Ralph Waldo Speaks on Copycatism

"The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity."~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Doesn’t he though? I always tell my writing and presentation skills students that they won’t go wrong if they assume their readers/listeners are intelligent adults paying attention because they want to add to their knowledge. Communicate under that premise, and you will gain respect.

Serial copycat abusers of our mother tongue are anathema to that audience. As I noted a few months ago, mindlessly inserting “going forward” and “due diligence” and “most unique” risks irritating your readers and listeners, which changes the context in which they evaluate your thinking. Remember: That’s you on that email or memo, and if you’re dealing with a new contact, remember this as well: You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

So, to the third installment of the Language Hall of Shame:

• Low-hanging fruit -- When this one pops up I’m tempted to make eye contact with someone else in the room and share a knowing grin. But let’s try to be serious. Here’s the day-to-day “business world” interpretation of low-hanging fruit: When faced with a challenge, you do the easy stuff first. So how about instead: “Let’s confront this problem one step at a time…”? I recall attending a planning meeting where “low-hanging fruit” entered the discussion early and was repeated eight times by four or five other adults. Apparently, all it takes is one brief utterance to turn otherwise bright people into language lemmings.
• Defining moment -- I take that to mean the one crucial stage or decision that lets us know whether we’re facing success or failure. If so, then by its very definition, the phrase must be used sparingly. Yet it sounds so precise that we overuse it because we feel authoritative and insightful. But how many “defining moments” can there be? Pile up too many of them and they lose their impact while you look shallow and unimaginative.
• Rgds and tks -- Whoa, you must be one extremely busy and important executive if you can’t find the time to write out “regards” and “thanks.” And lest I forget that, tks for reminding me of your stature every time you send an email. Maybe, as the poet William Wordsworth said, the child really is “father of the Man,” and we should start aping the shorthand that our brilliant offspring use when they “text” each other.

While I’m at it, a word about the etiquette of writing emails: Why are we no longer starting them with a proper salutation, such as “Hi, Bob” or “Good morning”? When you pick up a phone for a business call or run into someone at work, don’t you usually start with a “Hi, Bob” or a “How are you?” What is there about email that gives us permission to be abrupt, even rude?

The Local Media And Your Message

I’ve been thinking a lot about President Obama and the press, particularly in light of the drastically shortened “news cycle” that comes with all-news-all-the-time cable TV, the blogosphere and influential online news organizations like Politico and the Huffington Post. As Ken Auletta notes in The New Yorker, just six short years ago, when George W. Bush was finishing his first term in the White House, there was no Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, and dozens of regional newspapers and television stations were highly profitable.

Now the Washington press corps barely has time to scare up some “he said/she said” quotes to get two sides of a rapidly developing story that may owe its existence to a Politico blog at 6 a.m. that day. When I covered aviation and defense in DC in the 1980s, there always seemed to be time for a “think piece” (also known as “thumb suckers” or “navel gazers” to describe their supposedly contemplative nature) from beat writers at the major papers. But now Auletta quotes top Obama aide David Axelrod, who used to write for the Chicago Tribune: “There are some really good journalists [in DC], really superb ones. But the volume of material they have to produce just doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for reflection.”

For me, that’s the real danger of where we find ourselves when it comes to national civic dialogue. But I don’t know how you slow things down. In the hothouse atmosphere of Washington politics, it’s all about who won and who lost and the cable TV ratings bonanza to be gained from pumping up and cheering for the side that’s got even “moderate” senators like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins from my state voting with the right wing of their party.

How is that reflected in the marketplace of ideas outside the Washington Beltway? The answer, I think, is that it may not be, despite the cry from media critics that the Fourth Estate (the national incarnation, at least) has descended into celebrity- and conflict-obsessed “infotainment.” If you’re running for local or state office this year, as are some of my former media training clients, you may find that reporters are more attuned to pocketbook issues such as property and sales taxes and education funding, and less interested in baiting their opponents.

What’s more, you won’t find the likes of Fox’s Glenn Beck or his adversary Keith Olbermann at MSNBC on the local scene, in good part because the network affiliates have the ground covered. There just isn’t enough personality-driven news to generate all that semi-hysterical bleating and heavy-handed sarcasm and finger pointing.

What you will find are myriad opportunities to get your marketing message out at little or no cost. Community newspapers and regional TV stations know that their profits -- even survival in some cases -- depend on being relentlessly local. That means lots of space for your press releases (promotions at your firm, new products and services, awards, etc.) and events.

Last summer, I helped attract a local TV station to a “golf marathon” fundraiser aimed at setting up seven-week “camperships” for deserving kids. The hook was that each of the golfers had promised donors they’d play at least 100 holes, and they did. That made for some fine visuals and interviews with golfer after golfer about what it’s like to hit shot after shot after shot (“tiring, but worth it because it’s for the kids,” etc.). And now we’ve got a higher profile and a video to show when we start asking for golf marathon backers this summer.

But there’s more. We sent out a press release after the event and the state’s largest daily responded with a Sunday feature piece about the 90-plus-year-old son of the camp’s founder, which in turn was sent to camp alums who’ll be asked to kick in for the annual fund.

You can call that manipulating the press. As a former journalist, I call it a “good story.”

Thanks for all your email responses to my monthly newsletters.

Regards,
Dave

Rebirth of a Blog

Back and forth I’ve gone on all this “social media” business, and I’m a long way from making up my mind. Somehow the notion of “tweeting” hasn’t quite penetrated my thinking when it comes to serious and productive marketing. But I am reintroducing my blog. Why I let it slip I don’t know, but I do recall that it made for relaxed and stimulating conversation. Please join me at http://www.businesscommunications.wordpress.com, and react by sounding off on anything touching on business communications, presentation skills and writing skills, and all their promise and pitfalls. I'll continue to share what I know about the news media and how you can gain from press encounters, as well as writing and public speaking for success.