Why Creative Writing in Business Matters

This is an excerpt from a podcast episode I hosted at my previous agency.

According to research published by the American Association of the advancement of science, we will use an average of 16,000 words daily. And we know that running a successful business requires good communication. It might seem obvious, but central to that communication is the importance of words and how we use them. But because communication is second nature to us, we take our words for granted. I spoke with Neil Baker because he believes passionately in the value of words; in what we say and how we say it. Creative Writing is something many of us will associate with the arts, good books and scripts written to communicate ideas that reflect our shared humanity. But to help us become more clear, Neil is convinced of the need to bring more creativity to our everyday writing.

MICHAEL - Where did your love of words come from?

NEIL - I remembered as a child sitting down with probably my Mum, maybe my Dad reading. It's really basic reading books at school. And that was I was chugging along, feeling “Oh, I can read. This is quite interesting”. And then came across something that I didn't recognise it. And it had this kind O, U, G, H sound. And I thought, “I don't know what to do with that. What is that?”. And then I realised it was a word, I think the verb was trough, something like that, or through and I thought, I worked it out. And I do remember the moment when the penny dropped, and I thought, “that means through”. And I thought, “Wow, isn't that amazing?”. I just loved it. And it just opened a whole world to me.

And how did that initial interest words become a concern about how businesses use words? What was the tipping point from a general interest in words to the opportunity to use them well?

So that love of words got me into my first job, which was working as a journalist. I was working on a small business magazine for new accountants, which was very imaginatively called New Accountant. I worked there and learnt my craft by working with a challenging editor, who would immediately be up in front of an employment tribunal these days. I’d spend a lot of time interviewing pretty significant business leaders. I was probably twenty-one and knew nothing at the time, interviewing CEOs, and just baffled by the words that came out of their mouth. I’d ask, “What do you do?” and they couldn't answer clearly. I'd ask a question about something, and they'd give me an answer. And I thought, “I don't understand what you're saying”. Then the interview would end, and I turned off my Dictaphone. Suddenly they become normal people again. And you could talk to them. And I thought, “What happened? What was this strange performance that you were involved in a minute ago?”. The most interesting insights would come between the interview room and the lift – the interview would end. The person would walk you to the lift. On the way, we’d actually talk normally, like normal people.

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When you move into other parts of life, which are actually about connecting with an audience, you have to be able to… think it's not about me, telling you what I know; it's about me, sharing with you what I feel you need from me, and that’s completely different.

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And why is there this vernacular that we rely on in business that doesn't work outside of that context?

There are so many reasons behind that. One is that to succeed in a corporate business world, people tend to be well educated. You get on in education by telling young people what you know, to get a good grade – “I need to demonstrate that I understand that you, who are marking this, know all this stuff already, and that I'm telling you nothing new, doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. It's all about me showing you how much I know.” And when you move into other parts of life, which are actually about connecting with an audience, you have to be able to let go of that and think it's not about me, telling you what I know; it's about me, sharing with you what I feel you need from me, and that’s completely different.  

But it's a very difficult shift to perform sometimes. It’s embedded in the culture where you are. You end up in a culture where it's all about everybody telling everyone what they know. And if that's everybody's agenda, you end up in a room with many people shouting at each other and talking each other down. They’re not really listening to each other. If you are not a good listener and don't care about what your audience needs to know from you, you're not going to be a very good writer.

I've been reading your anniversary reprint of We, Me, Them And It by John Simmons. He talks about the importance of thinking about the specific words we use. There are words that have been accepted because they're part of the industry or the context in which we operate. The example he uses is stakeholders, but we wouldn't talk about stakeholders in any other context than a business context. Instead, he writes, we should be talking about audiences. There's no critical challenge to those words being used.

Exactly. When you're riding on the train, and you see words like “please alight here”, when did you ever alight from anything? Who even uses that word apart from the person that wrote that sign? But the person who wrote that sign was probably some expert in how to get off the train. Nobody challenged that. But it's just ridiculous jargon.

But on the other hand, it's easy to criticise language as jargon. I don't understand it; therefore, it's jargon. That's a slippery slope. So imagine you're a doctor, and you said to a colleague, “quickly pass me the rubbery tube with the listening things at the end”, and they say, “do you mean the Stethoscope?” And if you say “yes”, they would think, well, I understand that word. If you choose not to use that word, that's insulting, because you're saying they wouldn't understand it.

So there's jargon and idiomatic speech, which is technical language. If I understand what a word means, and you do too, then let's use that word.

So why does using creative writing in business matter?

It’s important that you connect with your audience. And that matters. It's very easy for your audience to agree with a statement and not understand it and ignore it. Imagine writing something that matters to you personally, like a little poem. If you read it to a group of friendly, supportive people who will celebrate and enjoy whatever you say, you will see how it connects with those people. When you discover what it’s like to make that connection, you won't go back to writing how you used to. Because that idea that you need to connect with your audience changes from being an intellectual idea to something that you've felt and experienced for yourself. You’ll feel the power of that. I remember the first time it happened to me. I can't go back; I can only go forwards. And you go forwards to fabulous things.

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You can't just borrow Innocent’s voice or Oatly’s and think everyone will love you. Because it's their voice, it's not yours. You can find your brand’s own voice. And when you do that, it's very powerful.
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And how does that work in a context of a brand? In the last twenty years, the language of brands like Innocent Smoothies and, more recently, Oatly talk in an approachable, down-to-earth tone. But you're saying there's more nuance in how brands communicate to be explored. You're not talking about everyone adopting a cheeky-chappie-friendly human banter. There's something more on offer, is that right?

Yes. And those examples you share are brands communicating with language in a way that works brilliantly for their products and audience. When Innocent amazed the world with their tone of voice, you also got the absurd spectacle of banks trying to do that.

My son recently lost his mobile phone, so I emailed Vodaphone to report it. I asked what I should do. They replied, with a beautifully written, very empathetic email that made it feel like someone very close to me had died. “We are so sorry for your loss. We appreciate what a difficult time this is for you. We want to do everything we can to make it right.” That's lovely and beautiful. But I'm thinking, “Oh, come on! He’s just lost a phone. Nobody's died!” It's all about getting that tone, right. In the world of creative writing, we do talk a lot about finding your voice. When you find it, writing in a different voice can be useful to see what that feels like. The issue of voice in the creative arts means a lot. And it means a lot in the brand world too. You can't just borrow Innocent’s voice or Oatly’s and think everyone will love you. Because it's their voice, it's not yours. You can find your brand’s own voice. And when you do that, it's very powerful, not just in terms of communicating with your customers or clients, but also in terms of the people who work with you and those who might come and work with you. It’s about what your values are; who you are; what your personality is; what you'd be like to work for. Find a voice that aligns with who you are.

What about finding a voice that is more than a founder’s voice? One that is representative of a whole organisation set within the context of a market and when more decision-makers are involved. How do you settle on the right voice for the business, then?

You don't start by trying to find the voice. The voice is a consequence of something deeper. So when I write for myself, for example, the voice that emerges is a function of what I'm interested in, what I believe, and also my values in the world. Organisations have those things too. They have points of view, and they have values.

The key is to explore what the values are. Try as hard as possible to really dig into that. What are our real values? Not “we're friendly”. That’s nice, but is there some nuance around that? After that, all you're doing is telling stories, and using words in ways that reflect and are consistent with those values. It's finding those values. You discover them by listening to the organisation and the stories that people tell about why they’re there; why they work; how they serve clients; why the business was founded in the first place. You're telling this story because it says something about who you are. There's value in this story, so work out its essence.

You talked about tone of voice guidelines being complex and overcomplicated. Do tone of voice guidelines have any value for a brand and its marketing team? What do you think about the approach to tone of voice?

There's a school of thought I lean towards very often: if you're a good writer, and you know what you're doing, they're not very helpful. And why is that? Often because they include lots of general guidance about how to use a semicolon, or, let's try and write in the active voice, not the passive, which really, if you're selling yourself as a professional writer, you should know that kind of stuff.

They tend to contain broad guidance about how to write well. Or they include examples that are either not very helpful or no examples at all. They say things like, “we want to be friendly”. Well, can you give an example of what's a friendly way of saying, whatever you want to say? Fundamentally, though, they lack that tone of voice is all about how you say things, but overlook what you're actually trying to say. So you can give a writer a brilliant tone of voice guide, and a rubbish brief about what you're trying to say. They won't be able to write effectively or on tone because they don't know what they're doing because they don't have the clarity around what they’re trying to convey

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Listen to the full podcast interview here.

Neil runs writing courses at Dark Angels.