His master's tone of voice

This recent Marketing Week post on corporate tone of voice caught my eye. This figure is particularly striking — "brands [globally] spend $13bn (£8.7bn) a year on visual identity and just $2bn on verbal identity" — but it's encouraging to read of brands like O2 and Nationwide taking the war on jargon more seriously (especially as I'm a customer of both).

I wouldn't say O2's 'be more dog' billboards tell us anything useful about the clarity of the company's communications, though: the test is how easily customers can read small print and speak to call centres, not what they take from an abstract ad campaign. Attending to those small details might not win many headlines or awards, but it will help a brand quietly build a good reputation. Equally, we shouldn't assume that because a company's outlook is irreverent and unfussy it necessarily produces clear, consistent messages or makes the most effective use of communication channels. Corporate mission statements that read like Facebook status updates tend to grate.

A common complaint is that the language organisations use is often shaped by backroom technicians rather than frontline communicators, who end up having to work as translators so the public can understand what their colleagues are on about. If it's not possible to involve sales and marketing staff in the terminology process from the start of a project, it can at least help to have a comprehensive style guide that acts as a jargon-to-plain English dictionary.

This is all particularly true on social media. Corporate communicators are nowadays encouraged to speak to customers in their own language online; this is sensible, but it requires a solid grasp of who those customers are and what their language is like. As with every other aspect of the internet, risks and potential rewards are both magnified.

A final related point is that marketing folk tend to be more aware of the need to avoid jargon than senior management, who often need to be persuaded of the value of both plain English and social media. The best managers are instinctively open to such developments, won't treat them as tick-box exercises and will both invest and take part in relevant training: but this is more proof that good external communication depends on good internal communication.

Brands that aren't aware of these issues often end up annoying the public and losing customers. Now, why not have a look at a fellow comms guru's advice on a few things firms can do to avoid annoying journalists and losing press coverage?