AI is making corporate writing human again

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

This famous line from advertising legend David Ogilvy was one of many that inspired me in my early years as an advertising copywriter. You can almost imagine yourself inside the car.

British copywriter David Abbott, whose work included some of The Economist’s best-known ads, wrote something equally lovely in a Father’s Day ad for Chivas Regal. Among a son’s reasons for thanking his father was this line:

“Because you never expected too much of me or let me get away with too little.”

An ad for whisky makes you think about your own dad.

In ad copywriting, making someone feel something or see something differently is the holy grail. Those lines stayed with me because of the few words took me someplace. The first, someplace i’d never been, i.e. inside a Rolls-Royce, and the other to a very family place which is my dear dad.

I don’t think we have to leave that behind when we write for a company.

Bringing it to work

In the early days of running my own copywriting business, around 2000, I worked with local publishing company Epigram on numerous corporate publications. We would pitch ideas for telling an organisation’s story through words and design.

One of the first projects we worked on together was a commemorative publication for the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). We called it In Safe Hands, with a close-up of a firefighter’s hands holding a young civilian’s on the cover.

At a time when book titles such as “xx years of excellence” or “celebrating xx years” were rife, we pushed to look beyond the expected to what those years of service meant to people. The title and image brought that down to a simple gesture, one person looking after another.

For an Asia Pacific Breweries annual report, we used “The Rise and Rise”, accompanied by a close-up of bubbles rising through APB’s iconic Tiger Beer. A good year for the company, expressed through the very thing it made. It also said something about APB: a company comfortable enough with itself to let a little wit into its annual report.

Neither approach used “greater heights” or “empowering resilience”. Instead, we gave readers something they could recognise and feel.

Let people recognise themselves

There are opportunities to make that connection inside a publication too. Even in a thank-you

Take a company thanking its staff after opening a new distribution centre: “We thank our employees for their dedication and commitment.” It may be sincerely meant but it is also something almost any company can say.

Many times, we can get more connection simply by telling more of the story.

“Our customers received their orders as usual while we moved to the new centre. Behind that were months of planning, trial runs and colleagues working across both sites. To everyone who made a difficult move look uneventful, we know how much work that took. Thank you.”

If you were one of those colleagues, you might recognise your own long days in that paragraph and that someone noticed.

Sometimes, human means being straightforward

An annual report is a formal account of performance. In a difficult year, a company needs to explain its results while maintaining confidence in its direction. How it handles the uncomfortable parts matters.

“Revenue from our logistics business fell 8% this year. A weaker freight market played a part, as did the opening of our new hub six months behind schedule. The hub is now operating.”

There is no attempt to make this moving. It gives readers a straightforward explanation, including a fact the company might rather not dwell on. The delay contributed to weaker results. The hub is now open, which signals that things are back on track. There may be more to explain elsewhere in the report, but this passage makes those points clear.

That, too, is part of writing for people. Readers can form their own opinion. Giving them a clear account respects that and gives them a basis for trust.

Finding what matters

We start by thinking about the person reading. What do they need to understand? What would make this matter to them?

A draft can have all the expected words and still leave those questions unanswered. We learn that a company is committed, its people are dedicated and its future is promising. We come away knowing very little about any of them.

There is thinking to be done before choosing the words. Sometimes, perhaps in the rush to the deadline, we haven’t found enough to say yet. And asking AI to “add warmth” won’t supply the missing understanding. We need to speak to the people involved, ask questions and listen until we can say, “Ah, now I get it.”

Then comes the writing. Choose what to bring forward, what to leave out and how to bring the point home. Give readers a reason to trust what you say. If there is still work to do, be clear about what has been done and what remains.

What AI is giving back to us

We can’t be frustrated at AI for having that default corporate voice we have been approving for print for decades.

Now that it can produce so much of it so easily, some familiar phrases are harder to read without wincing.

Perhaps that is what AI is giving back to us, a reason to ask more of ourselves, to dig deeper when it comes to choosing our words. There is much room for a sentence that makes someone feel something and look at the company a little differently.

If AI makes us less willing to settle for the usual words, I’ll take that as progress.