Three Reasons Not to Use Sophisticated Language If You Write for Marketing

Brian Boys reports:

"When you drop in big words to sound erudite and profound, it’s like adding a tiara and opera gloves to your work outfit. It’s just not going to have the effect you want. Especially if you’re a guy...Here are three basic reasons not to try to sound sophisticated in your marketing writing...You lose your audience. The number one goal of any kind of business communication is to send a clearly understood message. If you throw in technical or academic lingo, you have a good chance that your meaning will be lost on a large percentage of your readers. As soon as they realize they’re not going to understand your message and so get nothing out of it, they’ll stop following your argument and toss your marketing piece aside...It seems suspicious. When you’re reading a software company’s website and they use the fancy custom-tailored-suit term 'bespoke,'...[y]ou immediately assume their product must be inferior because they’ve had to resort to fancy words to talk it up...It doesn’t have the intended effect. The people who don’t understand you will think you’re a little odd. The people who do understand you will think it’s sad you’re trying so hard. (Back to the tiara and opera gloves.) And certain cruel copywriters will save your brochure just so they can show it to other copywriters and give everybody a good snicker...The greatest works in English were marked by their simplicity because it gave them the power to communicate to everybody. That’s a great principle to follow in your marketing writing. Replace your big words with more simple ones. And if you have to use technical argot (jargon), define it right away."