T19:28:00.001+01:00

Just to point out, a bit belatedly, that my daily emails did indeed finally succeed in persuading Tony Blair to resign, just as I confidently predicted back in December.

No need to thank me: I did it because I believed it was the right thing to do.

A charity ad that worked

2007-06-27T09:01:00.001+01:00

Earlier this week, I made a donation to charity - my first, apart from the odd handful of change tossed into a collecting tin, for some time, I'm ashamed to say. The piece of persuasive writing responsible was one of those annoying loose inserts that fall out of newspapers when you pick them up. On the cover, it showed two small children huddled together, with the line:

"We're sleeping in your newspaper because we're cold."

What was it about this that prompted me to pick up the phone when so many other charitable appeals had left me unmoved? Firstly, I was feeling guilty; conscious that, over the previous few months, I'd given virtually nothing to charity. Secondly, the insert spoke to the parent in me. The idea of children suffering distresses me a thousand times more than the thought of cruelty to animals - or even, I have to admit, old people living in poverty. Thirdly, it arrived in my newspaper on the day after I'd returned from Glastonbury, which made it easy for me to imagine the reality of trying to sleep somewhere cold and miserable.

So far, then, so fortuitous. None of these three factors involved any skill on the part of the writer. But the fourth, and most important, certainly did. That introductory line I quoted above reached out and grabbed me by the lapels. By the apparently contrived device of making the children talk to me directly from inside my newspaper, the writer left me nowhere to hide. The distance between their cold hillside in Afghanistan and my warm kitchen in the south west of England was, momentarily, obliterated.

Of course, on another day, I might well have ignored the same appeal. If I'd been in a bigger hurry, or had just received an enormous gas bill, it's perfectly possible that I would have chucked it straight in the recycling bin, with barely a second thought.

But, on this particular day, a very good piece of persuasive writing demonstrated how the right words can turn response (compassion) into result (cash).

How not to spread the word

2007-06-20T19:04:00.000+01:00

I walked through Broadmead - Bristol's lingering-death-of-the-soul 1960s shopping centre - on the way to the station yesterday. As ever, outside Boots, there was one of those shouty evangelists loudly exhorting passing shoppers to abandon the paths of unrighteousness and forswear evil-doing.

Usually - and I hope my anti-fundamentalist prejudices aren't too visible here - these zealots are fairly unsavoury-looking characters. But yesterday's preacher was a bit of an exception: a very tall and notably good looking black guy, with an immensely powerful voice.

I wonder if he made any converts? (Certainly, nobody took the slightest notice of him, while I was passing.) And, actually, I wonder if anyone has ever fundamentally changed their belief system as a result of being shouted at in the street by a stranger?

On the plus side, I guess it's possible to argue that our friend with the fervently held convictions wasn't really trying to win anyone over with the strength of his arguments. Instead, perhaps, we might see his performance as an attempt to demonstrate the power of faith: "Look, my belief is so strong that I'm happy to get wet and cold, while making a total twat of myself!")

But I don't really buy it. Overall, I believe that any form of persuasive communication that involves hectoring, haranguing or harrassing the audience or reader is doomed to fail.

A more effective way of spreading the word? Perhaps our evangelical friend might have stood quietly and calmly in front of a placard reading:

Jesus changed my life.
Let's talk about how
He could change yours.

What's currently making me spew blood-flecked bile. . .

2007-06-14T12:04:00.000+01:00

Well, I exaggerate slightly; but there's an ad campaign for Alfa Romeo that's definitely been getting me a little aerated lately. Perhaps you've seen either the TV commercial or the press ads, which present us with a series of lies that we might tell ourselves in order to justify spending some ridiculous amount on the shiny hunk of metal pictured.

The lies are far too boring for me to remember, but they are all concerned with dull technological gizmos and worthy-sounding safety features sported by the car in question. And they are followed by an endline which informs us that "The truth is, it's an Alfa Romeo".

What exactly is so hateful about these ads? Their insufferably knowing smugness. The advertiser and their agency not only assume that we are so enslaved by desire for their product that we're prepared to engage in elaborate self-deception to acquire it; they actually have the nerve to tell us that we feel that way - clod-hoppingly spelling it out for us. ("Here are the pathetic lies you tell yourself, you poor besotted fool, and here's what we all know to be the undeniable truth!")

In persuasive communication, it's important to be as clear as possible about what readers think or feel. But it's always a bad idea to tell them what they think or feel. They prefer to think or feel it all by themselves. And, even if they do harbour the thoughts or feelings ascribed to them, they tend to rebel - or even, as in my case, feel insulted.

The insight that there are people out there who passionately desire an Alfa Romeo, but feel they need to rationalise such a major purchase, may or may not be a valid one.

Who or whom: who cares?

2007-06-08T18:12:00.000+01:00

Do you know when to use "who" and when it should be "whom"? If you're not sure, you might like to test yourself:

Roger introduced me to a plumber xxxxx, I felt, was trustworthy.

At the party I met a woman xxxxx I really liked.

The bloke xxxxx said that was clearly a cretin.

xxxxx would you like to take to the ball?

If you got them all right (who, whom, who, whom), you can feel bit smug. But I'm afraid it won't do you a lot of good. Because I'm pretty sure that, along with the apostrophe, whom will have disappeared from all but the most learned written English 10 years or so now.

Why? The usual reason. It's bit fiddly, it sounds old-fashioned and it doesn't really serve any useful purpose. "Who would you like to take to the ball?" just sounds more like a normal person talking; and, almost always when we write persuasively, that's the effect we're aiming to achieve.

I wonder if there's anyone out there to whom what I say is sacrilege?

Why making it longer is always a bad idea

2007-06-07T11:18:00.000+01:00

In my book, I have a bit of a rant - well, more of a whinge, really - about the way that designers are always asking me to cut what I've written. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because they don't want too many nasty squiggly little words cluttering up their nice clean layouts.

But the other day, I received a much rarer request from a designer: for typographical reasons, she wanted me to increase the length of what I'd written by about 20%. For once, I dug in my heels and refused (I'm renowned for being amenable to the point of spinelessness).

Cutting a piece of persuasive writing will nearly always have some beneficial results. True, you may lose something, in terms of tone or content, if you cut too much; but the loss will probably be at least partly off-set by greater economy of expression. But increasing the length of a piece of writing - for any reason other than to add something of value to the reader - will always make it worse.

As I might be tempted to demonstrate, by writing another paragraph here, when I have nothing else to say, just in order to make this post look a bit more substantial than it really is. But I won't, because I'd be wasting your time. And mine. Sorry. I'll stop now.

Or maybe now, actually, because I always think a short para looks better to end on.

A word I really must stop using

2007-05-31T16:42:00.000+01:00

Like everyone in my business, I frequently and unthinkingly use the word audience (often in conjunction with "target") to refer to the people towards whom a piece of communication is directed.

But I really shouldn't. Why? Because it conjures up all the wrong mental images: a large group of people, sitting contentedly on comfy seats, looking forward to the entertainment which they have chosen to spend their evening enjoying, and for which they have probably paid handsomely. True, they may leave at the interval, if they're disappointed in the show; but for the first half at hour at least, they'll be determined to have a good time.

Good persuasive writers don't write for an audience. They write for an individual reader, who probably has better things to do, and who will certainly be off like a shot if her attention isn't immediately engaged.

Can bad be good?

2007-05-24T16:29:00.001+01:00

It hurts to admit it, but I suspect that, just occasionally, it can. Take, for example, the home made effort above. "All our time is going to waste" is, by any objective standard, a terrible line. In pursuit of a wearisome pun, our friends at McCarthy Skip Hire have only succeeded in communicating what an inefficiently run business they are. "We're total rubbish" would have been more self-denigrating, but not by much.

And yet. It has a kind of charm, doesn't it? We find ourselves picturing Mr McCarthy, alone in his office late one evening, turning to marketing matters after a hard day's waste management. We see him, tapping out the line above, typing with only two fingers . . . and somehow, we sense his pleasure in his own verbal inventiveness, and the pride he feels in his business. "All our time is going to waste?" he ponders, with a faint smile. "Yeah, that says it all, really."

And, in complete contradiction to everything I supposedly believe, I think he's right.

No credibility? Borrow someone else's.

2007-05-22T08:26:00.000+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I made a brief appearance on a Radio 4 programme called Word of Mouth, talking about persuasive communication. The following day, my book's Amazon sales rating soared to 371 (up from 870,000 just a few weeks ago).

Why am I telling you this? Partly, I admit, because I'm hoping you'll be impressed by my brief brush with best-sellerdom. (Very brief: I see I'm back down to 23,741 today.) But mostly because I think this story illustrates an interesting point about credibility.

With no false modesty at all, my performance in the interview wasn't particularly brilliant; and, of course, for radio listeners, my name means nothing at all. But the fact that the BBC had invited me to take part in the programme gave my book an endorsement that persuaded quite a few listeners to log on and order a copy.

Sometimes, what you say matters less than where you say it.

Why do estate agents write like that?

2007-05-10T16:33:00.000+01:00

We're in the process of moving, which is deeply painful and traumatic. And it's made more so by the horrible and inexplicable abuses that estate agents inflict on the English language.

Yes, I know I'm not the first person to make that observation. But allow me, anyway, by way of therapy, to share you with the Top 6 Things I Hate About the Way Estate Agents Write:

"Benefits from"

A house or flat doesn't benefit from having gas central heating or double glazing, the inhabitants do.

"Boasting"

As in "2-bed flat boasting a large open plan kitchen-diner". No!

"Comprising"

Completely unnecessary. Nothing is lost by shortening "A Victorian mid-terrace with accommodation comprising 2 large receptions . . . " to "Victorian mid-terrace with 2 large receptions . . ." or even " Victorian mid-terrace, 2 large receptions . . ."

"Having "

As in "a three bed town house having a south facing garden". Why "having"? What's wrong with "with"?

"Located/situated"

Always redundant. "A period 4 bed semi family home situated in the heart of Redland."

"To"

Bizarre. Where do estate agents learn to write "to the first floor there is a large master bedroom . . ."? I've literally never heard anyone else use "to" like this. Oi, estate agents, it's "on the first floor . . ."

Anyway, thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I feel a bit better now. Now, off to find a desirable new residence in a sought after location boasting many period features, while I still have the strength.

Word Watch: fulsome

2007-05-03T12:12:00.000+01:00

Look up fulsome in the dictionary, and you'll discover that it's quite a negative adjective. It means, roughly, "offensively excessive". So fulsome praise, for example, isn't praise at all; it's gushingly insincere flattery.

Except that nowadays it isn't. Whenever you see fulsome used these days, it invariably means something like "lavish" or "generous", with no pejorative sense at all.

The meaning of words can change over time. Good persuasive writers understand this. They may know the "correct" meaning of a particular word, but they recognise that insisting on using it in that sense - thereby showing that they know better than their readers - won't help them achieve the result they want.

Long, long ago in a galaxy far away . . .

2007-04-26T09:39:00.000+01:00

Well, actually, it was London and the year was 1979, and all I wanted in the world was a job as a junior copywriter in a big ad agency. I had no experience, and not much else to offer, so I spent a lot of time writing long and immensely witty letters to creative directors, in the hope that my verbal pyrotechnics would dazzle them into offering me a job.

Nobody did, and pretty soon I started to get quite despondent. (I've never been much good at that "try, try again" approach to the pursuit of success.) In fact, my spirits sank so low that I did a dreadful thing. I abandoned all my efforts to demonstrate my vast creative talents, and fired off a simple three line note to Tony Brignull at CDP.

(Pause briefly to establish context: at that time, CDP was widely regarded as the most creative ad agency in the world, and its creative director Tony Brignull as the joint best copywriter, with David Abbott.)

I don't remember what I said, but I know that my letter was concise to the point of terseness: desperate to be a copywriter, no experience but loads of enthusiasm, any chance you could do anything at all to help me . . . or words to that effect. But I do remember the reply I received just a few days later; or, at least, the first sentence, which began, "I liked your letter so much that I've decided to offer you a month's work experience at CDP".

When I met the great man, I couldn't resist asking what he'd liked about my letter, the unadorned simplicity of which I was now feeling rather embarrassed about.

You've guessed: what he liked was the unadorned simplicity. Every day, he told me, he received a sack full of immensely witty letters, and other more elaborate types of communication from young hopefuls like myself, desperate to impress him their creative potential: a hollowed out pineapple with a flashing lightbulb inside; an arrow with a message wrapped round the shaft, fired through his window; a fake terrorist bomb, complete with lifelike detonator, and so on.

A short, simple letter, written from the heart, stood out - and made a nice change, he told me.

Sadly, the ending of this story is a bit anti-climactic. I did my month's work experience, and learned a lot from it. But Tony Brignull didn't anoint me as his chosen successor, or even offer me a job. He just shook my hand and wished me luck with my future career.

But there is a reason why this episode has stuck in my mind for almost 30 years. And it may not be exactly the one you're expecting. Because I'm not saying that short and to-the-point is always better.I'm saying that it pays to think very hard about the competitive landscape. If everyone else is having a hernia trying to look creative, be simple-verging-on-dumb. If everyone else is telling the story in six bullet points, write joined-up prose. If everyone else is writing joined-up prose, consider rhyming couplets.

In short, if everyone else is zigging . . . zag.

My favourite sign

2007-04-19T17:27:00.000+01:00

If you read the Independent from cover to cover, you'll have come across a slightly shorter version of the piece below on today's Letters page. But since you probably don't . . .

My favourite sign is next to the motorway, on the way out of Bristol. It reads:

SIGN NOT YET IN USE

Surreal, or what? A sign confidently denying its own existence. On closer inspection, the sign is attached to the base of a much larger electronic traffic information sign . . . which isn't in use yet.

But never mind. I've still enjoyed the philosophical paradox, even if it wasn't what the writer intended to communicate.

Ugly words wanted

2007-04-12T18:48:00.000+01:00

In the book, I talk about beautiful words; the kind that, completely independent of their meaning, are delightful simply as a combination of syllables. Archipelago, mesmerising, incandescent, peripatetic, willow, lapidary, pergola, febrile, vilify, serendipity, daffodil . . . it's easy to think of them.

But ugly words, I'm finding, are much harder to come by. In fact, so far I've only come up with three that are really offensive to my ear: bursary, mollusc and orgasm (or worse still, in verb form, orgasmed).

That last one, I realise, is a bit of a risk - since the chances are, you'll attribute my distaste to some weird sexual dysfunction on my part. But I'm standing by it: say it aloud a couple of times. Sounds horrible, doesn't it?

And please do let me know if you have any other suggestions for inclusion in my collection of verbal mingers.

Conclusive proof that persuasive writing doesn't work?

2007-04-05T17:09:00.000+01:00

It should, in theory, be the most compelling piece of persuasive writing ever produced. It's based on hard, factual information, uncontested by any serious authority. It alerts the reader to a terrifying danger. And it's only two words long.

Yet it doesn't work. Every day in the UK, thousands of people hand over their money, and thumbnail open a pack bearing this stark message, without a second thought.

Just pause for a moment to think how ineffably weird that is. Imagine if there was a shampoo with a label that warned: "May cause permanent blindness". Or even a breakfast cereal which alerted you to the possibility of piles or vomiting attacks.

Nobody would buy them. And yet here's a product that makes absolutely no bones about the fact that it kills you - dead, so that your life insurance pays out, and your family has to face the future with only memories of you - without it apparently having any impact at all on sales.

What are we to make of this? I can see that, for a sceptic, it would be tempting to conclude it proves that this persuasive writing malarkey doesn't work. After all, if "buy this and die" doesn't get results, what possibly could?

But, not surprisingly, I have a counter-suggestion. Every day, I'd guess, a few smokers - perhaps just a dozen or so - do indeed pick a packet of fags, read "Smoking kills" and think, "OK, this is it. Today's the day I quit for good . . . "

Good persuasive writing can get results, but not until the reader is ready.

Hello, Laura and Ollie!

2007-04-02T16:46:00.000+01:00

I was pleased and fairly amazed to learn recently that my daughter and her boyfriend have been reading this blog semi-regularly at university.
On my daughter's part, there's obviously a bit of familial bias involved. But, actually, not that much: if you have children, you'll know that, after the age of about seven, they show very little interest in anything their parents say or do, unless it's of direct relevance to them.

So I guess Laura and Ollie must have found that at least some of what I've written here has a bearing, however minimal, on their lives as hard-working students of classics and philosophy respectively.

Why should that surprise me? It shouldn't really: I'm always saying that the principles of persuasive communication are relevant to just about anyone, regardless of what kind of work they do. But after roughly five years when it has often felt as if I've been talking to myself - or, perhaps, shouting into a hurricane-swept chasm - it's very good to hear a few faint echoes returning.

Language, not Lego

2007-03-30T16:18:00.000+01:00

Here's the line on the cover of a big law firm's graduate recruitment brochure, which I saw recently:

HANDS ON TO OPPORTUNITY

Of course, you can see what they were trying to do. Opportunity is the generic graduate recruitment promise: join us, and you'll soon be power-breakfasting with world leaders in exotic locations. And "hands on" was an attempt to be bit more specific; to convey that this particular law firm makes a point of giving even its most recent recruits real responsibility.

But, sadly, the result of combining these two components is meaningless. "Hands on to opportunity" is, simply, a phrase no one would ever utter; completely without force, resonance or the truthful ring of everyday speech.

Our language is infinitely malleable, and can be coaxed and moulded into all kinds of extraordinary shapes. It isn't a box full of building blocks that can be snapped together in any combination, to serve the writer's purpose.

This week I have been mostly watching cricket and thinking about punctuation

2007-03-28T12:04:00.000+01:00

I know I may sometimes give the impression of believing that punctuation is a waste of time; but nothing could be further from the truth. And watching the World Cup on TV reminded me that a while ago I came across two examples of commas serving a useful purpose, both of which oddly related to injured cricketers:

Gough hopes to be fit in time for the Ashes. "I want to play badly," he says.

Vaughan, said Fletcher, was progressing steadily.

In the first, of course, there should be a comma after "play" - unless Darren Gough was actually hoping to turn in a sub-standard performance, which seems unlikely.

In the second, which is perfectly correct, removing the commas would reverse the meaning of the sentence: Vaughan would be reporting on Fletcher's progress.

And it also occurs to me that, although spoken rather than written, the greatest ever cricketing misunderstanding could be said to have resulted from a missing comma. Put a comma after "Holding", and it's hardly funny at all:

The batsman's Holding the bowler's Willey.

Damn their journalistic eyes!

2007-03-23T11:01:00.000Z

Roughly six weeks until my book is published and The Independent has been running what I believe is known in the newspaper trade as a spoiler: a pre-emptive series of handy free pull-outs on how to be a better writer.

I'd love to be able to tell you that they are garbage. But it wouldn't be true; the pull-outs I've seen so far have been full of good stuff, very little of which I could actively disagree with. And, while I'm at it, I might as well admit that there are plenty of other places where anyone who wants to learn how to write better can turn for similarly sound advice and helpful hints. The Economist's online style guide is just one example: www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide

But I'm undaunted by the presence of so many apparent competitors in my marketplace. Why? Because they don't work.

Well, maybe I'd better qualify that just a little. My observation would be that, despite the existence of a pretty wide consensus on what good writing looks like, and the ready availability of decent quality teaching resources based upon that consensus, most people continue to write badly.

I could write a book explaining why. (Hang on, maybe I have.) But, very briefly, my explanation for this puzzling phenomenon is that all the writing guides I've ever seen issue a multitude of hints, advice and sometimes stern commands on how you should write without ever really explaining why.
More specifically, they fail to understand that good writing isn't about what appears on the page or screen, but what happens inside the reader's head.

Without this understanding - that's to say, a basic grasp of how the relationship between reader and writer works - you'll find yourself trying to follow rules that don't really make any sense to you. (Why is jargon so bad? And what, actually, is jargon? How plain can Plain English be before it becomes Dull, Uninspiring English? What's so terrible about passive verbs?)

Think of it like assembling a really complicated piece of flat-pack furniture. No matter how clear the instructions, you'll struggle to follow them if you've no idea whether you're making a wardrobe or a table. Or, for that matter, what a wardrobe/table looks like.

To become a better writer, you need to change the way you think about writing. And that, I hope, is what my book can help you do. Though I have to admit the Independent has a better sports section.

Proud moment

2007-03-20T15:00:00.000Z

I've just this morning received two advance copies of the book from the publishers. After such an astoundingly long gestation period, it's hard to believe that I've finally given birth. But there it is in the picture (if you can tear your eyes away from the crazy dishevelled character on the right): "Can I Change Your Mind? The craft and art of persuasive writing", published by A&C Black on 30 April, available for pre-order from Amazon for £6.59.

An audience of one

2007-03-14T16:34:00.000Z

The other day, I emailed a group of half a dozen friends, letting them know that unfortunately I wouldn't be able to make a meeting we'd planned. None of them replied.

It might look as if my so called friends don't much like me. But I don't think it was that. In fact, I'm pretty certain that the reason none of them wrote back to say "sorry you won't be there" was that I had addressed them as a group. Seeing five other names at the top of the email, each individual felt absolved from the responsibility to respond.

Good persuasive writing - the kind that aims to elicit a specific response and achieve a clearly defined result - always addresses an "audience of one".

Another severe case of Bolted-on Tone of Voice Syndrome.

2007-03-08T13:46:00.000Z

I'm sure sustainable fishing is a good thing, even if I'm not entirely clear what it involves. But I strongly object to the way Britain's Best Loved Retailer is telling us about it, for two reasons - the first of which may sound pedantic.

The idiom is used incorrectly. You don't believe something hook, line and sinker; you fall for it. The associations conjured up by the phrase are all to do with with naivety or gullibility. And, actually, that isn't a niggly, nitpicking objection: the familiar but misapplied phrase undermines the intended sincerity of the communication.

My second, more obvious cause for complaint is the complete redundancy of the second sentence. I suspect the brand communications team responsible would defend it on the grounds that it makes a dry, factual piece of information more engaging, by addressing the reader in a tone of voice appropriate to Britain's Best Loved Retailer.

But does it, really? Or is it just a laboured play on words that adds nothing but an air of facetious self-congratulation? You decide.

Another Blair-related post. (Oh dear, am I starting to sound obsessed?)

2007-03-05T19:34:00.000Z

Picked up an anti-war leaflet in Gloucester Road on Saturday. I'm strongly opposed to war (well, this one, anyway), so I should have found myself nodding in agreement, as I read. But, in fact, the writer managed to lose my sympathy in the opening sentence - by referring to the prime minister as "BLIAR".

Don't misunderstand me; my contempt for Tony Blair, in his role as the USA's staunch warrior ally, is bottomless. And I don't have much time for those quibbling arguments about whether or not knowingly using dodgy evidence to support the case for war actually amounted to lying. (In fact, with Mr Blair, I pretty much go along with that old anti-politician gag: "How can you tell when they're lying? Just look and see if their lips are moving.")

But, while it's a happy accident that his surname very nearly accuses him of mendacity, that doesn't make BLIAR an effective piece of persuasive writing.

What's wrong with it? The obvious answer is that it sounds like a playground insult - and, as such, it trivialises the writer's case. With hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, those of us who believe the war was both illegal and a foreseeable catastrophe, surely have a duty to argue our case powerfully, soberly and without descending to the level of "your mum's a fat slag, and your dad's a pooftah".

But it isn't just a matter of taste. What I really object to about BLIAR is that it won't change a single mind. Insults never do. They may give a warm feeling to others who feel as outraged or angry or fearful as the writer; but they will usually have precisely the opposite effect on anyone a little less certain what they think or feel about the subject in question.

When you're really angry, icy cool courtesy is your only chance of winning the argument.

Yoga: two extreme positions

2007-02-27T06:58:00.000Z

In the book, I related a little anecdote about looking for a yoga class, to help me fight the increasing inflexibility of middle age, and coming across an ad in my local post office window, headed like this:

YOGA WITHOUT TREE-HUGGING

For me, I commented, this sounded perfect, since I've always been a bit suspicious of forms of physical exercise which oversell themselves on the basis of their supposed spiritual benefits.

Today, in a different shop window, I came across an ad for another yoga class, headed:

HATHA YOGA - AS A MINDFULNESS PRACTICE

Now, I wouldn't go to that class unless you stunned me with a tyre iron, bound me hand and foot, and carried me there trussed under a pole. But, of course, that doesn't make the ad a worse piece of persuasive writing: just one aimed at a reader as different from me as it's possible to imagine.

And no, since you ask I haven't actually enrolled in the non-tree-hugging class yet. But I'm going to, soon. Honestly.

Oh y-s, oh y-s, oh y-s, y-s, y-s, Y-S!

2007-02-20T14:37:00.000Z

Bizarre. An ad in today's Indy for a "feminine massager" guaranteed to bring women to "org--m" in 60 seconds.

What were they thinking, substituting those two litle dashes for the missing letters? Did they imagine that this would somehow make the ad less potentially offensive? And if so, to whom? Surely they didn't seriously believe that the kind of people who want electronic assistance to achieve sexual satisfaction in a minute flat would come over all Mary Whitehouse when confronted by the word orgasm?

C-me, c-me, that would be absurd.

Let's hear it for 300million . . .

2007-02-15T18:38:00.000Z

As you'll have noticed if you are one of my three semi-regular readers, this blog is now far more beautiful than before. For that, I have to thank my brilliantly talented friends at 300million, London's most intelligent graphic design consultancy.

They have also created an elegantly simple website for the book itself, which I hope will persuade literally dozens of people to part with the very reasonable £6.59 that Amazon are asking for my life's work. If I knew how to add web links into posts like this, I would send you straight to www.canichangeyourmind.co.uk and then on to www.300million.com

Sadly, I don't. But maybe by the next time you drop in here, some kind web-literate person will have explained it to me.

Thanks again, Dom, Nick, Martin and the rest of the 300million gang.

An early contender for Most Hateful Use of Words, 2007.

2007-02-14T18:41:00.000Z

Not long ago, I gave Barclays a sharpish jab in the solar plexus for labelling their cash machines "holes in the wall". But this time, they've really gone too far.

They'd like us to pop into one of their branches and open a current account or take out a personal loan. But instead of giving us any reasons why we should, they have decided to win us over with "humour".

One problem, though: it isn't even remotely funny. And if they're hoping we may groan indulgently at the rubbish "joke", and perhaps even give them a bit of credit for not taking themselves too seriously - well, forget it. Banks rarely treat their customers with any noticeable indulgence, so why should they expect any favours from us?

Just face up to it, Barclays and other banks: trying to sound all warm and cuddly and human is never going to work for you. At least, not until you start showing some faint signs warmth, cuddliness and humanity in the way you behave. For some reason, the words "hell", "over" and "freezes" spring to mind.

My friend Phil on "Leadership"

2007-02-12T11:01:00.000Z

One of the good things about blogging, I'm belatedly coming to realise, is that, instead of writing it all yourself, you can get other people to do the hard work for you. So today, I'm handing over to my friend Phil, who's been going to job interviews lately, and hasn't been over-impressed by the way potential employers use the English language . . .

“Leadership” seems to be particularly important to employers who want to give you responsibility but no power. “You’ll be the unboss of business architecture. You’ll be accountable for other people's mess. You can use your charisma to influence them. However, you have no control over the objectives that their bosses set for them. Let’s face it: they’re going to look after their bonuses, first.”

Nicely nailed, Phil. I wonder if you'd like to have a crack at "Empowerment" for us, next?

Straplines. Saying nothing much to no one in particular . . . fast!

2007-02-01T21:35:00.000Z

I had a 10am meeting in London the other day. I didn't want to be late, so I caught the 7am train - due in to Paddington at 8.40. Just outside Reading, it stopped and didn't move for half an hour. Then it trickled forwards half a mile or so, and stopped again for 20 minutes. No announcements were made, and no member of the on-board team showed his or her face. Eventually, we limped into Paddington at about 10.20, a symmetrical 100 minutes late.

So I had plenty of time to ponder the rail company's corporate strapline:

ABC Trains. Transforming Travel.

Gobsmacking, really. What were they on what they came up with that? How, conceivably, did a highly paid team of communications professionals convince themselves that such a ludicrously overblown claim could - in the context of a rail company desperately struggling to bring its services up to a barely acceptable standard - be anything other than an insult to their poor frustrated and furious passengers?

Transforming travel? For me, that morning, they would have been pushing their luck if their strapline had read: “Trying Very Hard to be Slightly Less Crap”.

Of course, not every strapline is as breathtakingly ill considered as "Transforming Travel". But the vast majority are pretty dreadful, and there’s a simple reason why. Straplines, by their nature, are unable to observe the two most important principles of good persuasive writing: know who your reader is; and what result you are trying to achieve.

Designed to be plastered everywhere - on ads, sales literature, staff induction manuals, promotional coffee mugs - a strapline addresses the entire world. And what is the entire world supposed to think, feel or do after reading the strapline? Er, nothing specific, really. The only real job of a strapline, in the vast majority of cases, is to fill that little bit of space below the logo.

Straplines say what the company (or brand) wants to say about itself, not what the reader may be interested to know or willing to believe. They try to be all things to all readers, and inevitably, they fail.

But at least they’re only three or four words long.

What's wrong with this sentence?

2007-01-26T11:33:00.000Z

Here's a sentence written recently by one of my favourite political columnists:

"The left too has a heritage it may have forgotten, a libertarian, anti-statist tradition dating back to the 19th century."

And I'll answer the question above straight away: I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But, if I'd written it, I would probably have punctuated it a bit differently. (Commas on either side of "too" and a semi-colon after "forgotten", since you ask.)

My point? That, despite what disciples of St Lynne of the Truss may tell us, punctuation is very largely a matter of taste and judgement. Did I stumble over the writer's meaning because he failed to use the same dots and squiggles as I would have done? Not for a second. Would the sentence be any easier to read punctuated my way? Almost certainly not.

For persuasive writers, the only cast iron rule - to be enforced with "zero tolerance" - is that every mark we make on the page or screen must make it more rather than less likely that the reader will be won round to our point of view.

12 steps to better, more persuasive writing (if you can't be bothered to read the book).

2007-01-19T18:19:00.000Z

Publication is getting closer, at last. And I've just written an article for a management magazine explaining why every organisation can benefit from learning to use words more persuasively. But, to make the piece a bit more user-friendly, I also included a few handy hints on how to communicate more effectively in writing. Here they are:

1. Start with a bang
Remember, if your opening doesn't give a busy person a compelling reason to read on, he or she almost certainly won't.

2. Splurge, then edit
Don't agonise over every word. Just get it all down, fast - then go back and cut and shape and polish.

3. Write as you'd speak
Don't be chummy or jokey, but do write as if you are talking, articulately and knowledgeably, to another intelligent person.

4. Use the "y" word
Is there at least one "you" in your first few sentences? If not, your reader will be feeling neglected.

5. Never utilise elongated verbal formulations.
And avoid clichés like the centre of town on a Saturday night.

6. Read it aloud
Hearing what you've written is a foolproof way to spot clunking phrases or convoluted sentences.

7. Is it a good idea to use questions?
Yes.

8. Put a figure on it
"Customers in 37 countries" not "customers all over the world".

9. Go for a walk
When the words won't come, leave it and come back later. In my experience, it always does the trick.

10. How does it look?
Make things easy for your reader: break it up with headings; pull out key quotes; include a bullet point summary.

11. Don't just spellcheck
Give it a proper read-through. No point getting the spelling right if you've used the wrong worm.

12. Never stop editing
. . . until you finally hit "print" or "send".

According to Voltaire. . .

2007-01-15T08:33:00.000Z

". . . the secret of being a bore is to tell everything". And I couldn't agree more. Except that I might phrase it, "The secret of being a bore is not knowing how to edit."

Hunting out dishonest language

2007-01-11T18:17:00.000Z

I don't feel particularly strongly about fox-hunting, though, in general, I'm opposed to pleasures that depend on inflicting non-consensual pain. But I was quite seriously agitated by the Countryside Alliance car-sticker I saw earlier:

"FIGHT PREJUDICE, FIGHT THE BAN!"

Of course, you can see what they were trying to do: reach out to the not-strongly-committed (people like me, in fact), by making their preferred rural pastime a civil liberties issue. "OK," they wanted us to feel, "I may not really be in favour of hunting, but only a bigoted animal rights fanatic would want to ban it, and deprive country people of their age-old right to ride to hounds". But it all falls down on their hateful use of the word prejudice.

Prejudice is popping a dog turd through your neighbour's letter-box because his skin is a different colour from yours. It's daubing a swastika on a synagogue. It's assuming that every dark-complexioned young man with a rucksack is a terrorist. It most emphatically isn't questioning the right of the county set to pursue a "sport" that a very large body of public and expert opinion believes to be cruel and barbaric.

It's dishonest communication, and it won't work. Not a single mind will be changed by that slogan. By adopting what we might call the Martin Luther King defence, the hunting lobby have made a mockery of their own case.

Missing cat? Missed opportunity.

2006-12-29T13:41:00.000Z

I wonder how many "poster cats" have ever been found trapped in a neighbour's garden shed? Very few, I suspect. In fact, I'd guess that 99 out of 100 never nick the chicken from their owners' fridges again.

So you might say that the words on posters like the one above don't really matter. But I'd disagree. For me, every word counts. Always. And, in this case, I'd suggest that any of the following suggestions would be more likely than "MISSING CAT" to grab a passer-by's attention, and - just perhaps - persuade him or her to keep his or her eyes open for a feline resembling the mug-shot:

OUR CAT IS LOST!

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR CAT?

PLEASE HELP US FIND JOSH.

COME HOME JOSH, ALL IS FORGIVEN!

Of course, it probably wouldn't make any difference to the ending of the story. The chances of poor old Josh returning home safely would only be very marginally improved (say 2% rather than 1%). But writing persuasively is about using the right words to increase the likelihood of achieving the result you want - even when, as in this case, it's the longest of long shots.

Dear Mr Blair, please resign today, yours sincerely, Lindsay Camp.

2006-12-18T13:27:00.000Z

Every day, I write to the prime minister urging him to resign. I don't want to bore him, so I try to write something a little different each time (joke: the Downing St website receives 6 zillion emails for Mr Blair a day - none of which, I'm quite sure, he ever personally reads). But the basic message is always the same: the Iraq catastrophe has destroyed your credibility for ever; without trust, you are a liability to the Labour Party and the country; go now, for god's sake, go now.

A pointless exercise, you may be thinking. But I couldn't disagree more strongly. In fact, this is one of the rare occasions when I'm 100% certain that what I write will achieve the desired result. Because a day is sure to come - some time in June, if the pundits are to be believed - when I will email Mr Blair, and he will indeed resign.

The "unstoppable" Kevin Pietersen?

2006-12-12T18:15:00.000Z

Here's an ad in today's paper for an expensive solar-powered wristwatch that never needs a new battery. Under a picture of the cricketer Kevin Pietersen, the headline reads:

UNSTOPPABLE. KEVIN PIETERSEN IS. SO IS IS HIS XYZ WRISTWATCH.

And, oh look, in the sports pages of the very same paper: "KP Pietersen b SK Warne 2."

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the mighty (and unquestionably English) KP. But unstoppable he ain't. Except on the rare occasions when they are not out at the end of the innings, even the greatest batsmen get "stopped" every time they play. So the comparison is, frankly, dumb.

Perhaps you think I'm being a bit literal-minded. But why shouldn't I be? If the advertisers can't be bothered to make a plausible link between their product and the person endorsing it, they can't expect me to pretend I haven't noticed. And, without such a link, my only response to the ad is to wonder how much they are paying KP to appear in their ads.

Hang on, what about this . . .

BRILLIANTLY TALENTED, BUT A BIT PRONE TO TAKING RIDICULOUS RISKS AND THROWING HIS WICKET AWAY. KEVIN PIETERSEN IS. SO IS IS HIS XYZ WRISTWATCH

No, on second thoughts, that wouldn't work either.

19th dishwasher breakdown

2006-12-06T12:06:00.000Z

Our dishwasher is entering its dotage and recently, I've noticed that it doesn't actually wash dishes very well any more. I suspect we'll have to replace it soon, but I guess it's possible that I could get it fixed for fifty quid or so, and squeeze another three years' service out of it. So today, I looked in Yellow Pages.

Four densely pages of ads under Electical Appliances Repairs. One - quite a small one - jumped out at me:

IS IT WORTH REPAIRING?

Congratulations, A E Horder Limited of Gloucester Road, Bristol. Your persuasive words, which showed a perfect understanding of what was going through this reader's mind, have won you my business. I wonder if you can get someone round here tomorrow morning?

So how will Souped-Up Astra Guy respond to this?

2006-11-30T18:40:00.000Z

Actually, I set out to snap a "baby on board" sticker - but I came across this first, and I think it may be even more nauseating.

Worse still, from our point of view, it's a disaster as a piece of persuasive writing. To understand why, we need - as ever - to consider the reader and, first, the intended result.

It's possible, I suppose, that some people put these stickers in their car windows for no other reason than to make the unhappily childless feel completely terrible. But, in most cases, we must assume the aim is to persuade other drivers to exercise special care in the vicinity of the vehicle carrying this precious cargo.

So who is being addressed? Logic suggests that it must be the more reckless and antisocial kind of driver; the (usually) young male in the souped up Astra GTi who, especially when lagered up, is more likely than anyone to careen into the side of the family MPV, with tragic consequenes.

And what are the chances that Souped-up and Slightly Pissed Astra Guy will respond to this message: "A baby? Bless! Time I mended my mended my ways, and started to drive considerably more carefully."

Not good, I'd suggest. "Tiny person on board"? You might as well drive around with a sticker saying, "Smug middle class driver. Feel free to cut me up at the lights."

Time to take climage change seriously. The Clangers say so.

2006-11-24T18:38:00.000Z

Oliver Postgate is a worried man. As you may have noticed, the creator of some of our best loved children's TV shows, has been running a series of ads in national newspapers and magazines, warning us of the perils of climate change.

In many ways, it's an admirable thing to do. He clearly feels passionately on the subject, and he must have spent a fortune on the advertising space. But I'm afraid that, in terms of the persuasive effect of his ads, he's wasting his money. Not because they are badly written: the arguments are over-heated (appropriately enough, you may feel), but quite well expressed.

No, the problem lies in the bottom right corner of the ads - where, in the place conventionally occupied by the client's logo, we see a small pink woolly long-nosed creature, under which runs the line: "Sponsored, anxiously, by THE CLANGERS".

In persuasive communication, provenance matters. As readers, one of the first questions we ask (consciously or unconsciously) as we read is: who is telling me this? And this leads directly follow-up questions like what do they stand to gain? And why should I believe them?

If we want to be informed and warned about global warming, we might turn to George Monbiot in The Guardian. Or visit Friends of the Earth's website. Or go to Google and search a billion learned and not-so-learned sources. But it's pretty unlikely that we'd think of consulting a knitted toy.

So nice try Mr Postgate, but no cigar. The characters you've created have entertained millions of children, and no doubt made the world a better, happier place. But saving the planet? Not even Bagpuss could manage that.

How the words we use betray us, part 132

2006-11-16T18:30:00.000Z

The other day I read a letter on a problem page from a woman whose partner had recently left his wife and children, to be with her.

Not content with having won her man, she felt powerfully aggrieved by his insistence on continuing to give a large chunk of his income to his first family - money she felt he should be spending on her and her children by an earlier relationship.

What's more, she had a clinching argument: her new partner's ex-wife was a professional woman with "ample funds" at her disposal.

Ample funds? How, precisely, is that different from "enough money"?

Usually, the reason for using this kind of language is transparent: a desire, on the part of the writer, to make something sound impressive. ("We received in excess of 10 applications for the job", for example, sounds so much better than "more than 10" or even just "11".)

But here, I think, the motive was probably quite different. "Ample funds" sounds coldly formal. "Enough money", in contrast, has an everyday ring to it that brings to mind - well, the opposite of having enough money. Kids going to school in shoes that don't fit. A woman sitting with her head in her hands, wondering how she's going to pay the electricity bill. That kind of thing.

I think that, quite unconsciously, she wrote "ample funds" to insulate herself from the pain she knew she was partly responsible for causing. I'm pretty sure it didn't work, though.

Picture the scene: a harlot is sitting on the back of a fearsome beast . . .

2006-11-09T15:36:00.000Z

OK, so it didn't succeed in persuading me to leave the paths of unrighteousness. But, as an example of how to write an opening sentence that compels you to read on, it would be very hard to improve on the leaflet thrust into my hands by two fresh-faced Jehovah's Witnesses, the other day. (See above.)

Hole in the wall? Pah!

2006-11-07T15:13:00.000Z

Every time I see this I shudder with loathing, and I thought it might be useful to explore why.

The obvious persuasive writing crime being committed here is that, as readers, we feel patronised. "Hole in the wall" is a nickname; and, in part, it reflects a degree of warmth. Broadly speaking, we like cash machines; they are one of the few bits of modern technology that just about everyone (except my mum) has come to accept as an indispensable part of everyday life. On the other hand, we don't much like banks - which is why, like most nicknames, this one also conveys a hint of disrespect. (We know that banks themselves refer to ATMs, which sounds much more technological and important.)

So, in deciding to adopt "our" terminology as their own, this particular bank is manifestly trying to ingratiate itself with us; like the teacher who learns that he is known throughout the school as Old Fishface, and henceforward introduces himself by that nickname to every new class he teaches.

And, anyway, why have a sign at all? No other bank does. They give us credit for knowing that, when we see a machine with a screen and a digital keypad outside one of their branches, its purpose is almost certainly to dispense crisp new currency - rather than to order a pizza or access an online computer dating service.

Patronising and redundant: two more reasons why I'll never throw in my lot, financially speaking, with the Hole in the Wall Gang.

Why teenagers talk loudly on their mobiles in so-called quiet carriages.

2006-11-01T17:17:00.000Z

Of course, it's not just teenagers who do it. But when the offender is over the age of 25 or so, the explanation isn't very interesting: anti-social tosser pretty much covers it. With younger miscreants, though, I think there's a bit more going on.

My children's generation (21, 19 and 14, thank you for asking) have grown up with mobile phones. They're umbilically attached. Using their mobiles isn't something they do, it's part of who they are. They talk on their mobiles (or text or download clips from YouTube or gamble or check how their shares are performing on them) at all times, whatever else they may be doing.

As a result, they are simply unable to imagine how anyone could possibly object to hearing someone else talking on their mobile. Of course, they see the signs telling them that they are in a quiet carriage and asking them to refrain from mobile phone use; but, to them, the concepts involved in this communication are so outlandishly bizarre as to be utterly unintelligible. Don't talk on your mobile here? You might as well put up a notice reading "Stucco, fish, wimple", and expect them to undersand how they should respond.

However well we use words, sometimes we may have to accept that the person we want to reach just isn't receptive to what we have to say.

Just perfect

2006-10-26T16:24:00.000+01:00

I'm just back from a few wet-but-enjoyable days in Devon, and I thought I'd share one of my holiday snaps with you. Because, in its unpretentious way, the sign you see here is a perfect piece of persuasive writing.

By which I mean there's not a single word we could change or add that would increase the effectiveness of the communication, however hard we might try:

Caution, wet paint!

Wet paint - DO NOT TOUCH!

WATCH OUT! THIS PAINT MAY STILL BE WET.

Beware: wet paint. Possibility of damage to clothing.

Passers-by are strongly advised to avoid inadvertent contact with wet paintwork in the immediate vicinity of this notice.

See? And there's another more specific way in which this sign demonstrates the principles of good persuasive writing. It doesn't tell us what to do or think. Instead, it provides us with a piece of valuable information, and leaves us to supply the appropriate response.

Oh yes, and thanks for pointing out that reading this blog is now, indisputably, as interesting as watching paint dry.

Two little letters that guarantee I won't read on

2006-10-19T18:49:00.000+01:00

I'll read anything. No, really, I will. If I'm having breakfast, and there's nothing else to hand, I'll study the ingredients on the back of the cereal packet. But one thing I never read is anything headed with the letters MP. If it's by a serving (or recently retired) politician, I'm just not interested.

The obvious explanation is that I don't enjoy being lied to, but actually, there's a bit more to it than that. I could probably put up with bare-faced untruths; but what I can't stand is the crushing sense of predictability when politicians hold forth. Before you've read a word, you know precisely what they are going to say. Whatever the issue they are writing about, they know the party line, and the chances of their deviating from it are roughly comparable to those of Wayne Rooney announcing his intention to leave Manchester United, in order to study Renaissance Art at the Courtauld Institute.

Writing which holds no possibility of surprising or enlightening us gives us no reason whatever to read on. Not even those of us who are hopelessly addicted to the written word.

Joke

2006-10-11T18:24:00.000+01:00

I heard this today, and it made me laugh. And I'm including it here on the just-about-defensible grounds that good writers take pleasure in words, and the funny things they get up to . . .

Man walks into an Indian restaurant. Orders chicken tarka. Waiter mystified. Man explains, it's like chicken tikka . . . but 'otter.

No? OK, I'll make sure the next post is stony-faced serious.

Solutions, solutions, solutions, solutions . . .

2006-10-10T12:38:00.000+01:00

Pubs get persuasive . . .

2006-10-03T18:55:00.000+01:00

When I first started going to pubs, several hundred years ago, they gave very little away. As far as I can remember, the only information available to potential customers about what they could expect inside was basic in the extreme: a fine selection of quality ales; food served from 12 - 2.30 pm; that kind of thing.

But recently, publicans have got a lot more street-wise; and outside virtually every pub in town there's a blackboard or two telling you, at the very least, what's on the menu today and which major sports event you can enjoy on the giant plasma screen TV.

And I'm interested to note that now it's gone one step further, with pubs like the one just down the road from me experimenting with pure "brand advertising": communications with potential customers that provide no factual information, but attempt instead to convey a flavour of the boozer's distinctive character. (A place, in this case, where drinkers can expect to be assailed with whimsical trivia by the cheery bar-staff, apparently.)

I'm not crazy about this particular example, which seems a little too "we're all mad here, we are" to me. But I certainly find it more appealing than the sign below, which appears in the window of another pub close to where I live; one where I certainly won't be lifting a noggin and sharing a joke with my jovial host any time soon.

Apostrophes that matter and apostrophes that dont

2006-10-03T18:21:00.000+01:00

I'm always saying that, for persuasive writers, what's "correct" depends quite a bit on context: who is communicating with whom, and where and when the communication is taking place. And here's a good example.

I'm not too concerned about the missing apostrophe above, which appears outside the vet's surgery round the corner from where I live. (As long as he can put a geriatric hamster out of its misery, that's good enough for me.) The one below, on the other hand, bothers me quite a bit: the staff car park in question is at my daughter's school.

The elephant is dead: official

2006-09-28T18:43:00.000+01:00

The elephant in the room, that is. Remember how fresh and clever it sounded, the first time you heard it? So fresh and clever, in fact, that it probably took you half a second or so to make any sense of it . . . ah yes, the big and important thing that, for whatever reason, nobody can bring themselves to mention, despite its glaringly obvious and unignorable relevance to the matter in hand.

It doesn't sound quite so good any more, does it? For the simple reason that, over the last year or two, we've all heard it several thousand times.

Of course, that doesn't mean that this phrase no long conveys the meaning above. On the contrary, it works better than ever in that respect: use it and everyone will immediately understand what you intend to communicate.

But that's precisely the problem. Because the value of the elephant in the room was all in that half second's hesitation; the momentary interval when your brain was engaged in scanning that unfamiliar combination of five words, searching for meaning - before successfully supplying it.

Much of the time when we write, we want to convey our meaning as quickly and easily as possible. But not when we're aiming to add verbal colour. Then, we actually need to baffle the reader - albeit very briefly - in order to provide them with a moment of slightly delayed gratification.

Over-familiarity kills that possibiliy, as dead as - well anything but a dodo.

So can you judge a book by its cover?

2006-09-27T17:40:00.000+01:00

The publishers are still tinkering with the cover design, and I'm lobbying for a more vibrant shade of red, but this is roughly what the book will look like when it's published early next year. Between now and then, I'll be trying to use this blog to start a conversation around the book's key theme: that every word we use when we write can make a difference to the success of the communication. And after Can I Change Your Mind? appears, I'm hoping that conversation will continue here.