Word use, abuse and overuse: Whisperer

Posted on May 15, 2012 by

Some years ago I went on a week’s intensive course all about horse body language (no, really, I did).  The course was run by the fascinating Intelligent Horsemanship organisation under Kelly Marks, the UK’s first lady and star pupil of American equine guru Monty Roberts.  Monty Roberts was raised in the brutal ways of the old cowboys, in which horse-breaking often resulted in the violent death of the animal.

Roberts was revolted by it and set about studying the wild Mustang herds in the US.  He realised these highly sociable animals have a system of body language-based communication which humans can imitate and, using his new system, he was able to create a method of horsemanship which was 100% non-violent and practically 100% successful in breaking horses in.  He took his concepts further and made a truly holistic system by which he can pretty much literally talk to horses. He can help them overcome irrational fears (trauma association), rational fears (abuse) and much more. It is amazing to watch.

Roberts took his system around the world and Kelly Marks, along with some others, founded Intelligent Horsemanship to promote his revolutionary practices. I believe he has even worked with the Queen’s own horses.

Off the back of the massively successful and ironically brutally violent Nicholas Evans novel ‘The Horse Whisperer‘, and the subsequent Robert Redford film of the same name, Monty Roberts was often referred to as the ‘real-life horsewhisperer.’  The title of Whisperer was referred to in publications by people associated with Intelligent Horsemanship, though none of them claimed the title of Whisperer for themselves. Neither did Monty Roberts, who only alluded to it in the title of his own book The Man who listens to Horses.

So far, so good. All are sufficienty equine, so are at least related to the ancient and mystical practice of horse-whispering.  Then came the immitators and people seemingly unaware of the word ‘crass’.

I present to you a host of animal-related ‘Whisperers’. Think of an animal and there is probably someone claiming to be able to talk to them. I have ranked them in order of potential credability, with the least unbelievable or least laughable first:

The Dog Whisperer.

The Puppy Whisperer.

The Cat Whisperer.

The Elephant Whisperer.

The Whale Whisperer.

The Rabbit Whisperer.

The Chicken Whisperer.

The Bee Whisperer.

I find it very interesting that the person who pioneered a revolutionary system of human-animal communication is reluctant to take the title of Whisperer.  Yet, thanks to the Robert Redford film, the word has sufficient cultural cache to sell a host of questionable books with amusing titles.

Such is the power of a word, abused and over-used as this one is.

Other notable over-uses and abuses of the word are these:

The Angel Whisperer.

The Dream Whisperer.

The Ghost Whisperer.

The Australian Ghost Whisperer.

The People Whisperer.

The Plot Whisperer.

and finally, The Cornish Cake Whisperer

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Edited to add:

There are a few examples of acceptable uses:

The Baby Whisperer – acceptable because this system is demonstrably successful.

The Lion Whisperer - because Milton Jones is a comedian and might agree with me about some of the above.

The Dog Listener – not ‘Whisperer’, because the author studied under Monty Roberts and shares his respectful attitude.  Her system is also demonstrably successful.

Posted in Publishing, Writing | 3 Comments

Books and Parenting ~ Part 2

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

Richard is very passionate about books.

He is very careful in choosing which one to chew, suck or ‘bang’ with his hands.

I’d like to think he is a literary progedy, because he spent a lot of time choosing between Orwell, Poe, Steinbeck, Swift and Rushdie. (He chose Rushdie.)

On further reflection, I think he favoured Rushdie – not for the daring and highly provocative subject matter and imaginative brilliance – but rather for the shiny cover.

Posted in Garden or Family, Publishing | Leave a comment

Neologisms I’ve spotted

Posted on April 19, 2012 by

Apptivist – a fusion of smartphone app and activist.
I have been recently working on a smartphone application concept for charities and businesses which want to engage their supporters/ customers in promoting their work.  This app harnesses phone tech and social media to allow organisations to reward their supporters for advertising to their friends and followers.
While I don’t claim to have invented the term (perhaps picking it up subconsciously), there ain’t many instances of the word online. This neologism’s cousin, Apptivity, is more common.

#bashtag – a twitter handle which companies create to promote themselves, only to have people use it to publicly criticise them.
Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, noticed this one from Forbes’ blogger Kashmir Hill. Madrigal writes, “A bashtag is what happens when a company (McDonald’s) tries to start a promotional hashtag (#McDStories) and users use it to hate on said company…. It is a very simple way to describe what advertisers don’t want to happen.”

Photobomb - to appear unexpectedly in a photo and have the intended or unintended effect of ruining it for the subject.
Though usually the reserve of irritating internet memes about cats or seals, this word has become slightly political in that (mostly US) politicians can be criticised heavily for being photographed with ‘undesirables’. Obama was criticised for being in a crowd with members of the New Black Panther Party (extremists). Apparently this was enough to get his opponents worked up into a frenzy.

Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism) – a portmanteau formed out of the words slacker and activism.
This one isn’t terribly new, though it is worth mentioning in light of Apptivist. Slactivist has caught on, though exclusively as pejorative term for any campaigner not wearing a suit. A less popular version of Slactivist is Clicktivist, which refers to signing online petitions and feeling like you’ve contributed to society.

Twisticuffs – an argument conducted on Twitter.

Please add your own in the comments below. I’ll update more as I see them.

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Book Choice Parenting Dilemma

Posted on March 22, 2012 by

I was recently in a charity shop. Richard (my 17-week-old son) was on my back in his backpack seat and doing his usual trick of flirting with everyone who comes within gurgle-range. I was browsing books. I found one for him and one for me:

Option One: ‘What do you say?’,  by Mandy Stanley; an animal noise book designed to delight little people.
Option Two: ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, described by Rushdie as one of the most beautiful books written in any language, ever.

I had only fifty pence in my pocket and my wallet was at home.
Oh but which to choose?

The urge to be a selfish parent was strong.

Posted in Garden or Family | 1 Comment

KONY 2012 – a decade-long campaign reaches critical mass

Posted on March 8, 2012 by

Yesterday a video went viral.  Within hours the phrase KONY 2012 was appearing on facebook pages, twitter feeds, blogs, emails and various discussion fora.  The video was a 30 minute documentary by Jason Russell, a film-maker and founder of Invisible Children Inc., about the brutal Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and his campaign of abduction, rape and enslavement of 30,000 children in Africa.  View it here on YouTube or here on Vimeo.

The KONY 2012 campaign seeks to force western powers (specifically the US) to arrest Kony and bring him to justice.  Their means – by making him famous and by grassroots political activism.

This is a marketing campaign, and it is astonishing.

The campaign reached a critical mass yesterday but it did not begin yesterday.  It has been growing for a decade.  They have already had some success: President Obama ordered 100 US Army ‘advisors’ to be deployed in Uganda to work with the Ugandan military.  There is momentum, but Russell and the staff of Invisible Children need to keep it going, keep it increasing.

There are plenty of blogs which analyse the rights, wrongs and compromises of this group and their campaign.  This isn’t one of them.  I’d prefer to focus on their marketing campaign and highlight two particular elements which show how sophisticated it is.

1. It is an in-club with a unique membership totem.  Invisible Children has prepared a pack of t-shirts, posters, leaflets and stickers that supporters can buy and use to get the message out.  Within this pack is a bracelet.  Each bracelet is stamped with its own unique membership ID number and this number can be used to register as part of the in-club and also to upload photos and videos of the individual supporter’s activism.  This connects the supporter to the organisation and connects the supporters to each other because they can all view the media of activism that each uploads.  This is exactly what I was talking about in my blog post about the language of membership.

Please forgive me for the ‘I told you so’ moment.  I can’t help but enjoy it.

2. There is a call-to-arms which appeals to the young.  They can letter-write and send messages through facebook, twitter and other social media, but every campaign wants to do that.  KONY 2012 asks its followers to prepare for 20th April 2012 when they will ‘cover the night‘.  This means going out after dark and covering their their towns, cities and neighbourhoods with KONY 2012 materials: posters, stickers, lawn signs and more.  It isn’t just ‘put up posters’; it is go out at night and cover the entire town – all at the same time, all over the world.  That is exciting, and I’m tempted to join in.

There is one other element regarding the marketing campaign surrounding KONY 2012: the backlash.  Within hours of the video going viral, people around the world were attacking the campaign and its followers by producing material designed to discourage and mock their efforts.  Consider these:

These, and the many others like them, vary in sophistication and humour.  In today’s cooler-than-cool world, where inane memes saturate the internet, any campaign is going to be parodied.  Some are more cynical and ignorant than others but, love them or hate them, they actually continue raising awareness.

And I’m amazed that people were able to produce them so quickly.  This is a remarkably stimulating and interactive campaign.

Posted in Copywriting, Publishing, Writing | 2 Comments

Looking for a freelancer?

Posted on February 22, 2012 by

I’ve just joined Guru.com – a new kind of website which allows freelancers place bids on live jobs in an international forum.  The only problem with this method of finding work is that the freelancer has to pay to bid on jobs (or more than 10 per month, anyway).  The most basic level of membership gets you your 10 free bids a month, but if you want to win a reasonable amount of work you are pressured to pay for a greater level of membership, allowing you to bid on a greater number of jobs.  I’m not comfortable with the concept of the jobseeker having to pay to apply for work.

Anyway, here’s my profile.  Comments welcome.

————————————————————————-
UPDATE: May 2012.
I’ve since deleted my guru account, having found it to be utterly pointless.

Posted in Clients, Copywriting, Publishing, Writing | Leave a comment

Do you belong?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by

I follow people on Twitter and people follow me.  Twitter has been with us a while and now charities and corporate bodies are talking of accompanying their parters/investors and on whichever symbolic journey they want to take in business or service-provision.  There is a lot of talk of walking with their supporters or clients and this kind of phraseology is increasingly widespread.

A quick search on Google will find you lots of examples.  The following are from organisations not among my clients:

“We stand with the Pakistani people and walk with our partners on the path of a liberal democracy with human and civic rights as well as the freedom of equal citizens.” Friedrich Naumann Foundation

“We have had the pleasure to walk with our partners in Uganda—to see schools built with Invisible Children, knowing our resources helped make it happen.” Reject Apathy (Clothing)

“Our goal is to walk with our partners, walk behind our partners, and ultimately walk away from our partners empowering them to drive their own projects forward.” Plant a Seed Foundation

It is all very nice and heartwarming.  And trendy.

As a copywriter, I make it my business to read everything about a client in terms of their aims, their self-image and their positioning in the marketplace.  This means reading things like Mission Statements and Tone of Voice documents, and it is these documents which reveal the kinds of words the organisation wants to use about itself.  There is a lot about ‘The Language of Accompaniment’.

Words are powerful, especially when fundraising for urgent humanitarian disasters and preventative development programmes.  Novelty in language is important and there is a danger that, as trends in language rise and fall, words lose their meaning and organisations get left behind.  Who would use any of the phrases in this terrific Calvin and Hobbes Cartoon?

One of my favourite things about Calvin and Hobbes is Calvin’s unrepentant butchery of the language, satirising the trends current to the strip. I wonder if Calvin would take a similar tone with the language of accompaniment in 2 years’ time when it has reached absolute saturation?

Accompaniment is just one trend in language.  Interestingly, I recently saw two instances of a different trend which also is spreading away from its point of origin.

Gyms, sports clubs and health spas command monthy subscriptions of £60.00+ from their members and they use the language of membership to bring people in.  How many charities would jump at the chance to up their baseline donation to £60.00?  Might they start to use the language of membership?

It would seem that unlikely businesses are catching on.  Here’s what I saw on the side of a dentist’s surgery:

I also saw something very similar on the side of a warehouse owned by a furniture importer(!), though I don’t have a photograph because I was driving at the time.

What does it mean to belong to a dentist?  What does it mean to belong to a furniture importer?

The presumption is that there is a benefit; perhaps some kind of discount programme or specialist service.  Membership is a curious balance of inclusion and exclusion.  You’re in; others are out.  You belong; others don’t.

It may be ugly, but it speaks to a deep human need to be part of the in-crowd.  Can it be harnessed to the good? I think so.  Would it excite you if you belonged to a charity that broke up illegal slave markets in Sudan and set people free?  Though you might never actually go and do the work on the ground, your regular donation secured your membership of a dynamic and daring charity.  You’re in.

Food for thought.

Philosphers are debating what comes after Postmodernism.  Where will society go after ultimate fragmentation?  The answer – NeoTribalism.  The ancient urge to belong will resurface and individuals will band together into tribes to live and work and belong.  The tribes will be very specific – not necessarily based around national identity.  It might be a way of living, such as semi-self-sufficiency through an allotment, or it might be working within the bonus-saturated culture of the Corporation – anything that offers a sense of in and out.

Charities might do well to position themselves as tribes; tribes with a mission.

Posted in Copywriting | 3 Comments