The chief law enforcement officer at Syracuse University sent an email to everyone to tell them not to be afraid. This obscured the real purpose of the email, which was to cover his ass while not saying anything at all. Here’s the email that my friend got. I’ll highlight the weasel words and passive voice…
it seems as if every community in North America is now vying to host Amazon’s second headquarters. These municipal pitch documents, located as they are at the intersection of politics, business, and fantasy, are solidly built on a ratio of one part statistics to five parts bullshit. I took a close look at the pitch…
Salesforce is a great program for small business. Each of its customer sites has an administrator, many of whom are non-coders. That’s why a recent “critical update” featuring “block execution” sounded scary — but incomprehensible — to many. The salesforce email: simultaneously opaque and terrifying A correspondent working in a small financial advice firm forwarded…
Yesterday, Rich Rowe, CEO of Arkema, warned that his chemical plant near Houston might explode. Today it exploded. When you know something like this is going to happen, you need to get right to the point. Rich Rowe didn’t. The Arkema plant is in Crosby, Texas, about 25 miles from downtown Houston. Houston, of course,…
Hurricane Harvey looks like a devastating storm. But with the media deploying superlatives so frequently, is there any capacity for alarm left for this actual emergency? I analyze the lead hurricane article from The Weather Channel for precision, clarity, and effectiveness. The lesson here: context is crucial when describing a potential disaster. Start with this:…
Marketing automation company Marketo had an oopsy last week — they forgot to renew their main domain name. This caused a day’s disruption for their customers. The CEO’s passive apology fails to be direct and honest. Why is this so hard? Let’s take a look at the CEO’s email to customers. In what follows, I’ve…
Air France announced a new subsidiary targeting millennials, Joon. It apparently believes that millennials will select an airline based on branding and style, unlike everyone else who buys on price, convenience, and a reduced chance of being assaulted. The resulting announcement is as airy as a fresh-baked Parisian croissant. The Joon announcement is breathless My…
A 48-year old man drove a van into a crowd of people in the Muslim neighborhood of Finsbury Park in London, but he’s mostly missing from the news headlines about the attack. Why? Is it journalists’ passive writing habit, bias in a case where Muslims were victims rather than attackers, or just a need for…
Two-and-a-half weeks after dragging a passenger off a flight like a rag doll, United Airlines has released a statement about changes to its procedures and emailed all its frequent flyers. Everything they did wrong in the original statements, they’ve now done right. And the two sets of statements give me a unique opportunity to contrast effective…