Well look what we’ve found.

If you no longer wish to subscribe to our newsletter, fill in your email address/click on the link below/fill in our short questionnaire’ blah blah blah.

Click, click, unsubscribe, get email confirmation, delete.

Until I got to Firebox.com, where the ‘unsubscribe’ link took me here: 

And you know what? I had second thoughts. For the first time in about two years, I clicked through to the website. And I chuckled at their banter. And I marvelled at the remarkable bargains. (‘Maybe I really do need Random Crap Crates?’)

In the end, I resisted their charms and unsubscribed anyway. And then I got the email to confirm it. Where everyone else said something along the lines of You have been successfully unsubscribed from X, this email was different.

Hi there,

It’s a bittersweet moment for us and we’ll treasure the memories, but as requested, we’ve unsubscribed you from the Firebox newsletter.

If you have changed your mind (puppy dog eyes) or if this was all just a big misunderstanding, you can easily resubscribe here.

Kind regards,
Firebox Team

I clicked on the link. What can I say? I’m a sucker for puppy dog eyes.

In workshops, we often talk about the difference between a company’s language in their up-front advertising, and how they sound when they think you’re not looking (like in the small print and Ts and Cs). A bank’s branch definitely counts as a bit of glossy advertising; it’s the first thing you see when you go to open an account – and by making it as plush and relaxing as possible for their customers, North Shore are doing no bad thing.

But here’s an extract from their website terms of use.

YOU HEREBY RELEASE, REMISE AND FOREVER DISCHARGE NSCU FROM ANY AND ALL MANNER OF RIGHTS, CLAIMS, COMPLAINTS, DEMANDS, CAUSES OF ACTION, PROCEEDINGS, LIABILITIES, OBLIGATIONS, LEGAL FEES, COSTS, AND DISBURSEMENTS OF ANY NATURE AND KIND WHATSOEVER AND HOWSOEVER ARISING, WHETHER KNOWN OR UNKNOWN, WHICH NOW OR HEREAFTER EXIST, WHICH ARISE FROM, RELATE TO, OR ARE CONNECTED WITH YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE WEB SITE.

So which is the real North Shore Credit Union? Is it scented candles and pots of fresh coffee, or is it barking incomprehensible website law?

If companies really want to give themselves a makeover, then the language they use is a big part of any cultural change. The new North Shore looks great – but the language doesn’t match. They’ve broken the mould with boutique branches; maybe it’s time to think about how their boutique bank sounds, too.

Just as good is Petit Pret (Pret A Manger’s compact cousin). Obviously, it’s exactly the same idea. Just in French.

It feels like a whole genre: cute brand extensions. Little Waitrose, Petit Pret, Dave Ja Vu, and the sadly defunct BMI Baby. They’re ace.

Us Writer trainers spend quite a lot of time in the air, and I usually fly British Airways (for the points, and the ineffably polite cabin service, occasionally tinged with a note of public-weary sarcasm). But one thing I love about BA is that when I print out my boarding pass at home, it says at the top:

Mr Neil Taylor, you’re ready to fly.

It’s just so... exciting. Romantic. Like I’m about to step onto an aeroplane (no, hold on, definitely an airplane) in Rio in 1953. Or something. And that little ‘Mr’ is important, too. I don’t get mistered very often (and when I do, I don’t always like it). But BA pull it off.

None of which usually bears much resemblance to the rest of my flight. But it sets me off with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. Just like one of our workshops in California: a woman brought along a receipt from the US outdoorsy brand Prana. She’d kept it in her purse for five years because she liked a quotation they’d printed on it. How much would an ad agency pay for that ‘share of mind’? Every time she got her money out, she saw this brand. For five years (and counting!).

It cost them virtually nothing to do. But it’s why we think the nooks and crannies of a brand’s writing can be priceless.

But there are lots of committees in the corporate world. As a business writer, every word you commit to paper will be scrutinised by a dozen eyeballs at least.

Maybe that’s because having opinions about language is difficult.

The committee acts as a safety blanket. If the hive mind agrees that the words are right, no single person needs to take responsibility if it all goes pear-shaped.

But let’s face it: committee decisions don’t tend to go pear-shaped.

The committee is a sieve. You put something jagged in one end and out the other comes a perfect circle. Smooth. Inoffensive. Beige. Like every Wikipedia article.

And that’s the thing. Though safety blankets are good for fighting disasters, they never come in shocking puce. Committees protect, they don’t provoke.

But sometimes writing should be jagged. It should piss people off. Make them gasp. Make them cry. Make them feel something.

That’s why everybody mentions either this or this when pressed for the best ad of all time. The VW ad will have put off swathes of potential customers. The Economist one will have irked anybody with a discrepancy between their age and job title.

Likewise, I’m hoping a lot of you will disagree with what I’ve written in this blog. Because that’ll mean there’s a core group of you who don’t.

But either way, at least you’ve reacted. If I’d put this blog through a committee, you wouldn’t have had the chance.

Oh no, I thought. Anelia’s right. I’m grumpy. I’m jaded. I’m British.

But hang on. I don’t think I’m that repressed. I even cried at a Sainsbury’s ad once. (You know, the one where the dad and the little boy have a day out together, and they take the train to the seaside, and frolic about with a kite for a bit, and have an ice cream, and then they go home and make a massive pie for dinner, and the mum comes home and finds them cuddled up on the sofa fast asleep... oh blimey, it’s set me off again.)

I loved the Halls packaging, too. It’s funny and cute. So what is it about the Nurofen ad that’s curling my stiff upper lip into a sneer?

It seems to be trying to get at some universal human truth. But to me, its grandiose sentiments and rhetorical repetition don’t feel authentic. It makes me feel jaded because I’ve heard it all before.

And I can’t relate to it, either. Yes, I often soldier on through sniffles and sore throats. But if I get a real humdinger of a headache, I tend not to think to myself: ‘I will not let my spirits be dampened! I’m on a constant journey!’ To be honest, I’m just as likely to throw in the towel and go for a nice lie down.

(After popping a couple of Nurofen, natch.)

What do you reckon: could Halls ever get away with this in Britain?

To a Brit, the quasi-religious reverence these books seem to elicit in the USA is a bit odd. As a rule, I think in the UK we’re a bit more comfortable with the odd bit of linguistic jaywalking. So while I’ve got nothing against following the rules, or the AP Stylebook, if you’re looking for some rules to follow, please, please, please ignore the spurious ramblings of Strunk & White.

The brilliant Language Log has been skewering this ‘horrid little compendium’ better, and for longer, than I ever could (and it’s telling that they file their Strunk & White blogs under ‘prescriptivist poppycock’). But the basic point is this: their rules are so arbitrary and constraining that they can’t even follow them themselves.

And it’s why, when we give our clients writing guidelines, they’re just that; not rules, not laws, and not always right.

Why? Because online fraudsters can’t write. Most phishing emails are full of grammatical errors, clunky phrases and – deliberately or not – are written in a strangulated formal tone.

Even the quickest nose around banksafeonline’s archive of phishing emails turns up a whole crop. How about this from an attack on Co-operative Bank’s customers:

‘The Co-operative Bank P.L.C. Internet Banking Security Department has been receiving complaints from our customers for unauthorised uses of the Co-Operative bank accounts. As a result, we are temporarily shutting down some selected Online Accounts perceived vulnerable to this, pending til the time we carry out proper verification by the account owner.’

‘For unauthorised uses of’ is just bad grammar. And the strangulated formality of accounts ‘perceived vulnerable to this, pending til the time...’ is just weird.

This phishing email sent to Halifax customers crams the same two bad habits into a single sentence:

‘Important notice: note that your Security Question and Answer should be match correctly for proper re-verification, in order to avoid service suspension.’

Of course, most people who fall foul of these attacks aren’t reading the phishing emails in this kind of detail. And that’s the point. At a quick read, people obviously just get a general feeling that these emails are genuine.

That doesn’t say much for our impression of how banks communicate with their customers. But it does present a clear opportunity: if you make sure the way you write to customers is clear, natural and distinctive to your brand – especially for ‘unsexy’ day-to-day emails – then these shabbily-written phishing emails will instantly feel wrong to your customers. They’re much more likely to think ‘hang on, this doesn’t sound like my bank...’.

Ironically, the phishing email that prompted me to write this post was this one, purporting to be from HM Revenue and Customs:

‘After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 468.50 GBP. Please submit the tax refund request and click here by having your tax refund sent to your bank account in due time.’

Its pompous and formal tone sounded exactly like how HMRC actually sound. Which is really dangerous for them.

PS: Hey, phishers! Ever thought about signing up to one of our writing workshops?
Get lost. We only use our powers for good.