Tread Softly, Because Dreams
Meeting John Simmons and his wicked good, life-changing book
It’s 2006. A curious book pops up on Amazon. We, Me, Them & It: How to Write Powerfully for Business. By John Simmons.
The book seems personal and quirky. No ‘Look Inside’ thing that lets you sneak peek some pages. Still, the thing is speaking to me, tapping me on the chest. I click “Buy Now” and whoosh, the UPS guy arrives. I read the covers off it, write my first book review, talk about it non-stop.
Years go flying past. Online, I bump into Jamie, a colleague of Simmons. The two of them are clearly up to something. It’s possible that I beg. “I want to be in your club,” I write in an email. “Okay,” they say. “Come to Spain. We have a workshop.” “Okay,” I say. “I’m coming.” It’s 2011.
{In preparation for Spain, came this note, via email. “We would also like you to read and have a think about the couple of sonnets attached here before the course starts.”}
Sonnet 97
How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen,
What old December’s bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer’s time,
The teeming autumn big with rich increase
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widowed wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute;
Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.
Sonnet 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth
Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue;
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not t’ have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
{At this point, I in fact do have a think. And as I think, I fall back into my lying, low rent, untutored, once-upon-a-young-Canuck-self from the south end of Fall River, Massachusetts and ask myself, “O, what the fuck are you getting yourself into?”}
Writing workshop. Under epic blue skies, a stunning mountain home in Andalucia, with pool. At midnight, on day one, around the giant farm table in the kitchen, my fellow writers want to hear about—Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman. “We are a young and foolish people,” I tell them, “we do this to ourselves all the time. Don’t worry. This’ll never happen again.” Ha.
We drink scads of a humble Spanish red, we eat, we write, we drink. Our workshop is run by Simmons and another colleague Stuart (Jamie is in India) so it looks like there might be a total of three of them. They have a company, Dark Angels. My Dark Angels Spanish experience? Inspired. Some, tongue barely planted in cheek, will later call Dark Angels a dangerous cult.
I launch an embarrassing campaign to persuade Simmons to adopt me as a friend. Couple years later, another workshop. Oxford! I write a sestude about Lewis Carroll, whose camera I’ve seen at the local museum. After the first night, my dorm room is without electricity. It matters not because, dinner with… Philip Pullman. After dinner, intimate reading of Grimm Tales by and with…Philip Pullman. Soon after, I visit Simmons and his wife in London, make the pilgrimage to Emirates Stadium, become pals with his photographer daughter, and by 2015 I’ve managed somehow to convince Simmons and his colleagues to let me join the club.
But the book, the book. We, Me, Them & It is about tone of voice in business writing. It is altogether amazing. And personal. And today—my birthday as it happens—the book is being reissued. This all did take a bit of time. Original review — now annotated — follows.
{A sweltering patio behind my rowhouse in Baltimore. With dogs barking, sirens wailing, the simmering feud with the neighbors in full twist and shout, the sound of gunshots in the distance, and the ghost of Henry Louis Mencken whispering in my ear, I begin my review...}
The Empire Writes Back
This irresistible book with the charming title floats a simple answer to a difficult question. Your organization is struggling to emerge from an overcrowded marketplace and is looking for ways to forge a separate and unique identity — to create an enduring and powerful brand. How do you do it? Simple, says Simmons. Write different.
{Branding and copywriting were new to me. I’d woken up one day in 2002 and announced to my wife, friends, and dog, that I was now a copywriter. Freelance! At first, I sweat through empty days and long, long nights figuring out how to become one. Later, I modified my Google search: “How to become a good copywriter.” Onward…}
Most firms turn to graphics, colors, logos, photography and typography — a visual identity to distinguish themselves. But language, writes Simmons, and more specifically, tone of voice, is a powerful way to forge a distinctive identity. Branding, after all, is about differentiation. And describing a brand begins with words.
Yet time after time, company after company, the same tired and worn-to-the-bone words and phrases keep showing up. So your audience, (a word he prefers over stakeholders) faced with a company that has failed to engage, stimulate, humor, or excite them, will decide for themselves who you are. Not bloody likely they’ll decide in your favor. Major opportunity lost.
“The basis of the tone of voice process,” he says, “is a determination to use words that really mean something and take a risk.”
We | The company; the collective group that “you” as a writer work for.
So how does Simmons — a well-established brand himself — get his message across? A deeply personal, knowing and assuring tone of voice. Strong openings. Dramatic closings. Risk.
Chapter one is a jazzy tour of the Simmons working process. We open with the wildly inventive Dennis Potter; “The trouble with words is you don’t know whose mouth they’ve been in.” At that, Simmons is off and running like a passionate band leader, improvising here, reading the charts there, moving his audience through short solos on literature, advertising, politics, culture and creativity.
Here’s David Ogilvy — “People who think well, write well.” There are classic openings from Jane Austen, Joseph Heller and from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera.
{Boom! Marquez’ story of Florentino and Fermina was like heroin. Who does not love an epic, fifty-year love affair? I LOVED that book. I could EAT that book.}
There is much, much more.
All of which is designed to push the boundaries of language. To lead, liberate, excite, educate and inspire writers to toss aside the shroud of dreadful conformity that blankets most business writing.
Words are living, breathing entities. They have a life and mind of their own. Inspiration is all around us and is there for the taking. And yet anyone who admires Dennis Potter knows words can cause trouble. “Words are your children,” he cautions. “They can inflict small unthinking acts of cruelty on your neighbors.” Keepsakes: Listen. Read out loud. Speak the words inside your head if you must, but careful listening will kill off a lot of bad writing. I turned the page to find this.
“There is no such thing as correct use of language.”
{I lit up like a Roman candle. I was desperate to wield that sentence like a wooden ruler, but sadly, Sister Mary Joseph, the dominatrix of the diagrammed sentence from my shame-based Catholic grammar school was dead, dead, dead.}
Me | My Individual Personality as a Writer
“The places where water comes together with other water. Those places stand out in my mind like holy places.” — Ray Carver, opening chapter two.
{ Jesus H. Raymond Carver. In a business writing book.}
The tone of voice approach asks that we develop a more personal writing style within the overall framework of the tone of voice for whoever we are writing for. We know there are limits to how much individuality can emerge within any corporate or organizational narrative. Obstacles abound. So chapter two is about finding ways to do it, “gives permission” and offers several case studies (Oxfam and Royal Mail) that Simmons and Interbrand (where he headed verbal identity) worked on.
{This seems as good a place as any to jump in... What came forth from finding this book? Travel — Spain, London, Paris, Oxford. Friendship. Fellowship. Craftsmanship. Arsenal! Clients. Confidence. Chanting. In a stone storytelling circle. On summer solstice. In the Scottish Highlands. With a bevy of Dark Angels. After which, bacon sandwiches and the singing of Leonard Cohen songs.}
One method that Simmons created to help bridge the personal and public was to introduce poetry into the workplace. Why poetry? “What we show at work is the outer person. But what is really interesting is the inner person. Can we find ways to bring more of the inner person to work? If so, will we be more fulfilled in our total life? If so, will we actually do better work because much of our work needs to have an emotional content?”
{There are two reasons to love this. Number one, it’s classic Simmons and is beautiful. Number two, imagining every VP in America rolling on the floor in laughter.}
He offers poetry as just one method, but advises against trying to franchise the approach. It worked for him. It may or may not work for you. The bottom line idea is that people are happier when they can be “more themselves” at work. People who are happier, do better work.
{Given the absolutely amazing state of my last project, nothing could be more spot on accurate than those words.}
Bringing more of yourself into your working life is a good thing, but no small trick.
{Note to my friend John: In America being yourself at work, being happier? These are foreign, therefore unwelcome, notions. We are all about the dollar. Which is reason No. 1 that we’re No. 1}
Poetry is one way.
For people who write for a living, reading poetry is a way to stay fresh, to create anew and to think about and use language in new ways. Poetry may open pathways to emotions, and depending on the kind of work you do, that can be a very useful thing.
Why is so much business writing bad? Neglect. Indifference. The corporate voice dominates the airwaves. Aversion to risk. The fear of offending. The turn of phrase or idiosyncrasy that might signal an individual voice — emanating from family or personal history, cultural tastes, a playful sense of humor, simple, plain-spoken honesty, (or, god forbid, poetry!) have been deleted, scrubbed clean.
And, “because all writing is conversation, not monolog,” a growing, long-term relationship with hordes of potential customers entranced by your unique and engaging way of speaking with them, slips from view.
Them | The Audience
The core idea here is about expanding traditional notions of corporate identity to include language, the words a company uses, and tone of voice, the way that language is spoken as part and parcel of an organization’s identity. As the definition of “brand” has expanded in recent years to now mean the company itself, rather than particular consumer products, then the company’s values, behavior and priorities, as expressed by the people within this company are central to the brand.
If the company is the brand, and the people are the company, then tone of voice becomes an essential mechanism through which to define, enhance and clarify the brand to the core audience.
“Them” is about a deeper understanding of that audience. For Simmons, tone of voice signifies understanding. For him, identity and brand differentiation through tone of voice includes everything. He considers every form of communication — signage, public service announcements, collateral — an opportunity to strengthen the bonds of loyalty between you and your customers.
Why?
Because brand attachment today is about repeated experience. Think Apple, Starbucks, Google. The quality and nature of communications — word choices and tone — need to emerge from everyday performance and practices, values and belief systems, not a passing fancy for the latest “branding idea.”
What company these days doesn’t want to be relationship based? Yet how many examine whether the links between products, services, culture and language helps establish, or hinder the relationship they hope to create?
It | The Message, The Stories we Tell
Synchronicity, heaven sent. While working on this piece I received a project. The project is to edit (a better verb might be “fell”) a huge manual that is masquerading as an encyclopedia. Here’s a sample; “Opportunities for program immersion,” and “The application of a system of organization within the infrastructure as a whole is indispensable to effective presentation.” For 300 pages, a disembodied voice carries on, strangling every last ounce of life out of a pretty interesting subject.
Corporate identity in the Simmons universe is really about possibility. It’s about understanding that identity — that profoundly complex mix of positioning statements, values, graphics, culture, colors and language — can help companies and organizations see themselves and their mission in entirely new ways. The collective stories that live within any organization can form the basis for regeneration and re-imagination. That entails some measure of risk.
On the subject of risk, (and of dramatic endings) one of the best stories ever told is of the British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott and his race to the South Pole. Scott (a shining example of the stiff-upper-lip British explorer brand) died tragically on his return from the Pole after discovering that his rival, Roald Amundsen of Norway, had bested him. As he and his men lay dying in their tent just ten miles away from a supply depot, Scott wrote long, moving letters home to family and friends. When he finally reached his end, he scratched out his final words. “It seems a pity,” he wrote, “but I do not think I can write more.” Me neither.
Buy the book, because dreams. I did and mine came true. Life has never been so beautiful.
