A YouTube Short crossed my desk yesterday offering some sage advice. Except it came from the unlikeliest of places:
A former hacker turned game developer.
Devs usually have the absolute worst communication skills. It’s part of the industry. But this guy is the anomaly. His hacking expertise wasn’t the Hollywood image of a loner with his own dark, special office full of an Iron Man setup of computers. Instead, his expertise was in social engineering.
And so, he’d basically call customer service teams, bait them into small talk, use that to find
their Headquarters location, then head there with his tech gadgets that can steal info and data.
Wildly interesting stuff, especially because he was one of the “good guys.” He hacked companies to reveal their security weak spots rather than using the data he collected for his own gain.
Anyway, he knew how to talk to people. Which is why he was able to offer such sage advice about communicating with the younger generations.
So, what was his advice?
Using “corpo-speak” as he calls it is the quickest way to make gen z and gen alpha (and I’ll speak for the young millennials too) hate your guts.
For example:
Let’s say you need to raise your prices. Timely, I know with inflation stealing money from everyone’s coffers.
If you wrote an email to your clients or customers about why you’re raising prices using “corpo-speak” you’d write something like this:
====
Dear sir/madam,
Thank you for being a valued part of our community. In an effort to provide the best experience for our customers, we are going to raise prices starting on [date].
We’re raising prices so you can continue to provide you with quality experience you’ve come to expect from [Brand Name].
Thank you for your understanding.
[Brand Name]
====
This makes my eyeballs wanna puke.
(Disney+ sent me one of these this past week, which reminds me, probably about time to finally cancel Disney+—not so much for their corpo-speak, though that didn’t help, but because of their utter disregard for putting out quality content. That’s a story for another day…)
Not only is it a fabricated story, but it’s impersonal. It’s like a weird mix of capitalism and legalese. And while I’m a proud supporter of capitalism, it doesn’t come without its flaws. Corpo-speak being one of them.
It’s much better—and more persuasive—to simple tell the truth:
====
Hey, we’re raising prices because we’re a business and we need to make money.
If you’d rather cancel your account, you can do so below.
====
Short, sweet, simple, and most of all?
Human.
Since Thor (the hacker turned game developer) is more in touch with the younger generations, he made the case that there’s nothing worse you can do than write in corpo-speak.
And so it is with your copy.
And so it is with even the design of your emails.
That’s part of the reason I use plain-text emails. You never design an email when you send it to a friend. And even so much as having the corpo-design of a pretty HTML template Klaviyo created because that’s what they think their best customers want and need will subconsciously dupe you into writing in a more corporate, anti-human tone than you’d normally do.
This, of course, will only become more important as AI takes over more industries and creates even more desire for real, human connection. Not to mention, it will also become more important as these younger generations grow older and start moving into a bigger block of buyers in general.
And there are many such cases of this exact thing playing out in real life now.
ESPN, for example, recently bought Pat McAfee’s YouTube show and simulcasts it on their network because they committed this corpo-speak mistake for years.
Nobody outside of boomers and trapped airport visitors watch the mainstream news anymore.
Etc etc etc.
Moral of the story?
Corporations aren’t people. And the more you act like a corporation, the more you turn into an AI robot yourself.
People desire connection above all else.
And figuring out how to inject more connection into your copy is one of the most persuasive thangs you can do.
Need help doing that last part?
Hit reply, and let’s chat.
John
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