Acronyms Gone Wild (AGW)

OK folks -- this has got to stop somewhere. Some of us in marketing need to step back and review what acronyms are supposed to accomplish.

There is reason for using acronyms -- judiciously -- in technical fields where terminology is difficult or lengthy and will appear in a document often. A three-letter acronym is a considerable saving of space over a 25-letter subject phrase in a page-limited government proposal, where engineering style dictates that the subject be repeated at least several times on each page. 

Where acronyms do not need to be is where there is no complexity and no space limitation; where the intent is purely to try to give a technical flavor to something that ain’t.

“Content marketing” is filled with examples of that already:     you see CX and UX and CTA for the perfectly pronounceable and un-technical “customer experience,”  “ user experience,” and “call to action.” 

(Those “experiences” are an odd concept to begin with; often they posit a relationship to a company before the individual has bought the company's product. But wouldn’t it seem the customer's experience (the CX) happens only after he or she finds whether the product works or it doesn't and the customer service department is helpful or isn't? But that would be logic, not Content Marketing.)

So the acronym generator grinds on.

I have now seen the acronyms WOMM and UGC. Oddly, while they appeared in unrelated articles, they mean the same thing.  

The first appeared, unbidden, like a toupe in the punchbowl, in an article on a website called Econsultancy. This is a venue in which I’ve had disagreements before. Contributors there are concerned with furthering the idea of ”content marketing” and the industry grown up around it. This is something I’ve railed against in more than one previous post. Anyone who’s been listening, if there is anyone, will know I think it’s snake oil in new bottles, if I can mix a metaphor.

I have also noted in earlier posts my distaste for acronyms as a species, acquired over a dozen years in the defense/aerospace industry, where they run rampant and are invariably over-  and incorrectly used. Here, then, we have the worst case: the combination of acronym and “content marketing.”

The first phrase being acronym-ized is a well-established one often used in the past, that comes up exactly twice in the thousand non-technical-word article in which it was found. So how much has really been saved? Since it had to be written out the first of the two times to define the acronym, the author saved 19 characters in the whole article using WOMM instead of word-of-mouth-marketing. But look: we have another excuse for a glossary!

“UGC” is the discovery of another breathless article that reveals what it is, why it’s good, and how to create it and use it in marketing. It’s based on the premise that the marketer’s “content” will be so intriguing that people reading it will feel compelled to talk and write about it themselves. 

It's not that hard to get people talking, if you aren’t particular about the type of response you get. I myself have responded to marketers’ "content" and discussions about it. I’ve done it in the “Comment” sections of numerous websites. I’m doing it here.     But is this the kind of  user generated content -- the WOMM -- marketers really want? 

A Kind Word for Euphemisms

Euphemisms have their place. Maybe you don’t need to tell a     4-year-old what really happened to his puppy just yet. It’s a kindness.

“Enhanced interrogation”?  “Downsizing”?  They’re meant to spare feelings too. In these cases the feelings being protected are those of the speaker rather than the listener, but you can see where the intent is similar.

Each industry has its own expressions, and publishing has come up with a nifty one: “native advertising.” It amounts to inserting advertising into the editorial matter of a publication. Not sure where the name got its start, but parsing it out, I’d guess that saving “advertising” in the name was a way to attract advertisers, while the “native” part is calculated to make it sound healthful. Like “natural” prefaced to ingredients for all sorts of foods. 

It used to be that publishers and journalists were so concerned about even the appearance of conflict of interest that they maintained a “Chinese wall” between the department that wrote news and the department that sold advertising. No advertiser could ever be able to influence news coverage. If you didn’t keep that wall separating the editorial and advertising departments, your publication was considered to be prostituting itself.

 Well, not only have fallen publications been rehabilitated; respectable ones have joined the sisterhood. In a 180-degree turnabout in reasoning, the argument now goes that you’re not serving your readers if you’re not telling your advertisers’ stories.

I’ve written for a number of trade journals, but I’ve never been a full-time journalist, and I attended Business rather than Journalism school. Even so, I’ve always subscribed to the idea that advertising should be kept out of the editorial side. There’s enough persuasion going on already without slipping in more in the guise of reporting. Yes, there are federal regulations and industry codes of ethics that mandate transparency for the new format, but as we know, regulations are skirted regularly and ethics…ain’t what they used to be.

Maybe the worst part is, now reporters and editors --- the people formerly under almost Hippocratic Oath not to  do it -- are being conscripted to write the material. The argument for it is that, in business publications, for example,  they write about the companies in their industry regularly and so are in the best position to “go native” (while we’re talking in euphemisms).

Unarguable as far as it goes, but what happens when and if one of those reporters or editors has some negative news to report about one of the advertisers he or she’s been shilling for? The conflict of interest that’s been latent all along now becomes real. Where is his/her loyalty expected to lie? It’s the old “serving two masters” problem, and I haven’t heard that anyone has come up with an answer to that one yet.

My inclination is to bemoan the change, although practical considerations tell me I should celebrate it. I’m in the catbird seat: I can write  advertising that reads like journalism, and journalism slanted to persuade. But I still don’t like it.

(Belay that posting date up there by the title; this was ready on Sunday the 26th. 
I forgot to post it!)

Die Gedankenleiter

Can’t help myself; “Thought Leader” just sounds like it needs to be in German.

There has arisen a class of people christened “Thought Leaders.” I thought they had been anointed by LinkedIn because I keep running into them there, but apparently the term originated in a Booz and Company business magazine about 20 years ago. 

The information on origin is from a website called Mashable, which goes on to try to define what a Thought Leader is. Ultimately, after much conversation, for Mashable it comes down to "a Thought Leader has earned his or her title because that person's ideas have gone viral." Presumably the ideas can be good or bad as long as a lot of people see them. 

David Brooks does a much better job in a column in the New York Times of December 17, 2013. I subscribe to his version, or at least his attitude: he defines "Thought Leader" as “sort of a highflying, good-doing yacht-to-yacht concept peddler."

It’s very confusing. Why are some people in the group? What are the criteria for ordination? I see President Obama near the top -- what the president says is important -- and Sir Richard Branson,   a very inventive guy who’d be worth listening to.  But it falls off pretty quickly after that. 

I’ll allow for experts in fields I know nothing about and whom, accordingly, I don’t recognize. Call that a second  tier, as seen from my viewpoint, and it figures to be a big one. But it gets kind of hazy after that, for me, anyway. There seem to be hundreds, if not thousands of these people. And all with vital information I'm told I should want to hear.

I don’t buy it. I’ve run  into quite a few advice-givers on line by now, and most often what they have to say is a transparent attempt to put a twist on something old and present it as something new. It's especially prevalent in the marketing field. 

You also find Dueling Leaders. One marketing maven says you must use psychology and emotion to sell things to business buyers; another says using emotion to sell business-to-business is “an exercise in futility.” If you’re gullible enough to follow these guys, what are you supposed to do with that?   

The original Thought Leader didn’t have that problem. There was one party line. Everybody believed it. Or else. That’s thought leadership. You can almost hear the echoes from the big stadium. 

A Nibble on the Novel

  

After years of trying, on and off, to sell my novel to someone,       I suddenly have a sign of interest  -- and not from a publisher or agent. It’s from a movie-making company.

It happened more or less accidentally, the only way it could happen. The description of one of the writing assignment I bid for had the throwaway line at the end, ”We’re always looking for movie scripts.” I told them I had a novel, but if they’d like to make it into a movie I wouldn’t object.

As the novel had languished over the years, I had considered trying to convert it to other formats. I'd thought about a comic strip, but the problem there was that comic strips go on -- sometimes for years -- but my story had an ending.

After that I thought about a photonovella and tried the idea out on some graphics-type friends. That ran into a different kind of problem: these guys are so visually oriented I couldn't get them to read enough of it to see the potential. "Too many words." 

So, no luck with novel, comic strip, or photonovella; what was left? MOVIES!

To my surprise, my half-joking offer drew a response. I fired a synopsis off to the fellow who contacted me, a man named Victor (a good sign) with a rhyming last name (even better). 

Still better, I had long ago written a “cast of characters” for the novel describing the players and how I envisioned them. I’d never had occasion to use it before, but it seemed just right for a pitch to a movie-maker. All in all it wasn’t a professional package, and it’s not even a script, but I had to take the shot.

To my even greater surprise, I next received an email saying the material I sent would be read within a day or two and I would hear back almost immediately. Wow. That kind of speed and businesslike approach is unheard of in the freelance game. It’s enough to start you wondering if you're onto something really great or being drawn into some kind of scam.   

Abandoning myself to optimism -- I'm assuming it will take some doing to turn the novel into something you can make a movie with; it’s written first person and there’s a lot of what I guess you’d call ”internal dialog,” where the narrator is thinking things to himself. Not the best material for the silver screen. 

So I suppose much of my job, when they buy, will be to translate the internal stuff into dialog you can hear, or into action. I haven’t done that kind of work before, but I’ve been really close to the novel’s characters for a long time; I think they'll say and do the right things if I ask them 

Transparency

Anyone who thinks there isn’t enough “transparency” in the business world today should see the agreement and disclosure statement I received along with the debit card I applied for. You’ll note I said “see”; I didn’t say “read.”

The reason is that, in what they would probably call a victory for transparency, VISA sent more information than anyone, the most literate among us, could possibly absorb. 

For starters, the type is almost microscopic; I would estimate it at a 4 on the typographic point scale that rates one-inch-high type as 72-point. This mouse type, single-spaced, covers both sides of a sheet that folds out to 14 inches wide and 7-1/2 inches high. The disclosure from the bank itself with the same type runs an astounding 33 inches wide, and it’s an inch taller than the debit card piece. Word count is beyond estimating. But you want full disclosure? We’ll give you full disclosure.

This is a device I’ve seen also used by the utility company, in the enclosure that comes in every bill, informing you of their application for a rate increase. (Not the rate increase from last month; this is a new one.) Everything you need to know for your futile comment to the state Public Utilities Commission is there, but encoded in type so small and so lengthy that only the lawyers who wrote it can be sure of what it says. But it’s there; what’s your complaint, citizen?

There are consumer advocacy organizations and they have lawyers, too, so sometimes we get to hear what all those words really mean, and it’s usually bad news. The organization here in California has celebrated some victories, but whether such organizations can overcome the utility’s lobbying of the state agency over the long haul is a question. You’d think our side would win, considering the unfair advantage we seemingly have: we’re a whole group of people and the utility corporation is just one person. But what if he or she is dating someone on the Commission?  

A How-To-Write Post

  

Everyone and his brother on line feels qualified to give advice on how to write. Some call themselves “consultants,” others have been ordained “Influencers” by the Church of the Internet. Some aren’t even native English speakers, and it shows. I admire their spirit, but they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. I’ve been writing for a long time, but I’ve refrained from giving advice on the subject. Until now.

Walking home from my writing bench one day when I’d been particularly prolific -- I had roughed out four stories that day --     I had an epiphany. It’s what a microbiologist must feel when he finally isolates a virus he’s thought from time to time must be there but has never pinned down. I’d been writing this essay-kind of stuff all along without ever defining how I was doing it, but right then  I finally, actually, definitively realized the “how” of it, and I’m going to pass it along here, free.

It’s not like when you write advertising copy or a letter to a friend. For those you know what you have to say or want to say. This is different. You just write a sentence.

Just that simple. You write something -- anything -- that suggests the possibility that it could be interesting, even if you're not yet sure how. Then you let your life experience write the rest.

Write something you once did, a place you remember, someone you knew or something you heard them say, something you read    -- and let the fragments begin to come together. You’re assembling pieces  of a puzzle whose final form you don’t know yet. You find fragment 4 really belongs in paragraph 2, so you move it, and sooner or later -- could be much later, but it’s sudden when it happens --  suddenly, that last piece snaps into place, and you have the essay or article or, in this case, blog post. And you weren’t even trying to teach anyone anything.

Of course, the longer you've been around, the more of those puzzle pieces you can spread out on the floor and hold up against each other. And damned if something you did in 1995 doesn’t suddenly slot into something you heard last week. If you’ve never had that feeling, you’re missing something.

Maybe I’ll pass this along in an article on the Internet. Dozens of people publish hundreds of tips, hints, suggestions, and rules about how to write, but this is as good as any of them, if you’re old enough. With enough experience, you'd know things to write about that might actually be interesting to other people. With enough experience you won't be surprised to hear that not everything you write will be.   

Wild Bill and Ken

I said in a previous post that three good friends who had been in WWII were all named John. There were two others, not as close, but certainly friends, and I can’t leave them out. One was  named Bill and the other, Ken.

I thought of him as “Wild Bill.” We got to know each other when I worked for a business aviation company and he was the rep for a magazine we advertised in. Eventually he went on to publish his own magazine in that industry.

We had to be two of the unlikeliest friends anywhere. He was a brawling, hard-drinking Marine Corps fighter pilot, and I was -- me. He had an almost electric energy about him. At a business convention my wife watched him approach me when my back was turned, and she thought he was going to attack me. But it was just his normal intensity

I wrote to him once, years later, when I thought he was living in Vermont, but the mail was forwarded. I received an almost formally worded letter from Vero Beach, Florida. He was in his 60s by then, but still tough as nails, running on the beach every day with his Irish Wolfhound. He didn’t need to send a picture;    I could see that as clearly as I see this page. I’ve lost his address, but odds are against his still being alive anyway.-- not many of that era are. 

Ken had also been in the war, in the Pacific, and before that had ridden freight cars around the country, one of the army of unemployed men the Depression had cut adrift. Years later he would be amazed to see a boxcar roll by with the “KT” he had chalked on it.

He was a high school English teacher by the time I met him.        It was during our seven-year sojourn in the mountains near Yosemite National Park. It was redneck country, and he was a welcome exception to the locals. He once described to us watching a freshman buckaroo practicing how to spit, and in fact he taught in a school whose drinking fountains often clogged with chewing tobacco.

He found time to conduct an adult evening class for local aspiring writers, in reward for which he got to read a number of compositions beginning “And lo! An Angel spake…” One of my prouder moments from those years was confusing him with a piece of writing he puzzled over for a week because he thought it was too professional for that class.

He was well liked by the brighter students and I suppose tolerated for his war record by the ones who were just waiting to quit school and get on with the important stuff of drinking and riding their horses. Through it all Ken retained his even temperament, treating his students with  respect or forbearance, as each required.

The one story I ever heard him tell about the war was an intriguing one. Sweeping through an abandoned Japanese encampment, I think on Saipan, he found a magazine with a picture of a Caucasian woman under guard by what appeared to be a Japanese policeman. Not being able to read the Japanese text and preoccupied with more immediate problems, he discarded it. Only afterward did it occur to him to wonder if it could have been Amelia Earhart.