ailing turbulent seas, overcoming obstacles, climbing mountains – these metaphors have worn out their welcome in the financial world. Prospective customers have heard and read them all.
Writing Tip: Mastering Metaphors, Part 1
Metaphors have seeped into our language so thoroughly that they constantly pop out into our speech and writing. We don’t even think about them. That’s the problem.
Cheeky writing in business: Walking the thin line between clever and obnoxious
A lot of companies are following this line of informality as a way of tightening connections with customers, and it’s getting to be … well, a little tiresome. So how does a company walk that line between clever and obnoxious?
Aetna’s efforts to simplify language saves money — and maybe lives
A federal report released in 2006 got the attention of the healthcare industry when researchers found some 90 million Americans didn’t fully understand the written communications they received from insurers, providers and others. That spurred Aetna, among others, to rethink the way it addressed its members. The company received an award for its efforts last […]
Using Visuals, Part 4: The Potential and Danger of InfoGraphics
In the second installment of this series, we looked at how an email marketing company created an infographic that could have better made its point in the form of a table. Why did this company’s leaders decide to hire a graphic designer to create something they could have otherwise made in Word? Ideally, a […]