November 5, 2004
dinosaurspeak
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I wrote the preceding paragraph to illustrate the intellectual bankruptcy of what I call “Dinosaurspeak”. That rather sociopathic combination of being completely focused on customer benefit and yet completely selfish at the same time.
And yeah, if it doesn’t work on gapingvoid, it ain’t going to work on your product, either.
What is interesting to me is that this style of language was pretty universal only a few years ago. Sure, you had a few mavericks out there stirring things up, but most external business communication was pretty much stuck in firehose mode.
When markets become smarter and faster than the companies servicing said markets, language changes. Of course it does.
My question isn’t “how is it changing” (I already kinda-sorta know the answer to that one), but “why isn’t it changing faster?”
Any thoughts?
I know a guy who is a good example. I used to work for him, he was the marketing director of the company where I worked, and he was convinced that a good sales letter was one that contained lots of statistics, was devoid of first person and had a reading level of at least 11th grade. Problem was, our market was firefighters and policemen. I told him over and over that they don’t read his letters, but his ego was so enamored by how many statistics he could quote, that he thought it actually was persuading someone. Dinosaur, indeed.
Demi Moore’s law in action. The adapotion of new technology in advertising (in this case, language)is not moving as fast as the actual technology ( conversational speech). If I remember correctly Bhaskar Chakravorti says the intrinsic benefit to gettign real is huge. The lag can only come from witholders — that is, people who have hardened around what is familiar.
Watch them change, or watch them die.
Wow. I must subscribe now!
Er. Don’t be so Socratic
Tell us how that ad would read in the new market speak. More down to earth? More transparent about the relationship between the consumer and producer and less focused on trying to make it seem that it’s the best thing that ever happened to the consumer?
Here’s one reason why dinosaur-speak continues to exist:
Lazy journalists often copy dinosaur-speak directly from our press releases into articles. The text instantly goes from being unbelievable hype from a biased source — to being the excited view of a wise and impartial journalist.
The journalist could ring up our CEO to try to get quotes that aren’t in dinosaur-speak, but frankly it’s a lot easier for them to just copy the quotes and questionable assertions directly from our press release into the article. Our CEO is now fluent in dinosaur-speak, thanks to the training our PR people kindly arranged for all our senior management team.
A journalist could spend time checking the credibility of our statements, but then the press release might prove not to be newsworthy, and how the hell DO you find 100 pages of news every week for an industry magazine covering an industry where nothing of interest happens? The ‘journalists’ turn a blind eye to the dinosaur-speak; we feed them hype to fill their pages.
If you’re a $30k pa ‘journalist’, are you really going to want to rip into companies whose PR people source 70 per cent of your stories, get anecdotes for your articles, take you to lunch and give you freebies ‘to review’? If you do, they’re stop helping/bribing you.
Senior management are delighted to see their dinosaur-speak in the industry mags, the PR people are delighted to craft the dinosaur-speak for $100,000pa for 12 days work, and the journalists are happy to have PR companies do most of their work for them.
Here’s to dinosaur-speak, and the fools who believe it!
I guess the bottlenck isnt just the dumb old adversiting men though. Its also in many cases the advertiseing consumer. Its comfy being talked to in this old Kraft and Kellogs language. Not just as a kind of nostalgia: Tide ads and other perpetuators of dinosaur speak promise a world that is a kinder gentler place than it actually is, and ever was. That is, if you act/subscribe now.
Thanks for the comment! These cartoons are great! I’ve added you to my blogroll, so i can keep up with your antics and drawings:) They’re great.
Yeah, I have thoughts, but your blood HTML is broken.
Yeah, I have thoughts, but your bloody HTML is broken.
OK, so, reading that first paragraph was really scary. Then, I saw that you were intending it to be really scary, and it was OK.
So, that’s what I was talking about when I wrote this: http://truetalk.typepad.com/truetalk/2004/11/revisiting_clue_1.html
Stay loose, Paris will eventually be great. It’s very courageous of you to write about it not being exactly what you expected.
Dinosaur-speak.. spot on. There’s something so soulless, leaden and bland about it. I think it’s part of a culture in which the copy isn’t really written to satisfy the end-customer, just to flatter the client. And part of a culture in which “customer-centricity” is just another of those exciting ideas that eveyone talks about without really doing the work.
Your trackback link is broken — so I’ll comment.
Great post — I linked to yours at http://kinetic-energy.blogspot.com/2004/11/dinosaurspeak.html
However I just realised that this sort of dinosaurspeak is alive and well in the workplace. How many of your fellow workmates (including yourself) put on a different tone and language when speaking to senior management. Suddenly instead of being straight talking with firm views on the corporate issues of the day — we find ourselves in full approval and suck up mode.
Why isn
“Tell us how that ad would read in the new market speak.”
Easy answer, Firas. Read my blog every day and find out.
Every blog entry is an ad for gapingvoid. Of course it is.
“Tell us how that ad would read in the new market speak.”
Easy answer, Firas. Read my blog every day and find out.
Every blog entry is an ad for gapingvoid. Of course it is.
Now, the opinion on someone who has absolutely no clue about advertising…
That first paragraph feels like the written part in a soymilk ad. It’s so irritating it makes me feel like boycotting that brand and the magazine where I found the ad. Then I go to the supermarket and buy the cheapest or the least-known brand, thinking that the difference in price is due to the expensive brand spending more money in marketing. I don’t want to buy a label, I just want to buy the milk.
I guess not everyone in the supermarket thinks like me, but I wish they did.
All ad copy is masturbatory.
Seriously though, I would say the dinosaur’s are hanging on because they aren’t passionate about the art of marketing or sales. It’s one part laziness, one part apathy. Plus, those exclamation marks and cliches still work to varying degrees and according to the product.
All ad copy is masturbatory.
Seriously though, I would say the dinosaur’s are hanging on because they aren’t passionate about the art of marketing or sales. It’s one part laziness, one part apathy. Plus, those exclamation marks and clich
Yikes, sorry about the double posting.
Hugh asks: “Why isn’t it changing faster?”
Jeremy says: “I
Evelyn, I totally agree. Got any ideas on how to get the party started? How about you, Hugh?
I think the answer is relatively simple — it’s Pavlovian. The traditional marketing “dogs” are not being rewarded for a behavior change. Regardless of the blogdom’s insight into the new market, until there is a stimulus that forces an action that is reinforced by a reward, it will continue to be slow going.
So, until the market demands a real conversation by ignoring the current language/approach, the landscape will continue to be dominated by the language of the dino (dinoese?).
Likely, this is too simple of an explanation, but it seems easier to understand. So, our job is to continue to educate and infiltrate the mind of the market in order to create the stimulus/reward mechanism that will accelerate the change.
By the way, Hugh. After reading your “How to be creative” manifesto, I decided to do something meaningful with changing the world. My blog, http://bigchieftablet.blogspot.com/ is a very nascent attempt to create a clearinghouse for the thousands of conversations that occur each day about poor product performance or poor customer service experiences. These blog conversations are largely unheard by the people who need to hear them the most — the companies that sell the products and services.
My blog is intended to find and publish these comments. Hopefully, as more and more experiences are published, the offending companies will begin to take notice of the site and use the site as a place to hear the most important comments they will ever get from a customer — complaints.
Of course, any company that really understands the blogdom can do the same thing, but at this time, it’s unlikely they are thinking about this avenue.
So, give a brother some props and throw me onto your linklube. Trying to change the world without help is a bit of a challenge. Even a wolf hunts in a pack when food is scarce.
why isn’t it changing faster??
well, to extend your metaphor, maybe we need to generate some kind of massive extinction event…
here’s a fun mind game for you to play with.
imagine what would happen to the world of advertising, mass media, or whatever, if some science fictiony electromagnetic pulse weapon DESTROYED THE INTERNET AND ALL COMPUTERS. let’s not say “permanently” right off, although that might as well be the case for all intents and purposes.
what forms of communication would survive, and which ones would die?
i propose that bullshit is a religion. sorry; bullshit is a religion™ — ©2004 campester all rights reserved.
sadly, though this new brand i just pulled out of my ass is amusing, it doesn’t help much…does it?
my disease is i keep coming up with these things even though i could make a lot more money by writing that top paragraph over and over and over.
Hugh: Forgot to mention I thought you were serious for a bit as I was reading and in my mind thinking ‘what the F*’ is in the food or water in Paris. I should mention I was sleep deprived.
Jeremy: I guess that was slightly self-serving remark — although only slightly because my idea isn’t self-serving. What Maslow describes as a high-synergy-culture and I just heard David Brin call a transparent company.
I’m working on something right now. I’ve started leaking details on my blog — although my brain is WAY way way ahead of what I’ve actually written.
I think today’s post, The Age of Story-Dwelling, has all the relevant posted links to my start-up idea thus far:
http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2004/11/the_pace_of_the_2.html
“why isn’t it changing faster?”
Why did half of America vote for Bush?
Go figure!
There’s half your audience for “Dinosaurspeak”, and if you add the 2 – 16 year olds and the insane, who also didn’t vote for Bush, that’s 75% of the biggest consumer market, plus parts of the rest of the world that think that anything American is cool.
I keep sniggering at an advert to buy a Pepsi and win an evening with Beyonce. I wouldn’t want an evening with Beyonce for all the Pepsi in the world!!
Your first paragraph has not convinced me to subscribe to your feed (fantastic site, BTW). However, I am compelled to purchase contact lenses now…if only I could decide on a brand.
I guess the bottlenck isnt just the dumb old adversiting men though. Its also in many cases the advertiseing consumer. Its comfy being talked to in this old Kraft and Kellogs language. Not just as a kind of nostalgia: Tide ads and other perpetuators of dinosaur speak promise a world that is a kinder gentler place than it actually is, and ever was. That is, if you act/subscribe now.
http://domai.host.sk
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