In our humble...

James Hogwood

Unquestionably there are plenty of brands who fuel over-consumption, waste and materialism. But to criticise is easy, and you risk getting trapped in a binary pro-or-anti-consumerism argument. What's more interesting to me are the brands (in various sectors, Howies, E.on and others) who reward a different kind of consumption, one based on making smart, sustainable choices.

Sarah McCartney

We can all use our powers for good or evil. Most of the time we’re carefully crafting some words to make something happen, invoicing the client and making ends meet. Sometimes that means that we’re encouraging people to buy a load of tripe they don’t need, or to take out a secured personal loan to consolidate their debts. Do we stop to consider the consequences and refuse the work for ethical reasons? Maybe. But if we don’t fulfil the demand, someone else will. That’s what arms manufacturers say too. Is it their fault people shoot each other? Yes, partly.

Roger Horberry

Sweet Jesus, not this again. Didn't we go through this with No Logo a few years back? Brands don't kill people, people do. Brands are amoral, they're neither good or bad, they just are. The business practices that drive and sustain them, now that's another story. And what about personal responsibility? If I'm a fat bastard, is it KFC's fault or my own? Did Col. Saunders come round and ram his family bucket down my throat? No he did not. People over-consume *because they want to* - any other explanation is patronising and inaccurate. The answer to over-consumption is simple: stop consuming so much. Not much fun I agree but there it is.

Fiona Thompson

A brand won’t make me buy more toothpaste. It will just help me distinguish between the bland (Colgate) and the odd, strong pink one (Euthymol) that I inexplicably love. It’s a bit of a loaded question, to be fair, and I don’t think brands deserved to be bashed over the head and accused of turning us all into rabid consumers.

Tom Lynham

Various dubious sources are claiming the ground that affluence makes us unhappy; that we are victims of evil brands turning us into retail junkies; that to ban advertising would be spiritually uplifting; that children’s’ minds are warped by unethical targeting. Bollocks. Living (life is a bitch and then you die) on a tiny planet floating around in an ever-exploding universe is completely bonkers. Civilisation and socialisation - education, career path, hierarchy, urban infrastructure, morality, rational thought et cetera - is designed to suppress the madness of it and render us exploitable. One of the ways human beings have coped across the centuries is to CONSUME - food, stimulants, possessions, entertainment, drama, relationships and so on - and to MOAN about their lot. The writers of the Compass Report should look to their history books. Brands are simply placebos offering salvation-for-sale-or-rent, and they spout the same disingenuous mumbo-jumbo as priests, politicians and potentates have always done. We are not stupid. We have very sophisticated bullshit filters. Let’s celebrate our insatiable appetite for the unattainable. Everything bad for us is good for us.

Jim Davies

Sadly the answer is ‘yes’. Though you could argue that the whole point of a brand is to choose one bar of soap (phone, TV, pair of jeans, or whatever) over another, rather than simply buy more. Even if you decided to jack it all in and write novels, you wouldn’t escape. You’d still be under pressure to shift more units. That’s just the nature of capitalism.

Martin Lee, Acacia Avenue

I don’t know about the word of this year, but it feels like the word of 2009 was ‘storied’. From being a word I don’t think I’d ever heard of, it was everywhere. If back story had entered the language fully in 2008, by last year, people with a colourful past life were always storied. I’m intrigued by this, as any new words based on stories is fine by me. So perhaps we’ll see extensions on this theme, such as ‘unstoried’, or even ‘overstoried’.

Roger Horberry

Bollocks. But then I think that every year.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

I read somewhere that ‘tweet’ was the word of 2009, and ‘Google’ was the word of the decade. So I suspect it will be some common word like ‘whippet’ or ‘truncheon’ appropriated by the latest technology craze.

Nick Asbury

As in any election year, the most over-used word will be ‘change’. Once the election has gone and the true economic picture emerges, it will probably be in the context: “Can your spare any... ?”

Heather Atchison

This year the word iSlate will be on everyone’s lips (and at their fingertips). That’s if the maelstrom of rumours about Apple’s new tablet computer has any grounding. Cue drum roll...

Robert Self-Pierson

Story.

In 2010, a billion people will tell a billion other people a billion things.

What will they remember?

The best stories.

Words need stories as much as writers need words.

Tom Lynham

Sabbatical

Mike Hadley

OBAMA

Stuart Delves

Rhythm and verse are memorable. I still remember lines that my parents told me about from before I was born. "The Esso sign means happy motoring" (I can hear the tune) and "The Murray mint, the too-good to hurry mint." It's a welcome development - particularly if copywriters create new, fresh verses. But using existing lines is OK too. I've used snippets of George Mackay Brown's verse in promoting Highland Park, the Orcadian Malt Whisky.

Tom Lynham

The problem is not that verse should be so alien to commerce, but that poetry has elevated itself into a cultural ghetto. Everyone’s conversation is peppered with poetic qualities; rhyme & rhythm, pace & tempo, metaphor & simile, and we happily play games with oral language. Anything that encourages business to be less anal about language and oxygenates language in the public domain helps us writing evangelistas to break down barriers.

Rishi Dastidar

As someone who’s penned a poem this year for a campaign, personally the return to verse has been very welcome. It ties into a more general renaissance for copy-led ideas and executions that, very tentatively, has started to happen this year. Slowly but surely clients and the wider world are starting to wake up to the fact that well-written words can be just as effective in gaining attention and swaying minds as jaw-dropping visuals and engrossing digital interactions. And poetry should, and hopefully will, be a crucial part of that.

Ben Afia

“Why on earth not? I love hearing poetry in adverts - I find myself actually listening to the words to see where they’ll take me, instead of just screening them out. So it’s more enjoyable than the usual stuff, and if it opens folk up to words they otherwise wouldn’t have heard, that’s got to be good for writing in general. And I doubt it’s a new development – surely market traders have been using rhythm and rhyme to sell their wares for donkey's years.”

Roger Horberry

Sure, all I ask is it's any good. I'm not certain McDonalds' reworking of Rolf Harris' "Court of King Caractacus" counts, but what do I know? In fact this must be a trend because even I've been asked to do something similar in recent weeks. It didn't get used.

Jim Davies

Of course poetry belongs to everyone, and you could argue that commercials are a legitimate way of getting metre out to the masses. On the other hand, it’s like your favourite novel getting the Hollywood treatment – it somehow cheapens the original and leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

John Simmons

Yes: http://www.26fruits.co.uk/blog/blogberry/memorability/

Mike Reed, Reed Words

Perhaps my worst Xmas line is from the heady days I worked at an agency called Other, alongside Nick Asbury, also of this parish. Desperate for a Christmas card idea, we came up with the worst pun we could think of. We dropped some selected foodstuffs on the kitchen floor, shot the resulting gloop and printed it on the front of the card. Inside was the line, 'A Pea/Eggs Mess.'

Nick Asbury

GAP have thoughtfully provided us with some new Christmas catchphrases this year. Their latest Christmas viral includes the soon-to-be-timeless Happy Whateveryouwannakah, Mo' Mistletoe, Big Ol' Piece of Peace and, erm, Good luck with that bird you office party hardied. http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/november/gap-viral

Roger Horberry

I am appalled to admit I may use the‘cool yule’ couplet at some point.

Jim Davies

A few years ago, I was asked to write seasonal one-liners for all the different genres on sale in Waterstone’s. A couple of my favourites were ‘Peace on Earth (and other planets)’ for science fiction, and ‘Less beard, more bard’, for literature. Which goes to show you don’t have to recycle ‘We’ve got Christmas all wrapped up’ every year.

Fiona Thompson

I particularly dislike ‘Happy Holidays’ because everyone knows that a holiday is in the summer, not in winter. But that’s more of a Christmas card thing than commercial writing...

Jim Davies

We're supposed to be these chameleon-like creatures, who can swallow our personalities and switch (tone of) voices like Alistair McGowan. Though we all have a natural writing style, some of us are better at getting into character than others.

Tom Lynham

I think we do whether we like it or not. Although our job description is to be chameleons and write in the clients' tone of voice, we help them develop it, and bring everything about us to every job.

Richard Owsley

Well it rather defeats the whole object of brands having a tone of voice or verbal identity. Unless you write for only one client, that is.

Having said that, if you can develop a concise style of your own which comes across as warm, confident and contemporary, then you are probably much of the way towards having a decent all-purpose tone that'll meet most requirements.

Chas Walton

Yes, every copywriter should have a distinctive style. That's the brand.
But when it comes to the work, they adopt the style of the client. That's the professionalism.

Giles Calver

Perhaps it is. I was listening to David Bailey talking about the photographer Irving Penn, who died recently, and he had a very distinctive style even though his work was commissioned by different magazines. Similarly, Annie Leibovitz has a style of her own, as did Norman Parkinson. It made me wonder whether a commercial writer could have a style. I guess the counter argument is that the style should reflect the brand and not the writer, otherwise all the arguments about brand differentiation are irrelevant.

John Fountain

I think most writers put a lot of themselves in their work. We all have our own ways of 'chatting up' our readers and I bet if we were all given the same brief with the same tone of voice guidelines, we'd still end up with different results.

Trouble is, make your writing too distinctive and you could become branded as a certain type of writer. I remember a guy who developed a very interesting machine gun writing technique – spraying short sentences about in rapid fire. It was punchy and high energy but in the end he was pigeon-holed and it limited his career.
So I'd say yes, be distinctive, but don't make it so strong that you become categorised.

Heather Atchison

It can be. It certainly makes life easier when clients like your voice and want you to use it for their own writing. But you have to be able to suppress this and take on other styles when need be – otherwise the idea of distinctive verbal identities goes sailing out the window.

Margaret Oscar

Why would it be a bad thing? It demonstrates an ability to write distinctively and doesn't necessarily mean it's the only writing style you can produce.

Mike Reed

It was only really when I was told I had a 'style' that I realised I did. Which shows how easy it is to be unaware of your own 'brand' - which of course is something that exists in other people's heads more than your own.

Once the point came up - in the context of "I'm not sure your style really fits this client" - I got worried. Was I putting myself beyond certain jobs because people didn't think I'd fit? What could I do about it?

The answer is: nothing. And that's good.

Like any brand, each of us benefits from a clearly distinctive voice. Partly, we should practise what we preach, but also what we preach is right. Without a distinctive voice, we risk fading into the background. I believe clients feel more confident when the writer is more confident - confident enough to have his or her own voice.

And after all, if you have a strong style, all you're doing is demonstrating your own offer at work. That's what's great about writing - everything you send out is a free sample. Any writer who doesn't take a second or two to check whatever email, letter, tweet or scribbled comp slip they send out is playing fast and loose with their own product.

I've learnt not to worry about the adaptability question. If you've been working for a while, you should have enough work on file to prove your ability to adapt to different client tones. Even if you're new to the game, you could always offer a sample para or two to reassure the client.

Sarah McCartney

It's rare to get a copywriting job where you can be yourself. Mostly it's inappropriate and immodest to think that your own style is more important than the brand whose owners are paying your fees. I know I'm one of the lucky ones. At Lush, we're allowed to write the way we would speak to a customer, so whoever is doing the writing gets to put a lot of themselves into their writing. Every now and again, it's great to write something that no-one would spot as mine just to make sure I haven't disappeared up my own backside. A good copywriter ought to be like a good actor, able to step into a role and transform, become unrecognisable. Journalists and authors have the luxury of being paid for their style; bloggers can do it for nowt. If we take the client's cash, we should show our own style only if that's what they ask for.

Martin Lee

It's preferable, but we probably need mutual tolerance of shortcomings more.

John Simmons

I'm forever saying in workshops "don't worry, this isn't about spelling". And I don't think writing is about spelling. On the other hand, if I read a piece of writing that's full of spelling mistakes, I think less of the writing. Can't help it.

So, although spelling can be difficult, it can also be fascinating and fun. I enjoy the difficulty of English spelling and I like it when the idiosyncracies of the spelling point me towards the word's origin in another language.

Rob Self-Pierson

Probly

Jim Davies, totalcontent

Occasionally I think phonetic spelling might be the way to go – it would certainly make life easier for people learning English. But if you got rid of all the quirks and arcane rules, the opportunities for pedantry would be severely limited.

Nick Asbury

Language, by definition, involves accepting a shared set of rules. At some point, we all agreed to call a tree a tree, a rock a rock, and a blancmange a blancmange. Otherwise conversations would never get anywhere – especially ones involving blancmange. The same goes for written language. If we all agree to spell rock, tree and blancmange a certain way, it makes understanding each other a lot easier. Of course, out of sheer good manners, we shouldn't jump down each other's throats if we make the horrendous mistake of ordering 'blamonge' for pudding. But that's not the same as getting rid of the rule altogether.

Roger Horberry

What's the alternative? Some sort of "Down wiv Skool" lexical anarchy? Come to think of it, count me in.

Jamie Jauncey

The trouble with 'incorrect' spelling is that it runs the risk of clouding true meaning. If the word is disfigured the etymological root may get lost and so it becomes harder to use the word in the way it was originally and precisely intended. One of the glories of English, of course, is that its huge vocabulary enables us to use words with great precision.

Rishi Dastidar

The National Maritime Museum, writing slogans for a Scandinavian financial services brand. Were the options ship shape? I thought so. But they sank without trace.

Heather Atchison

This isn’t technically business writing, but I once ran a tone of voice development workshop for a large building society in the hospitality room of Leek Town football club. Think late 1970s time warp. It was surreal.

Tom Lynham

I have a string of places where I ‘do it’. Setting up office in strange locations changes the shape of my brain. Highly recommend – Geffrye Museum herb garden, Tate Modern members roof terrace, Royal Festival Hall - high floors looking over the river are blissfully empty during the day, various little nests deep within the Barbican Centre, buses, tubes, trains. Heathrow Terminal 5 has a very good distribution of plug sockets, but my favourite off-piste work station is window seat 7A on the upper deck of a 747 where there is zero email interruption and they pour bubbly into me until I get to the other end...

Roger Horberry

Not writing as such, but I did once try to conduct an international conference call from the Gents in the British Library. Don't ask...

Robert Self-Pierson

Backstage at a theatre production in a Neolithic henge on a chilly summer's evening. Pen and paper – the old-fashioned way.

Fiona Thompson

The strangest place I’ve ever written is in an office. How are you supposed to work in those places? All those people milling about, playing ping pong, asking if you’ve got any nail scissors. I’m sure it’s much easier to write on a ski lift or while piloting a speed boat.

Mike Reed

One of the most surreal copywriting experience I've had was at a meeting in Frankfurt. I'd gone over to meet a lot of people at Deutsche Bank. In fact, it wasn't even really Deutsche Bank. It was the facilities management organisation within Deutsche Bank. They organised the towels in the loos, and that sort of thing.

The main client was English, but everyone else was German. He asked me to sit in on a big meeting with everyone involved in the project. I didn't have to interject, but he said it would be useful to be there and hear the discussion.

"You know I don't speak German," I reminded him.

"Don't worry, I'll be there, it'll all be in English," he said.

There was a jolly introduction, as my client got the ball rolling by introducing himself and everyone else. Then he announced that he had to be elsewhere, and left. At which point the guy actually leading the meeting said that as everyone else was German, it made sense to continue in German. Which they did. For the next two and a half hours.

I was a younger, greener writer then, or I might have spoken up. As it was, I just did the most enormous doodle in my notepad, and then went back to my soul-sapping hotel on the edge of the airport.

Sarah McCartney

I’ve written Lush lyrics to showtunes on a beach in Bali. Most of the Lush Times is written on my chaise longue (a la Barbara Cartland but without the secretary) with Law & Order on in the background to stop me wandering off. Otherwise, trains, many trains.

Fiona Thompson

The best way to cure writer’s block is to have a deadline in half an hour.

Roger Horberry

I'm not at home to Mr Block.

Rob Self-Pierson

Where do I start? No, really, someone tell me.

Severe writer's block is only remedied by distance. If a page or screen seems to be getting whiter, it's time to leave the pen, the keyboard, the room, office, house, town. I walk and breathe. I think. Then all the best ideas flash into my head. And I'm nowhere near a page or screen or pen or keyboard or house so I can't write them down. So I curse. But when I next see the blank page, I fill it with my walk and something usually comes out of that.

The best writing sprouts from periods of blockage: long walks, loose thoughts then have another go.

Nick Asbury

The best cure for writer’s block is a looming deadline. Either that, or just lower your standards and get on with it.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

'I Wanna be Sedated' by the Ramones. Three times cranked up to 11 usually does the trick.

Rachel Lister

Find a cat and stroke it, you’ll emerge all wordy from the purring alone. Failing that sit on the top deck of a bus - this works best if you’re not going anywhere in particular. Somehow the lack of a physical destination acts as a catalyst for a mental one.

John Simmons

Follow Nike's advice - "Just do it". Do a rapid burst of automatic writing on the subject you have to write about - that means you write and write without stopping. Use a pen or pencil on paper, write whatever thoughts come into your head. From that you might just take one word, or one phrase, but you'll have started, you'll have something you can edit.

Martin Lee

Sorry, I need more time on this.

Sarah McCartney

As some of you know, I’ve been writing about Lush products for 13 years now; some products have now appeared in the Lush Times 52 times. I’ve written 52 descriptions of Bohemian lemon soap, I get quite a few people calling to ask if they can buy me coffee and pick my brains about how on earth I don’t dry up. (So many, that I’ve started to run workshops on keeping your inspiration topped up (please excuse small plug there).) If you plan ahead and constantly try new things, noticing – and noting down – feelings, experiences, changes, lovely things, and charge up your creative batteries with films, art, music and friends, then you’ve got a lot of material to call on when you’re stuck. For me, observation leads to inspiration. Picking up a good quality notebook and a fountain pen gets me started. I’ll scribble things in different parts of the page. Current favourite is one that has blank pages, squared ones and lined ones for different kinds of thoughts. It’s not the same as a word processor; one word doesn’t have to follow another in a nice neat line. Then again, when the chips are down, I do find that a deadline unblocks anything that’s standing in my way.

Roger Horberry

No. I don't care how professional you are, if you're not at ease it'll eventually show. But then if you hate it you probably don't care.

Mike Reed

Of course it is. Unless you're incredibly lucky, or have been in the job a very short time, you'll already have had to create copy for brands you're indifferent to, bored by, and probably some you actively disdain. Our job is to communicate the required message in the appropriate tone of voice, as persuasively as possible. Liking the brand doesn't really come into it, although I do think it's a bonus when you do.

If your hatred is moral, of course, you face a different question: "Should you write brilliant copy for a brand you hate?" I once turned down a job for Sainsbury's, because I was increasingly disturbed about the activity of supermarkets, and was involved in a campaign to keep a huge superstore out of our small town.

That's all well and good if you can afford to do it. On the other hand, when I co-founded a little agency years ago, we drew up a list of companies we absolutely would not work for. That felt good, but then we got the offer of a rather large project from one of those at the top of our blacklist: British Aerospace.

It was an internal comms job, promoting an employee share scheme, and so somewhat removed from the missiles and torture equipment that concerned us so much. But hell, you're still sitting down with the devil, no matter what's on the menu.

We took the job. We were brand new, had no money, and the project paired us up with some designers we were keen to work with. I still work with those designers today, and they've become friends. The project went very well, paid some salaries, gave us a portfolio piece and taught us some lessons. Nobody died, nobody fought a war, as they say. (Although, given the client, that may not strictly be true.)

But I still feel bad about it, just as I feel good about the times I've said no for purely conscientious reasons. These things are always a judgement call, but I'd recommend listening to the still, small voice when it comes. Even if it makes you wince financially. To quote another adage, it's only a principle when it costs you something.

Sarah McCartney

One of the reasons I’m a relative pauper is that I won’t work on brands I hate. However, I can write about products I hate with as much enthusiasm as the ones I like. So far, I don’t think anyone has spotted this. I remind myself that other people love them to bits, and I pretend that I feel the way they do. I think of it as being imaginative, rather than two-faced.

Martin Lee

I really don’t know if it’s possible, but I would say it’s worth giving it a try, even if only as a private exercise. The act of attempting to do it will take you into the mind of people that do love the brand, and will almost certainly give you fresh insights about how it’s possible to like it. Beyond that, the question that I’m asking myself is: is it right to accept the brief if your antipathy to the brand is that great?

Rishi Dastidar

Yes, if you apply the barrister's 'cab rank' principle - you might not like the case or the plaintiff, but you take it on its merits, and present it the best you can. That doesn't mean that it's easy. But it can become a challenge in of itself - can I make this persuasive even though I know I wouldn't be persuaded myself?

Jim Davies

Yes, but it will leave you feeling dirty afterwards.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

A piece of print is a finished object. Websites and blogs are constantly being tinkered with and added to, often by the client after the writer has waved goodbye. So the words become compromised and the writer feels less inclined to proudly hold his or her hand up and say ‘I did that’.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

I interviewed a great writer called Tim Riley who is head of copy at AMV BDDO. He mentioned the first TV commercial in the UK - a static shot of a tube of toothpaste encased in ice with a voice droning on for 30 seconds in the background. Tim pointed out that it took the finest minds in advertising a decade to work out how best to exploit the new medium, and that perhaps that's what's happening with digital right now. Less charitably it might just have been a crap year...

John Simmons

Without doubt www.26fruits.co.uk was website of the year but it came out after the entries closed....

Malcolm Garrett, AIG

There were no proper digital entries at the AOI awards either. Maybe these new media people don't recognise the old media awards, or don't know about them?

Matthew McCracken

You can tell when something's been written by committee because it feels like being in a room with lots of people talking at once. There's plenty of noise, but it's often hard to understand what anyone's actually saying.

Kasper de Graaf

If you can write great lyrics together, and some can, then teamworking has a place. Good old subbing is another way in which multiple cooks contribute to the ultimate broth – not always producing a superior read if Giles Coren is to be believed (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/23/mediamonkey). Commissioned copywriting often involves external input ranging from raw data to moving commas; the former essential, the latter a bore. My role as a copywriter generally amounts to taking drafts from colleagues, then writing the piece as they wish they could have written it in the first place. Does this amount to writing by committee?

Mike Exon

If your writing is about stretching the mind for a great idea, there is certainly a place for teamwork. For it to work though, people need to have a feel for getting the best out of one another. If your writing is poetry, it’s probably better to compose alone. Ted Hughes didn’t share his pens, did he?

Fiona Thompson

There’s definitely a place for teamwork in writing – just think of Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews (Father Ted). But while teamwork is perfect for comedy writing, I’m not sure it works for copywriting. Although I love coming up with ideas as a team, I always prefer to write on my own.

Rishi Dastidar

Only if I’m chief commissar of the copy committee, and everyone agrees with me. Otherwise, I’ll leave it to you all to sort out.

Ben Afia

I always work by committee because I'm a terrible procrastinator and a lazy proofreader. And I think another writer can usually improve a piece of writing – spotting mistakes and opportunities that you don't. Apart from all, it's more fun.

Roger Horberry

Copy by committee? Emphatically no - search all the parks in all the cities, you'll find no statues to committees.

Neil Taylor

Writing really can be a team sport. At The Writer we have a 'second pair of eyes' rule (recently nicked by the Financial Times), so nothing goes out the door without at least two writers working on it. It's more fun, and it stops people getting stale/complacent/wordblind/client-blind/precious. It means we only hire writers who can play nicely with other writers. (My colleague Joe has just read this. He added in this sentence.)

John Simmons

The secret to great creative work is to collaborate with good people. But you can't really do that by committee. A committee works its way through an agenda. Real creative collaboration allows silences, pauses for thought, diversions off track. It's often the diversions that take you to the right place.

Tom Lynham

Writing for business is writing for consensus. It’s all about teamwork but that doesn’t have to mean lowest common denominator, or horribly homogenised texts. The writer’s job is to question where client and designer are coming from and focus on the reader. A lot of my input is thinking creatively about writing more effectively; taking the texts to places designer and client never imagined they could go. / The information that washes around organisations tends to be exhausted because it has been cloned or neutered by layers of management. Many CEOs have one eye on their next position, and Boards are often self-propelling institutions. Companies fail because they lose touch with their audiences. So go to source whenever you can and listen to people at the coalface, because they actually produce the things or services the company sells and deal with customers’ concerns. / Workshops are brilliant for building and targeting communications and establishing tone of voice. Try to get a genuine cross-section of people involved – from the people with the vision to the people who have to implement it. Sessions like these break the patterns of communication, and I have facilitated many events where colleagues who work together on a daily basis talked to each other about the really important stuff for the first time. / The editing process is – by definition – teamwork, but be aware of the motives behind decisions client-side people are making. Many pander to an imagined a phantom consumer or stakeholder onto whom they project their insecurities, and this produces language that speaks to no one. The tendency is to err on the conservative, and some clients who have hired me to transform their tone of voice revert to default because they are so scared of what other people might think. / We are hired to help the audience understand the client’s offer. The best clients I have worked with had the courage to think braver and years down the line the words still buzz with excitement, and some have gone on to shape the whole future of the company.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

“It’s not where you take things from, it's where you take them to”. Thus spake Jean-Luc Godard. Seems about right to me.

Nick Asbury

People often justify blatant plagiarism by arguing there’s no such thing as ‘originality’, which I always think is like a shoplifter being caught red-handed and arguing that there’s no such thing as ‘property’. It’s an interesting philosophical argument, but doesn’t change the fact that you’re nicked.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

We’re all at it, all the time – consciously or subconsciously. The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with pinching an idea, so long as you can improve on it. Just ask Shakespeare.

Robert Mighall

When you’re found out? Plagiarism must have quite a narrow definition as a deliberate attempt to pass someone else’s intellectual goods off as your own*. Any wider, and much of modern, and principally post-modern, art is implicated in the charge. Homage, pastiche, allusion – it’s a fine line the artist treads when he or she wants to enrich art with reference but without the dry-as-dust machinery of scholarly acknowledgement. We borrow unconsciously all the time. There are only so many ideas, only so much soul and google searching you can do to ensure that line that tripped light fantastically into your brain, and now appears so right, doesn’t 'belong' to another or another before that. If we worried too much about such things day to day, we’d never write a line. It didn’t bother the ancients, and it didn’t bother the likes of T.S. Eliot. What is The Waste Land, other than a collage of literary ‘borrowings’ (not all of them attributed)? Which is particularly galling, as the Eliot estate is ferociously grasping in charging people to quote from ‘his’ poems. Allusion is the English national vice, as I think someone once said. It’s a bold lawyer who calls much of this plagiarism. *Please note, I pulled that vague definition out of the air, and not from Wikipedia, which I did not consult once in the framing of this response.

Tom Lynham

Everyone borrows from everyone. It’s what you do with it that makes the creative process so exhilarating.

Margaret Oscar

Borrowing becomes plagiarism when you get paid for it.

Tim Rich

Last year I finished leading a two-year writing programme for an international professional services organisation. We had some fun along the way, we really developed their language, made the leadership team sound inspiring and helped a lot of employees communicate well and enjoy their writing more. But I feel we only really got to base camp. There's so much more we could have done, and there are so many day-to-day benefits we could have achieved, like developing much better ways for them to inspire and guide their design and ad agencies and freelances. I would love the opportunity to develop another programme. It doesn't take an enormous investment to have a profound effect on the way an organisation communicates, so this approach seems absolutely in tune with the times. So, a dream client – a McKinsey, Bain or Booz. The civil service. Or the UN. Failing that, I'd be happy to work as Guus Hiddink's translator for a few months. His English is already excellent, so I would concentrate on steering him clear of sick parrots and games of two halves.

John Simmons

Writing books is, for me, the most satisfying form of work. My dream project would be to write the official biography of Leonard Cohen. I would wake happily every morning.

Jim Davies

A series of posters for The Smiths inevitable comeback tour. Somewhere I’d have to slip in Morrissey’s line “I’d rather eat my own testicles than reform The Smiths – and that’s saying something coming from a vegetarian”.

Rob Self-Pierson

How about a brochure for the first travel agency on the moon? It could happen. "Peaceful, plenty of land available, great if you love sterile surroundings. Spacious."

Chas Walton

This job's right on the edge of possibility: I'd like to be the onboard blogger on the first manned trip to Mars. In the emptiness of space, the job would be all-consuming. At home, the audience would be huge. Imagine sharing all those months of endless tedium and a few brief weeks of alien landscapes with so many people. Of course it could turn out to be a diary of the crew's (or my) descent into madness. That's part of the risk.

Tom Lynham

I would like to move to New York on a three-year contract to rethink the communications of the United Nations

Martin Lee

“Story, six words!”.....”Great!” Happy ending.

Neil Taylor

An ad campaign for I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. With all double entendres allowed.

Roger Horberry

I'd enjoy having a go at the next atheist bus campaign.

Tom Lynham

Crates of Bollinger, the Roller will have to go, I have already sold the yacht and the mooring in Monaco, the private jet was getting a bit past it anyway, as I don’t go to meetings any more, I donated the Gucci Rolex to my bank.

Jim Davies

Adjectives and superlatives. My writing will be leaner, meaner and more in tune with the times.

John Simmons

Bankers.

Fiona Thompson

I’ll be cutting back on scaremongering newspapers that keep telling us the sky is falling in, our houses are worth tuppence and no one in the country will have a job by Friday.

Ben Afia

‘I’m not cutting back on anything. As the big agencies lay people off and lean more on freelancers, this is our opportunity to grab market share. So I’m actually recruiting, and getting out there to win new clients.’

Nick Asbury

Having recently said farewell to London and moved up north, I’m taking advantage of significant savings in the price of a pint. I anticipate the cumulative effect will render any cutbacks unnecessary, although I’ve yet to crunch the numbers. (Too busy crunching my pork scratchings.)

Rishi Dastidar

That seventh course at dinner...

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

Paying work, mainly. It does so clutter up the day.

Heather Atchison

My expense-trimming plan for 2009 involves fewer luxuries like weekends away and meals out. What it doesn't include (yet) is cutting out my morning latte or evening glass of wine, which count as necessities in my book.

Martin Lee

I’m planning to cut back on adverbs, immediately. Or rather, with immediate effect.

Helen Jones

I'm giving up horrible Starbucks coffee in nasty thick mugs in favour of Earl Grey tea in thin china cups at home. 

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

Sorry to be so obvious, but I do love my iPhone. The music app from Brian Eno (‘Bloom’) is worth the price of admission alone. And the rather fine maps mean the business writer about town shouldn't ever get lost.

John Simmons

Obvious perhaps, but a Moleskine notebook comes with me everywhere. Perhaps it’s the power of branding but no other kind of notebook does nearly as well.

Mike Reed, Reed Words

No business writer - hell, no writer - hell, no human being - should be without an iPhone 3G. God, it's wonderful. It's like something that dropped through a wormhole from about 50 years hence. The phone aspect is negligible. What makes this piece of kit indispensable - and knocks the BlackBerry into, through and out the bottom of a cocked hat - are the applications, or 'apps'. The iPhone comes with a very handy app for writers built in - 'Notes'. Tap a quick note to yourself as you stroll along - good for those, like me, who always forget their paper-based notebooks. The pre-installed Maps feature is pretty handy too: nothing less than a detailed streetmap of the entire planet, which also uses GPS to show exactly where you are. On a recent business trip to Oxford, I stood peering at an utterly inadequate tourist map before remembering my iPhone, which showed me exactly where I was and how to get to where I was going. Genius. But these are mere basics. What really makes the iPhone is the App Store, where you can download hundreds of ludicrously useful and fun things, chosen by you to suit your life. Very few of these cost more than £1, and many cost nothing at all. So why not have the complete works of Shakespeare on your iPhone? All the plays, poems and sonnets. Everything. Free. If that's not enough, try the 'Classics' app: a beautiful looking e-book that gives you a clutch of great works - including Paradise Lost, A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, Huckleberry Finn, Metamorphosis and more - for 59p. 59p. I don't understand it, but it's true. Among my rapidly expanding collection, I also have some great games (Wurdle is a terrific word game, and Dropship is a great arcade-style spaceship-and-shooting game), Camera Bag, which instantly gives your photos a range of different effects, Shazam, which recognises any song you play it (handy when there's something on the radio you can't place), the BBC News Reader that downloads the day's news for you to read at your leisure later... It goes on. All this without even mentioning the completely revolutionary touchscreen interface, the keyboard that guesses (usually correctly) what you meant to type when you make a slip, and the fact that it looks stunningly beautiful. The new iPhone strapline seems to be 'This changes everything'. And so it does.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

I bought a pen on ebay the other week. No ordinary pen… it was a 1960s sterling silver Parker 75 just like my father used when he was alive. I not only really enjoy writing with a fountain pen again, but it reminds my old man every time I pick it up. So for Christmas, pocket a pen. You won’t look back. And join Sarah McCartney’s ‘Campaign for real ink’ on facebook.

Nick Asbury

Anyone who writes all year probably needs a break – I recently had a go at drawing. Despite being a feckless amateur (and I still am) it does open a door to a different part of the brain – slowing you down and getting you to see the world in a different way. There’s a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, by Betty Edwards, which is a pretty well-established beginners’ guide. Haven’t completed it myself yet, but it’s very good and I keep telling myself to go back and do more. Probably won’t be sharing my drawings for a while yet though.

Ben Afia

Have you ever been out and wanted to capture an interesting bit of text in better-than-mobile-phone quality? In a playground I saw ‘Adults may only enter if accompanied by a child’. And there was the Royal Mail van with ‘Delivering Value’, including capitals. If I had the time I’d write in and have a rant about it. Then there are meeting flip pages that someone has to type up. The simple solution is a pocketable digital camera that’s small enough to always be with you. So my stocking filler is the waif-like, 10MP, Sony T77 compact camera. At just 15mm thin it’s barely noticeable as it nestles in your pocket or briefcase. But it’ll still give you decent enough quality for prints or your blog.

Martin Lee

I’m not sure the perfect device is on the market yet, but in my imagination it’s a jamming mechanism for blocking Blackberries from working. Because what every business writer surely needs is peace and quiet. If the device I’m thinking of hasn’t yet been brought to market, then how about a bin, or a canal, in which to fling said infernal devil machine?

Tim Rich

Dear St Nick, ‘What’s the perfect stocking filler for the business writer about town?’ We writers are an advertisers' nightmare. What do we buy for work? A toner cartridge now and then, perhaps. Possibly a jotter or two. And, resentfully, a new computer when the current model starts to wheeze and groan. We're not really big hitters in the consumption stakes. And so the temptation is to answer this question with reference to yet another modest business writing bauble. Given the monkish austerity of the times, perhaps I should ask for a pebble from a beach to be used as a paperweight (sourced using sustainable methods, of course). Sod that. I think we writers should be raising our expectations. I think we should be more demanding. So I'd like two of these please.

John Simmons

Obviously, I'd say Arsene Wenger. He actually manages his club Arsenal in every aspect. He understands the brand and operates as a very savvy brand manager. Everything is geared to supporting the central activity, the football on the pitch, so he plays a big role in designing not just the training routines but the training facilities. His thinking is long-term and he doesn't get deflected by short-term setbacks to change his overall vision. Oh, and unlike most of the other Premier league managers, he works within budgets and doesn't believe the 'owner' should just open his wallet to provide extra funds. He also has his own way with words, footballistically speaking.

Rishi Dastidar

In these straightened times, my inclination is to suggest Malcolm Allison – because he’d show us how to be flash with the cash, and spend our way back to economic health.

Alastair Creamer

The Sporting Manager would have to be Terry Venables - all blag, great soundbite technique, looks good dressing down as well as up, can croon at the Christmas party, chat up the wives if necessary, comes across well on TV, good at handling large cheques, has no idea of how something actually works (this is actually a positive in the business world). He no doubt has a great lawyer and accountant. A shoo-in for any position going!

Tom Lynham

Brian Clough for gems like this on managing players: "I'd ask him how he thinks it should be done, have a chat about it for twenty minutes and then decide I was right.”

Martin Lee

The serious answer has to be Dave Brailsford, the team manager of the Team GB Cyclists. Meticulous attention to detail, staying in the background rather than being a massive egotist, raising a mediocre brand with no real pedigree into world beaters. Who could top that achievement? Although it might be more fun to have one of our top companies run by Jose Mourinho. Football was much greyer once he left, and in the current gloom, the business world would be massively enlivened by his swaggering bombast. He might be able to raise business morale by force of personality alone.

Amanda Folkes

I’d like to offer an alternative perspective on this one – whilst I think that as copywriters we should aspire to avoid the ambiguity of Eric Cantona’s infamous "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea" I think we’d also do well to emulate the poetry and memorability of this sentence. For good or for bad, it gets you thinking, and for me that is something that good writing should always do.

Jindy Mann

It clearly has to be Big Ron Atkinson. This is the man who displayed his astute business acumen early in his career, exchanging one player for a lawnmower and another for a case of champagne, whilst keeping himself in sheepskin coats, gold signet rings and fine cognac. In keeping with business executives, his vivid application of our language includes an entirely new vernacular - Ronglish. As business managers talk of "streamlining" and "blue sky thinking", Ron too talks of being in places "early doors" and "giving it the full gun". An inspirational character. One could easily imagine a doublespeak peppered annual address to shareholders by Sir Big Ron, CEO of Orange….

Phil Collins

From McCain we learn that the US electorate do not just want a VP who looks like them. They want a VP who both looks like them and is capable of being VP. From Obama we learn – we hope – that tolerance and peaceful demonstration on behalf of excluded people can lead, forty years later, to genuine progress.

Nick Asbury

It’s interesting the way Obama started out being hailed as the Great Rhetorician – every speech sounded like a grand historic moment in the tradition of Kennedy or Martin Luther King. But then it was widely reported that he’d been advised to tone it down, as the electorate was starting to find him a bit too flowery and almost became suspicious of how good he was. When it came to the debates, he kept the tone much more direct and to the point, rooted in everyday language and experience. If you compare it to the world of branding (forced parallel alert), you could say Obama has learned to vary his tone of voice according to the situation and audience, while remaining a recognisable brand. And it seems to have worked (although I still have a weird feeling McCain is going to win).

Tom Lynham

Enrapturing any audience through any media is all about theatre and storytelling. We borrow theatrical devices such as suspension of belief, false perspective, notional space, chiaroscuro, bigged-up personalities and exaggerated modulation and project them into language – Martin Luther King was a master of this. The devices of storytelling – ingenious plotting, mutual conspiracy, emotional dependency, subliminal symbolism, flawed protagonists, ersatz vulnerability, inveigling metaphor and elegiac language – J F K was a master of that. And of course really infectious communications always leave the audience gasping for more…or what our industry has joyfully christened – A CALL TO ACTION!

John Simmons

Well, it depends on the outcome, of course. But I'm hoping for an Obama landslide because he has acted and spoken throughout with greater honesty and dignity. He's used words to inspire people with a belief that change is possible rather than, as McCain has, to frighten people with a fear of otherness. As I write (19 days to go) McCain's negative personal attacks seem to be backfiring and the awful Sarah Palin's incitement of audiences to become lynch mobs seems to be counter-productive. So I believe Obama's election will be good for America, the world and the world of words.

Roger Horberry

Given that this election is currently being lost rather than won thanks in large part to the Republicans' connection with the banking meltdown I'd say a big fat zero. And even if there were any lesson to learn I wouldn't want to learn them.

Mike Reed, Reed Words

Mine are largely the obvious ones. As far as dictionaries go, I've abandoned print and subscribe to the OED online (http://dictionary.oed.com). It's the entire dictionary at your fingertips, with all the added ease of searching, clicking, etc. Invaluable. I also have a Roget's Thesaurus given to me by my dear Grandma decades ago. She was a great word-lover, and it's great to have this constant, close reminder of her. Allied to the Roget's is the Visual Thesaurus application, which I know has been mentioned on the message board before now. (http://www.visualthesaurus.com) It's a brilliant way to search the connections between words. You can buy the Visual Thesaurus software outright, or subscribe to it online. Then of course there's Fowler, still an essential and surprisingly entertaining read. My motto: Avoid howlers. Check Fowler's. Beyond the details of language itself, Marty Neumeier's The Brand Gap and Wally Olins' latest, The Brand Handbook, both have useful, clear things to say about the business of branding. And The Composition of Scientific Words, which suggests Latin, Greek and other words (or parts of words) for largely standard English words, is very handy for naming projects.

Chas Walton

Let's assume there's a Desert-Island-Discs-style ban on dictionaries (an up-to-date copy from all the big names), which brings us to style guides. You need all of them too, but if I had to choose one for my desert-island writer's bookshelf, it would be New Hart's Rules. Boring choice, yes, but vital.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

I have a groaning shelf full of dictionaries, thesauri and style guides, some of which get dusted off more than others. The new edition of the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is indispensable, fantastically laid out and easy to use. I find the Collins Wordfinder useful, and occasionally dip into the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Recent buys include Harold Evans’ Essential English and Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words, though I’m still getting to grips with them. And I also have my eye on the Chambers Dictionary of Slang which is due out next month.

Nick Asbury, Asbury & Asbury

I’m assuming other people will mention our own John Simmons and his Dark Angels trilogy, which I’d say is one of the few essential reads in this area. The other one is Lindsay Camp’s Can I change your mind? which is full of useful practical tips, all very cheerfully and persuasively argued. I’d love to get hold of the D&AD Copy Book that came out a few years ago, but it seems very hard to track down. But the most frequently thumbed book on my shelf remains the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Beats spellcheck not only for accuracy, but because you stumble across something new and interesting every time you open it up.

Rishi Dastidar

The Economist's 'Style Guide'. If you're going to learn how to write, you should learn from the best.

Tom Lynham

Fiction.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

I'm somewhat addicted to wikipedia. Does that make me a bad person?

Fiona Thompson

I love my Griffin iTalk. It’s a mini voice recorder that plugs into the top of my iPod and makes it a doddle to record interviews, conversations and Important Thoughts.

Jamie Jauncey

I discovered (by accident) that the humble and ubiquitous Nokia 6300 synchronises with Microsoft Outlook. Now, at last, I have a portable and constantly up-to-date diary again, having dispensed with the hand-written variety many years ago in favour of an on-screen version.

Heather Atchison

I suppose I benefit as a writer from the joy I take in writing on my PowerBook. It looks good, feels good and is a charm to use. It’s the 21st-century equivalent of a gorgeous fountain pen. And I never get distracted by little annoyances, like I frequently do on a PC. (Or maybe I’m just biased.)

Sarah McCartney

I’ve been using Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software for about three months. I injured my neck doing too much writing and this has helped a load. You have to teach it to recognise your voice but that doesn’t take long. Occasionally it goes bonkers* and I’m not sure I’d use it in a crowded office, but I’m delighted with it. *I wrote “relaxing ylang ylang oil is said to promote feelings of joy”. It wrote “relaxing ylang ylang oil is said to promote feelings of Geordie”.

Tom Lynham

I don’t have an i-Phone, a Blackberry, a Tom Tom satnav (despite cool name), a Bluetooth, an Xbox or even a Wii console, but my PowerBook has become a kind of alter ego. It’s gradually morphing into me (or the other way round), and like me, sinks into occasional sulks, conks out for no apparent reason, needs constant TLC, but bursts into life every morning ready for another day’s work. However, the really astonishing technology that encapsulates human ingenuity - is the book. Invented over 700 years ago, it has never been improved upon. It requires no power, no LCDs, no USBs, no FireWires or firewalls, no maintenance at all, and you don’t even have to scan it through airport security. No need to constantly update the software either, but every time you come back to it you return a little wiser and a bit more clued-up so I guess that’s the equivalent. No matter how badly you abuse it, deface it, rubbish it, abandon it, forget it, or skip bits of it, it’s always there for you with an unconditional love.

Rishi Dastidar

My Smythson notebook, which is almost as expensive an indulgence as something with an integrated circuit in it, fits in any pocket or bag and hasn't yet broken down.

John Simmons

I've got an English degree and never regretted it. Not because it's given me particular skills that have been useful as a business writer but because it gave me three years reading the works of great writers. Having said that, I have found some of those writers - Shakespeare, Milton, dickens - still influencing what I write, sometimes in unexpected ways. But other degrees, other interests, influence people too and help shape what kind of writer you'll be. The main thing is to keep your mind open to as many different sources of inspiration as possible, new and old. Three years at university is useful but you need to keep learning every day.

Rishi Dastidar

I dunno; I did modern history for my sins.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

For me, an English degree didn’t help particularly in getting a job. A more practical post-grad publishing course at the LCP (now LCC), did the trick. But three years reading and dissecting all the greats undoubtedly filters down into your own writing at a subconscious level. Which makes you a better writer, which helps you in your career. So long term, you undoubtedly reap the benefits. I just wish I had so much time for reading these days.

Sarah McCartney

I’ve no idea. I have a degree in Maths and Anthropology and another one in Marketing and Corporate Strategy. Best ask someone who’s got one in English and they can tell you if it’s ever come in handy. I learned to write by practising. I got better and faster as I went along. At least, I think I did. On the other hand, both my degrees are technically English as I studied for both of them in England. (I suspect that isn’t what you meant.)

Nick Asbury

It’s certainly not essential. Nor is any degree. The ideal career path for any copywriter would be to drop out of university, get a job as a chef in Paris, sell cookers door-to-door, join the British Intelligence Service, then become an Amish farmer in Pennsylvania. But then that probably only works if you’re David Ogilvy.

Ben Afia

You don’t need an English degree for a career in business writing – mine’s in archaeology, usefully. In fact you don’t need a degree at all. But you do need to have to have the rules ticking away in the background and a good feel for how language influences people. I’ve found that the best writers have had interesting careers. People who‘ve worked in different jobs, in unusual places often have an unconventional take on the world and that inspires fresh writing. Having said that, English would help me to describe the rules to clients when they ask. And I do rely on the English grads in my team when anything knotty comes up.

Fiona Thompson

I’d start by making friends with project managers in design companies, as they all seem to know each other, and will pass your name on if you do a good job for them. They’ll also take you with them when they move on to new companies. Think about how you’re going to market yourself. For example: - Word-of-mouth publicity is always best, so you could offer a reward to any friends or contacts who get you more work. - Write some intriguing copy on a postcard that establishes your style and will attract potential clients. Tom Rigby of 26 did this very effectively with a postcard that featured the Douglas Adams quote about loving the sound of deadlines whooshing by, and invited clients in a similar predicament to contact him. - Set up a website. Keep it up to date. Send out a regular newsletter to clients and potential clients (get their permission before you add them to the list) and fill it with interesting stuff related to copywriting, your recent work and new articles they can read on your site. Trust your instincts. Do the networking thing, but ask yourself ‘How can I help this person?’ rather than ‘What can they do for me?’. Work with people you like and who appreciate what you do.

Tom Lynham

The world is chronically short of good writers who think creatively and help organisations to communicate more adventurously. Get as broad a grounding as you can. Work in different industries, different countries, different cultures. Decide who you want to work with, how much you want to get paid, and what kind of life you want to live. Find a sympathetic mentor. There are many experienced writers around who would be only too happy to look over your shoulder, help steer your career, and introduce you to clients. And finally, practise, practise, practise…

Jim Davies

Don’t talk about writing. Just do it.

Rishi Dastidar

I’m always chary of giving any form of careers advice, as I only lucked into ‘writing’ full time a year or so ago. That said, I think doing these things help: 1. Read more. Reading is your fuel; it provides you with the tools you need to be a good and successful writer. It doesn’t really particularly matter what you read. But considering that you’ll most likely need to turn your hand to writing about almost any subject under the sun, it helps to be reasonably well informed about the world and its wonders. 2. Write more. Runners get better by running more. Writers get better by writing more. Really, they do. So take any opportunity you can. And if you can’t find any, make your own. A blog isn’t just a space to pontificate – it’s a chance to hone your skills, your craft, your voice(s). 3. Be persistent. Very, very few people fall into writing what they want first off. If you do, great. If not, don’t stop trying. 4. Join 26. And no, I’m not just saying that because I have to. It a) shows a degree of commitment to your chosen career; b) gives you the chance to meet and pick the brains of some of the best copywriters in the country; and c) is jolly handy to mention in interviews.

Nick Asbury

Alexei Sayle once said that, whenever young comedians asked him for advice, he would size them up first and work out if they were any good. If so, he’d tell them they were useless and to pack it in immediately – he didn’t want the competition. In that same spirit, I’d advise asking yourself three questions: 1. Do you have a natural, easy way with language? (Which is usually nothing to do with having an English degree and more to do with whether you can write a good email or tell a good joke.) 2. Do you have the nuts-and-bolts grammatical knowledge to back it up? (Knowing your apostrophes won’t make you a good copywriter, but not knowing them will make you a bad one.) 3. Are you happy turning your talents to any number of exciting and not-so-exciting uses? (No matter how successful you get, you’ll still find yourself writing instructions for vacuum cleaners at some point.) If you can say yes to all the above, then on no account become a copywriter. You’ll be useless.

Martin Lee

I wouldn’t wish to put off any graduate who was hell bent on becoming a copywriter, but to anyone that was unsure, my first piece of advice would be “go and do something else for a decade, and then see how you feel.” My second piece of advice would be to feel free to ignore all my advice.

John Simmons

Write as much as you can. Read as much as you can. Meet as many people as you can.

Tim Rich

Great business writing requires insight and intelligence as well as the ability to craft words. It starts with thinking, it calls upon personal experience, and it demands you can write in all sorts of ways for all sorts of people. So go out and experience life and business before concentrating on copywriting. Don't go freelance too early and never stay in a permanent in-house writer job for more than a few years, until you're 30 anyway (ancient, I know, but one day even you you might be that old). Work for very big and very small businesses. Spend some time working on the other side, in the media. Learn about editorial processes from great editors, learn about business from great business people, learn about marketing and PR from great marketing and PR people. Understand how TV gets made - it will have an enormous effect on business communications over the next 10 years. Make friends with designers, learn how they work and understand how writing and design can lock together to create meaning. Ask (stupid) questions all the time. Travel. Hang around organisations like the Institute of Directors and listen to what makes business people tick. Sharpen your understanding of economics, politics and society by going to events like the http://www.battleofideas.org.uk or reading beyond the mainstream press - http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk, http://www.standpointmag.co.uk, http://www.spiked-online.com. Most of all, write write write. And when you're exhausted by that, read read read.

Roger Horberry

There are plenty of sh*tty jobs out there; copywriting isn't one of them. So read everything you can, work like hell and don't be afraid to take a less than perfect job as a stepping stone to greater things. Persistence pays.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

No. In fact I think you'd be hard pressed to say if something was a good idea if it was genuinely poorly expressed.

John Simmons

In 1997 we all forgave some awful writing. It seemed that it was enough, after 18 years of Old Tories, for New Labour to say 'new' in every sentence. Times change, and now it seems we look for a different variety of new. But the best political campaign language is still coming from the US presidential contest.

Rishi Dastidar

How can it be a great campaign if it's badly written?

Jim Davies, totalcontent

Think of it this way. If the Economist ran a poster with an apostrophe in the wrong place or a glaring typo, its credibility would be destroyed in a single stoke.

Tom Lynham

Not really, but the truly great campaigns are a perfect melt of creative and words. Design consultancies can learn from advertising partnerships. Many I work with still relegate the writer to a service or resource that is bought in half way through the job, instead of an essential ingredient in helping to shape big ideas upfront.

James Hogwood

Could I forgive a great campaign idea if it was bady written? No, surely that's the worse kind - a great idea wasted in its execution. One advertising campaign that's consistently on my nerves (probably because it's essentially a words-based campaign) is Maestro debit cards. The wheels are coming off with their latest stuff, but the first wave of 48-sheets, adshels and so on had some great wordplay in it. The big idea running through it is about how cash is finished, redundant, dead. The problem? The strap/end/positioning line (call it what you will): "The new cash". If only they could sign off with something as verbally dexterous as their headlines. And doesn't it mean that Maestro cards are next in line for extinction?

Heather Atchison

Even if they were paying me handsomely, I wouldn't work for Kerry Foods. They produce brands like Cheestrings, Wall's and Porkinson Bangers. I find it hard to stomach their approach to food (sorry) - from what they put in their products to how they're made. But goodness me, they could use a good writer. Here are a few choice words from their website: "Through its unique understanding of end use applications, aided by state of the art sensory evaluation and Kerry's systems approach to opportunities, the division derives maximum synergies from its core technologies – creating value for customers by way of new products, product improvements, cost reductions or process development."

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

I'm hopelessly promiscuous when it comes to cold, hard cash, but I'm definitely not at home to political parties, religious organisations and the Klu Klux Klan.

Neil Taylor, The Writer

Boris Johnson. That anyone is foolhardy enough to consider entrusting anything bigger than a church fete to the man is enough to make me give up writing and become a professional canvasser. Which I really don’t want to be.

Tom Lynham

I hit ethical problems concerning environmental groups I work with: Should we vilify and excommunicate governments and businesses destroying the environment, or work with them to change attitudes and fund projects? Looking at the question from a slightly different point of view, in developing communications strategies with a human rights group, do we blame and shame the punters who use trafficked women? Or do we try to educate them? The solution to every problem ends up with a conversation around a table, and the earlier you establish consensual dialogue, the better your chances of success.

Tim Rich

Arsenal.

Mike Reed, Reed Words

BAE Systems. I did some work for them years ago, when they were British Aerospace. The work was innocent enough in itself, I just couldn't shake off the fact that, as well as civilian jets, they were also associated with selling weapons and security products to what I consider to be less than wholesome regimes. The recent Al-Yamamah nastiness with the Saudis just makes the whole brand even yukkier for me. There's not enough tea in China, and so forth.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

The Daily Mail and Bernard Matthews.

Martin Lee, Acacia Avenue

There’s definitely a hole in the awards market for another niche prize. I’m thinking of the ‘2008 Fascinating Proposal for an Unfinished Manuscript Written by Martin Lee Award’. The size of the prize would be sufficient to allow for enough time to craft a winning entry for the 2009 award. Is it really too much to ask?

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

Writing awards – essential if I've won one, irrelevant if I haven't.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

In our line of writing, there’s only the one award (D&AD Writing For Design) and that’s rather flawed. It was long overdue, and while at least it represents some recognition for the contribution writers make to a piece of design, it’s turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. For starters, it attracts very few entries compared to the other very well-represented categories at D&AD. I was on the judging panel one year, and was disappointed by what was laid before us compared to all the great stuff I knew was out there in the big wide world. Then there’s the question of how you measure, say, a Christmas card or a poster against a 200-page annual report. And finally, whether you can actually judge writing when you don’t have time to read it properly. Even with so little entered, with some of the longer pieces, you could only hope to get a flavour of the quality of writing in the allocated time. So, I’m delighted that D&AD Writing For Design exists, and I’d like to see others (Creative Review, Design Week) join the fray. But I think it needs to be promoted more vociferously, and the judging system needs looking at – perhaps by introducing short-listing like in the literary awards – so that there’s more reading and debating time built in.

John Simmons

Awards are great to win but only a few people can win. Which means those who don't win feel unjustly overlooked. But they're good in drawing attention and stimulating debate about the subject. I've always liked the Booker for that reason - it means that we focus once a year at least on new novels.

Rishi Dastidar

If all shall have prizes, how come I haven't had mine yet?

Richard Owsley, Bristol

Thanks to the internet, yesterday I worked in Australia, today it's Paris and tomorrow it's Newbury. Yesterday I went to my daughter's school parents' evening in Bristol and tonight I'll take my son to football training in Bristol. So modern technology works for me. More importantly it works for the clients, who can choose the most appropriate writer regardless of location. The only place it sometimes breaks down is the agency in the middle – who seem to think the only qualities needed in a writer are to be available tomorrow and to live round the corner.

Andrew Arnold, Copenhagen

Swapping London for Copenhagen was a great move for me. Big cities have never been my ideal place to live and the idea of a European capital city that wasn't too big was very attractive. Danish companies are very international so there's a fair supply of writing work, copyediting or translation to English. IT is well advanced and I can send press releases out or chat to journalists on the other side of the world at next to no cost. The creative climate is good and there's a great deal of focus on communications as a discipline, so there are fewer of the squabbles between PR, marketing and advertising as to who is the most impotent (sorry, important). Danes are disciplined workers and don't waste time, which means there's more time for families.

Jim Davies, Warwickshire

‘Locationism’ is a thing of the past. I moved out of London to leafy Warwickshire a few years ago when we started having a family – despite my pre-move concerns, the change of address doesn’t seem to have made much difference to the amount or quality of work coming in. I take the train into London a couple of times a week to pick up briefs, and everything else is done by phone, email and PDFs. If you’re starting out, London is the only place to be, but with a reasonable client base and a MacBook Air, you could happily ply your trade from the Moon.

Roger Horberry, York

As someone who has freelanced in Yorkshire for the last five years I can confirm London spanks the north in terms of both quality and quantity of work. There are honorable exceptions (Elmwood in Leeds, Like A River in Manchester and theWorkshop (sic) in Sheffield for example), but without the East Coast Mainline I'd be stuffed. Sorry, but that's my experience.

Simon Caulkin, The Observer

‘Reach out’, ‘solutions’ (aaargh), nouns as verbs, eg ‘to transition’ (I’ve even heard ‘solutioning), ‘prior to’ (why not ‘before’?) and almost anything with ‘delight’ in it.

Lu Hersey

‘Driving’ and ‘delivering’. They never involve cars or flowers in my experience.

Martin Lee, Acacia Avenue

OK, I’m going to commit heresy here and confess to a slight nostalgia for some of the ludicrous business jargon of the 80s. A few gems from that derided lexicon: ‘Helicoptering’ – hovering over a problem to try and find a solution from on high. ‘Run it up the flagpole and see if it flutters’ – equates to hesitant creativity. ‘Win win square’ – rarely anything of the sort. Of late, I have to say I’ve noticed a particular phrase creeping in to meeting arrangements – ‘Hard stop’, as in “I’ve got a hard stop at 4pm”. Usually a doomed attempt to bring a note of finality to a meeting right at the outset. It’s amazing how elastic the hard stop turns out to be.... What else have we got? Ah yes: ‘Push back’ – a polite way of saying “You’re talking complete bollocks”, but expressed as “I’d just like to push back on that last point”.

Tamara O'Brien

I think there’s a kind of verbal karma, or word-creep, which means that any word or phrase you single out for ridicule you will eventually end up using. One minute it’s laughable corporatese, the next it seems perfectly reasonable. It happened to me recently with ‘going forward’. So far I’ve avoided ‘seeking to’ do something, but can’t guarantee I’ll hold out…

Neil Taylor, The Writer

I'd like to speak up for nouns turning into verbs (and vice versa)! It's been happening for hundreds of years. And when people go on about English being destined for greatness because of how flexible it is, it's because we can do stuff like that. Innit.

Margaret Oscar

The word ‘execution’. Apparently, a good ‘execution’ is something to be proud of in the marketing world. But it's a word that's actually used to avoid the lengthy praise of good work. I'd rather hear the lengthy praise!

Heather Atchison

I can’t bear it when people try to big themselves up by using what they think are ‘posh’ words instead of straightforward ones (all too common in customer service). I mean things like using the verb ‘advise’ instead of tell or say – or saying ‘whereby’ when they really mean ‘where’ or ‘when’ – or the ever-so-common misuse of ‘myself’ when it should be ‘me’. And the word ‘outputs’ makes my skin crawl.

Mike Reed, Reed Words

A few years ago I encountered a ‘Brand Temple’, in which columns of values built on a foundation of vision supported a roof of personality. Or something. I can't remember the details, except that it was linked to the idea that employees were ‘Knights Exemplar’. I keep thinking I must have dreamt this, but I'm sure I've still got the diagram somewhere. I think the whole thing lies in ruins now, anyway.

John Simmons

Just in from a meeting with a client who said “I've got a hard stop at the end of March”. That's when he's redundant. He also introduced a new Brand blah-blah to my bulging lexicon of such terms. As well as a brand triangle and brand pyramid, there is now a Brand Parthenon... perhaps meaning it's ancient, difficult to get to and there’s absolutely nothing inside it.

Ben Afia, Afia

I love a good ‘challenge’. Usually in a sentence like ‘Could I just challenge you on that?’, delivered by someone really pushy but been on an effective communications course and thinks it’s subtle. Then there’s the wonderful ‘engage’ (have we mentioned that already?). ‘I’ve engaged internal communications’, to which I replied ‘did they enjoy being engaged’. Marvellous.

Tom Lynham

I fart in the bath, you fart in the bath, this is my business, this is your business, can we have a meeting of minds.

Jim Davies, totalcontent

It used to be the hugely vacuous ‘stunning’, applied lazily to anything from a movie to a book to business performance. Whack on the head anyone? Now it’s the ubiquitous ‘passion’ – everyone’s apparently out of control and ripping their bodices, whether they’re making wing nuts or creating a brand experience for you. But number one with a bullet is ‘journey’, as in ‘The past 12 months have been a momentous journey for the board of directors…’ It’s enough to make me pack my bags.

Ken Munn

"In order to". In most uses, two of the three words can be omitted.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

As my chapter in 'The Bard & Co' attempts to explain, these little fellas are often sorely misunderstood and gain currency precisely because they work so well. Plus many of us use them (in speech if not in print) rather more than we'd like to admit. Let he who is without sin...

Stein Olsen

The word that immediately springs to mind is 'innovative', followed closely by 'solutions', but I'm guessing that's going to get a hammering by most. Once, the word 'innovation' was the camping ground for magnificent achievements like the wheel or electricity. Now it's seen flying on corporate standards across the world. Type the word into a browser and marvel at the freak show (146,000,000 results found). Innovative Bowling Products Corporation, I ask you. Innovation should have it's dictionary definition changed to – see mundane.

Martin Lee, Acacia Avenue

To me, punctuation marks are like extra letters of the alphabet, simply there to help a writer make their meaning clear. They are normally missing in public signs, so that you end up with unintentionally comic ambiguity, such as “Slow police” instead of “Slow. Police.” Hmmm, maybe I’ve just talked myself out of punctuation…

John Simmons

I love. Full stops changing. The meaning of a sentence. Commas can do just as nicely given a, chance...

Mike Reed, Reed Words

The question doesn't make much sense as 'Punctuation a writers best friend or creative straightjacket', and I think that's the point. Punctuation aids meaning. I get a frightening amount of what you might call Joycean emails from clients who seem to drop all punctuation as soon as they see a keyboard. These messages take repeated, careful reading to decipher, and even then I often have to ring up and clarify. I have no idea why anyone - except for specific stylistic effect - would want to ditch these friendly little marks. They're only trying to help.

Nick Asbury

I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s my best friend – punctuation has never bought me a round, for one thing. But it’s undoubtedly a good thing. The writer’s job is to help clients project a professional image and get their message across. Bad punctuation distracts from the message and makes you look shoddy. On the other hand, it is annoying when people pull you up on silly things. Splitting an infinitive is fine if the alternative sounds clumsy. And starting a sentence with ‘And’ is OK – always has been. Although admittedly it can look out of place in certain contexts. (Starting a sentence with ‘Although’ is OK too, I reckon.)

Jim Davies, totalcontent

I don’t think of punctuation as a Truss. In fact, it allows you to shape your words more precisely, to create subtle accents and nuances – precision or ambiguity.

Rishi Dastidar

Punctuation a straitjacket? Only if you're already on the way to being locked up. If we didn't have rules, then there wouldn't be any fun in breaking them. Plus a well-judged semi-colon; well, it has the power to break your heart, non? If your words arrives mostly as txtspk, I can see how an ellipsis might not be of use... but for the rest of us, we should embrace the constraint. For it liberates, ultimately.

Tim Rich

I match my use of punctuation to the effect I want to create within the reader. If I want to convey a clear meaning I’ll opt for exact punctuation that invites the reader towards the messages I have in mind. If I want to disorientate I’ll introduce ambiguity. But I’m less and less interested in the trivia of stylistic experimentation and more and more interested in the trivium of liberal arts.

Lindsay Camp, writer and author of ‘Can I Change Your Mind?’

"As ever, it depends how the words are interpreted. If we take Plain English to be the opposite of the kind of language that tries to impress or even deceive readers by means of impenetrable jargon or self-important corporate verbiage, then we can all agree it's a good thing. But it worries me a bit that some people may understand the phrase to mean austere, unadorned, drained of colour, free from any form of wit or verbal playfulness - all things that can help to make our writing engaging or even enjoyable to read."

Freddie Baveystock, Managing Consultant – Brand, Rufus Leonard

"Plain English is a misnomer. There’s nothing plain or boring about good simple English – witness the impact of a poem like ‘The Trees’ by Philip Larkin, or ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost. Or, for that matter, any number of limericks, hymns and terrace chants. Sadly few businesses commission poets or comedians to craft their language. Many, on the other hand, have tried to take on Innocent’s tonality of refreshing simplicity, only to fall flat on their faces. So the answer to this question has to be ‘Neither’. Plain talking doesn’t always deliver compelling truth; but nothing beats it when it does."

Dan Radley, Start Creative

"I’ve just discovered the Pirate Translator at www.talklikeapirate.com/translator.html which is far more fun than Plain English, so from now on I’m going to talk like this. Ahaarrrrr! Them plain li’l words can be interestin' in combinations but I’ve always found fruity language appeals more t' comely wenches. In business, sayin' somethin' memorable be a cost-effective way for you t' achieve cut-through. Aye. So I’m all for whatever gets t' job done, me hearties. Accessibility Managers? Keelhaul ’em."

Lisa Desforges, Interbrand

"Plain is a pretty ambiguous word for an organisation so dedicated to precision. Just think of all those easily confused readers who might mistake the PECers for advocates of ordinariness rather than coveters of clarity! But seriously, do I want my words to be understandable? Of course. Do I want them benchmarked against an external quality standard with a Crystal Mark logo stamped at the end of every paragraph? Hell no."

Freddie Baveystock, Strategy & Communications Director, The Nest

“Yes and no. Certainly all the designers I know love working with writers, and looking around me, I see more brands taking care over their words. So in theory, spirit and practice I’m with John. In outlook, however, I don’t really share his breezy optimism. This year I expect to have just as many vapid political communiqués, frothy free magazines and dull DM thrust through my door as any other year. Ditto for pointless point of sale and screaming sale graphics. Culturally, we still have a mountain to climb.”

Fiona Thompson, Wordspring

“I’d love to think that 2007 could be the year of words used wisely, but remain a touch cynical just now. Perhaps designers could take inspiration from the recent ‘Literary Constructs’ exhibition at England & Co in London, W11. There, a range of artists cut up and manipulated words on paper in fantastical and beautiful ways. Chris Kenny takes disembodied phrases such as “Spikey blushed with pleasure as he shook Mrs Fieldmouse” and “Jack plunged in at once” and pins them to a board as though they were butterflies, creating witty poem landscapes. Meanwhile, Georgia Russell dissects books, often French classics, and displays the flayed results in acrylic cases or bell jars.”

Neil Taylor, Creative Director, The Writer

“Finally, someone running a big design agency who gets it. Thank heavens for John Allert. But it’d be great if design agencies didn’t just worry about the words they use when customers finally get to read their sometimes finely wrought websites, brochures and ads. What about the words they use to describe the brand before it hits the outside world? The language of brand models, essences, positionings, matrices, keys, and yes, lozenges is still woefully bland and uninspiring. So woeful that they’d be too embarrassed to ever utter them to a normal person. So why is it any different internally? As Scrappy Doo would say, let me at ’em. Let me at ’em!”

Jim Davies, totalcontent

“It’s certainly not the Wild West it was when 26 set up four years ago. There’s more of an appreciation of tone of voice out there, and a realisation that a story well told can give a brand that little something extra. Having said that, more often than not, writing still comes a poor second to visual content. It’s often left to the last moment and people aren’t mad about paying for it. And the paper stock is still more likely to get a credit than the writer. We’re at base camp – there’s still the best part of the summit to climb. Now where’s that crampon?”

Jim Davies, Writer, totalcontent

The Economist poster campaign is from the ‘if it ain’t broke’ school of advertising – it’s been ploughing the same old furrow since 1984. The early ones, masterminded by David Abbott, deserved all the acclaim that came their way – they were distinctive, intelligent and succinct. '"I never read The Economist." Management trainee. Aged 42' is probably the strongest. At a time when the glossy advertising image held sway, they bucked the trend, demonstrating the power of a few well-chosen words. The figures speak for themselves: worldwide sales doubled between 1988 and 2000; advertising revenue increased by 250%. Now, they seem to be trying a bit too hard. The puns are a bit laboured, and intrusive graphic devices detract from the elegant simplicity that once set them apart. Working on a campaign this famous is a double-edged sword – there’s a great heritage to draw on, but you have a lot to live up to. Perhaps it’s time to move on.

Roger Horberry, Alp Associates

I’m a fan. Simple is hard, as anyone who’s ever tried to do something similar knows. Only the most curmudgeonly creative could fail to be impressed by the variety, wit and sheer economy displayed in these ads. Their authors make the minimum amount of content deliver the maximum impact without recourse to the usual visual gimcrackery. OK, the occasional execution misses the mark but the overall hit ratio is envy-inducingly high. Basically, I wish I’d thought of them.

Tim Rich, Writer

Rather like the economy, long-running campaigns have highs and lows. I still like '"I never read The Economist.” Management trainee. Aged 42.' And the poster placed on a double-decker bus's roof that said 'Hello to our friends in high places'. Cue a mild depression. Did the latest creative team base their conception of business phrases on a stuffy text book from 1985? 'White collar' is now applied to everything from CEOs to administrative drones – which do they mean? 'Fold', 'Still busking' and 'bigger picture' are weak puns. 'Sparks & Mensa' is a recycled line about M&S from the 70s. But I'm more thrown by the references to marketing and communications here – is the idea of a 'rough' something most business people understand? Why a self-conscious headline about headlines? 'Free Seeds' manages to lower the brand to the level of tactical sniping at other publications while delivering a rather feeble play on seeds of knowledge. Or do they mean seeds of growth? This lot seem laboured. But I bet the campaign bounces back.

Neil Taylor, Creative Director, The Writer

Come on! 'Sparks & Mensa', that's genius, isn't it? Anyone who's serious about writing in business should jump for joy just that The Economist ads exist. They say two things which I want to hammer into the head of every senior business type in the country. First, that you don't (always) need pictures to make your point; good writing can do the job all on its own. Second, you don't need to be po-faced to sound clever. Obviously, some of them are better than others (I mean, 'Is your indecision final?'? My dad used to say that, for goodness' sake). But how many of us are funny all the time?

Mike Reed, Reed Words

It is the best of briefs; it is the worst of briefs. Such a huge opportunity – either to look wonderful or to screw up very publicly. And I have to say, this latest crop seem to be woefully below par. ‘Sparks & Mensa’ is not only a real groaner (it ought to say ‘Geddit?’ on the end), it’s too ‘on the nose’, as screenwriters say. The classic Economist ads compliment the audience in elegantly oblique fashion. This one says ‘You’re really clever if you read The Economist’, and sticks an Eric Idlean elbow in your ribs. (And what has Marks & Spencer got to do with The Economist anyway?) ‘Is your indecision final?’ seems to strike a sour note. Rather than congratulating its audience on their taste (and implying that non-readers had better join the club), it says very clearly, ‘You’re really struggling, aren’t you? Better read The Economist.’ Economist readers (in the world of the campaign) don’t read it because they’re struggling – they read it precisely because they’re not. It’s easy to knock, though, isn’t it? I know this is the point where someone says, "Have you got any better ideas?" To which I can only reply, "I'd be more than happy to provide an estimate."

David Hughes, David & Associates

Even the best orchestras strike a bum note from time to time. Even so, they don't usually happen all in the same bar. Without doubt creating new ads for the Economist is a tough gig. This long running campaign has been a brilliant example of brevity, restraint, wit and style. I've enjoyed each new expression of the core idea 'You're smart if you read the Economist'. Part of that enjoyment has been the amazement that the agency has managed to keep the thing fresh for 22 years. This latest crop may not stand up when compared to the whole of the back catalogue - very little could. I'm sure it's a blip and normal service will resume.

Chris Bird, Word Bird

Ben & Jerry, those chunky monkeys, were one of the first to sweeten up the corporate tone of voice, thanks to their sweet and sticky language, and the richness of their story-telling. Later, Orange talked to us ‘on equal terms, in a tone of friendly respect’, changing how we thought about mobile phones. Now we’re in danger of losing our innocence, as global purveyors of hydrogenated vegetable powders seek to sound like entrepreneurial smoothie-makers, and giant multi-nationals market bath bombs in an attempt to sound lush. So… ‘Tone of voice – valuable business commodity or meaningless buzzphrase?’ It all depends on whether you get in there first, and have something original to say.

Mike Reed, Reed Words

In this post-Innocent era, I don’t think anyone can doubt the power of a genuinely original and distinctive tone of voice. However, I do think some clients get excited about ‘tone of voice’ without really appreciating what that means. It can be seen as a bit of a magic wand – “If we get a good tone of voice, we’ll do brilliantly, like Innocent.” (Like the idea that a smart new logo will save the business.) Which I think accounts for the number of people asking for something “a bit like Innocent”. When you ask about the brand, its personality, and what makes it distinctive, such clients often go a bit quiet and start frowning. And they tend to come up with a brief that says, “We want to sound professional and authoritative, but also friendly, human and conversational.” All too often, this is presented as something genuinely new and distinctive. A genuinely distinctive voice has to be grounded in the truth of the brand and its values. Otherwise it can sound like someone putting on an accent in a transparent attempt to be something they’re not.

Ben Afia

How we talk to people affects how they feel about us. They make assumption on what we say, and how. If our words and tone fit how they see the world, they might want to talk to us more. And if they don’t, they’ll look elsewhere. So much for stating the obvious. But I think the same goes for companies and organisations. The words and tone they use give us clues about what they’re like to deal with and whether we can trust them. That’s what I think tone of voice is about. So, I absolutely think it’s a valuable business commodity. What remains to be seen is how far we can take it. Innocent’s distinctive tone of voice on bottles, echoes the purity of the juice inside. And the idea of drinking unadulterated juice appeals to people who feel bad about eating loads of takeaways. It’s a great business idea, brilliantly communicated through a tone that’s attractive to a certain market. The result is an expanding business that sells lots of juice. For other organisations, like the water board, we still want to feel that what matters to us, matters to them. And a straightforward and honest tone can help them to get that message across to us... but only if they believe it.

A response from Dan Germain of Innocent drinks:

I always find it a bit odd that people might want to sound a bit like us (Innocent). It seems to me like the only thing they should ever really want to sound like is themselves. the tone that innocent uses is the one that we use when we’re talking to our mums or messing about in the pub on a Friday night. It didn't get invented or agreed upon after a period of consultancy with some expert toners. And so what you hear from us is us. Not someone else's idea of what we are. Of course, analysing it like this is the toughest thing of all, because it makes you sound like a bit of an overly analytical knob. and that’s the last thing we want to be. fundamentally, I believe that a company will do best when it uses its own natural voice. but that might be the tricky bit – finding out what your voice is when you’ve been somebody else’s for too long.

Rishi Dastidar

Management speak is like a particularly nasty STI: despite effective remedies, it is always there even when you think you are clear, and can flare up again at the slightest provocation. Practitioners in the field should remind their patients that as well as a detrimental effect on those who come into contact with such words, their use has an impact closer to home – readers are likely to sense a poverty of thought, ill intentions behind obfuscatory language, and a general lack of humaneness. Prescriptions should always include a willingness to return email/memo/brief/report to transmitter of said jargon with a health warning attached; or a transfusion of simplicity, clarity and creativity.

Richard Owsley, Writers

Nothing seems to be able to stem the loathsome torrent of driving, delivering and leveraging on value propositions and core competencies. I used to think this was good news for my mortgage payments – so long as this nonsense proliferated, there would always be a need for translators (even if arriving at a meaningful rendition wasn’t always easy). And with English as the universal language of business, the world was my oyster. But now I’m beginning to fear this globalisation. The more I work for multinational corporations, the more I realise that they learn not standard English, but its bastard spawn. When my children reach working age they will need only three languages – Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Management Claptrap.

Anelia Schutte, The Writer

There’s no doubt that management speak is still rife. The difference now is that it’s finally being recognised – and publicly ridiculed – for the fact-shrouding hogwash that it really is. Why would any self-respecting manager want to sound like David Brent? Or be the brunt of a Boardroom Bingo game? On BBC2’s ‘Balderdash And Piffle’, Ian Hislop blamed the spread of management speak on the rise of management consultancies. But even the management consultancies are now becoming self-conscious about their jargon-riddled drivel. Just in the past year, The Writer has helped three such consultancies to exorcise their ‘paradigm shifts’ and ‘optimum work/life balances’. It’s like smoking. Some people might never quit the management-speaking habit. But it’s becoming increasingly anti-social.