Brand language expert calls for post-recessionary words

A new language must be created for the different kinds of business that will emerge in the coming months, says John Simmons, director of brand language consultancy The Writer.

Writing in the forthcoming issue of Design Week, Simmons, author of ‘Twenty-six ways of looking at a blackberry: How to let writing release the creativity of your brand’, says, ‘The rethink we need should start and continue with businesses’ approach to language.

‘If you lined up those sorry bankers, the ones at the heart of the financial crash, you would find they all speak and write the most ridiculous form of business-speak.’

He adds, ‘The language of quantitative easing has to go and we need more qualitative stimulation in our words. We should use our words knowing that they matter. If we start to care more for them, they will help us more.

‘And if we use them with precision as well as imagination we’ll avoid sinking back into a world where the banal nostrums of [former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir Fred] Goodwin are treated as the wisdom of Nostradamus.’

Read Simmons’ comments in full in tomorrow’s issue of Design Week.

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  • Jonathan Baldwin November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    “Qualitative stimulation” and “banal nostrums”?
    Three words: Pot, kettle, black – or is he being ironic?

  • Russell Jones November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    Clear and concise are what messages need to be. This isn’t anything new, just increasingly important.

    And Jonathan, your three words are spot on.

  • Kieron Letts November 30, -0001 at 12:00 am

    The world would be a very boring place if we only read clear and concise messages.
    Give me a vibrant and interesting language that stretches my vocabulary. Well done for making me reach for the Thesaurus.

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