By the end of the first sentence, most customers have guessed the sandwich is expensive. By the end of the second, they’re wondering what LunchTown could be trying to hide. Halfway through the third, they’re so annoyed by the non-clarifying explanations that they’ve already decided to try the taco shop next door instead.
You can probably recall a dozen exchanges like this from your own life. Airline customer service agents, government spokespeople, nonprofit fundraisers—they’re all masters (or at least frequent practitioners) of the buzzword-laden anti-answer.
So why are so many organizations afraid of giving straightforward responses to simple questions?
At the risk of stating the obvious: it’s because they think being honest won’t reflect well on them. The sandwich is expensive; the product is a dud. The project that took forever didn’t amount to anything in the end. It’s embarrassing to put things so bluntly, so you hide the real headline in a dense block of text and hope people’s eyes glaze over.
Unfortunately, sooner or later the truth tends to come out anyway. And by that time, the organization has lost both the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to cushion the blow.
If your sandwich costs $25, then you’re selling a very pricey sandwich. There’s no amount of flowery, sensitive language that will change that. But if you have the guts to answer the customer’s question directly, then you’ve not only demonstrated your honesty, you’ve also opened a window for persuasion.
Maybe your sandwiches are expensive because you’re providing top-notch health insurance for your team and free meals for your disabled neighbors. Maybe half the proceeds of every sale go to saving whales, educating children, or protecting rainforests.
Whatever the specifics might be, maybe you have a good reason for telling people something they’d rather not hear.
Is that going to convince every person who walks in the door to pay $25 for a pastrami on rye? Of course not. But it’s almost certainly going to do better than a rambling lecture about Our Values that’s indistinguishable from a hundred other lectures people have already heard from a diverse cast of bullshit merchants.
The most nuanced message is often not the most effective one. Sometimes getting straight to the point is the best way to deliver “bad news.” There will always be a percentage of people who aren’t willing to hear it in any form—but you might be surprised how many appreciate a rare dose of honesty in our grift-ridden world.
Because the last word is rarely the end of the conversation.
Much like penguins, we enjoy bringing you little gifts to show we care:
The LGBTQ advocacy organization Equality Federation is hiring a Vice President of External Affairs—fully remote, $170k a year plus a lot of benefits.
If a survey of 800 HR leaders that found 9 in 10 actively avoid hiring recent college graduates can teach us anything, it’s that commissioning a survey which confirms an influential demographic’s gut instincts is always a good way to make headlines!
The 2024 word of the year was “rawdog,” and we can only imagine what horrors await in 10 months :)
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Public communications is unlike molecular biology in many ways, but we’d like to suggest the most obvious difference is the level of linguistic complexity required.
Today, even a glowing review in the New York Times doesn't move the needle that much. Getting people's attention takes a more creative approach. And it all hinges around owning the means of (content) production.
Comms agencies that are good at their work tend to be curious and resourceful. We can’t pretend to be ignorant about the people and products we’re telling the public to trust. In all but the rarest cases, the agency knows what it wants to know. Business is never as pure or idealistic as we might want it to be. It does have ethical boundaries, though, and these are especially important at inflection points like the one we’re in now.
