Speaking Buisinglish

Just last week I was in Belgium for a clothing company’s European sales meeting. Everyone spoke English – sort of – but found the British quite hard to understand. And none of them found it as funny as I did to be invited into a workshop called “Men’s bottoms”. (Jeans and chinos, to you and me.)

It turns out that the rest of Europe thinks that “sexy”, applied to women, means that same as “cool”, applied to men. No matter how strongly the British disagreed – we said that cool and sexy can describe both sexes and that they mean two different things – we lost the argument.

Apparently we don’t really understand international English, and we should try harder. Tricky. I think that if the meeting had been in French, the French might have been a little more outraged at the reinterpretation of their mother tongue. On the other hand, I didn’t have to learn to speak fluently in a second language to be invited.

I’ll get my coat.

The one about Coca Cola

One more short post from the forthcoming book. My version, followed by the editor’s improvements. OK, I admit that perhaps I got a bit carried away, but I don’t think I deserved this.

Mine:

Coca-Cola has arguably the world’s most recognisable lettering. Its flamboyant loops and waves make the words distinctive even when they’re written in different alphabets from the original Roman, including Russian and Arabic.

Like other long-serving handwritten logos, such as Virgin, it’s been very slightly tidied up, but has hardly changed since Coca Cola’s book-keeper, Frank Mason Robinson designed it in the Spencerian handwriting script, which deserves a story of its own as it was Mr Spencer’s attempt to give American handwriting a brand identity which he felt it lacked.

With its predominant colour, red, plus the distinctive bottle, the Coca-Cola’s handwriting consistently puts it at the top of the list of the world’s most recognisable brands.

Hers:

Coca-Cola uses one of the world’s most recognisable letterings. Its flamboyant loops and waves make the words distinctive. Together with its striking red colour and the distinctively-shaped bottle, it makes Coca-Cola stand out as a unique brand.

And the editor said…

The continuing story of the rogue editor.

Here’s one that won’t fit on Twitter that I thought you might enjoy.

I wrote:

Coffee and tea shops had tables and chairs. When you finished your coffee, you left. Smart ones had waitresses who came to the table to take your order. Self service ones had counters.

Coffee was often instant, or it was made with a machine that gurgled weakly then burned it; you could have a sandwich at lunchtime, and possibly a salad. At tea time you could have a scone or a cake. At five o’clock they closed and you all went home.

And suddenly there was one with sofas.

The editor wrote:

Coffee and tea shops have tables and chairs. When you have finished your coffee, you leave. Some have waitresses who come to the table to take your order. Self-service cafeterias have counters. Coffee was often instant, or it was made with a machine that gurgled weakly. And suddenly a coffeehouse with sofas opened.

Earth Quest: The Search for Hot Air. Part 1

Al and Bert are on a quest to save their planet; they’ve come to Earth to collect all the hot air generated during business conversations. Just one thing: on their planet they are small green men with big black eyes, but on earth they’re disguised as normal business people…

Chapter One

For their first day on Earth Al and Bert booked themselves into a conference on the Future of Customer Relationship Strategy and the Effect of Transitioning to Online Social Media. It scored highly on their hot air scanner.

Every time the chairman read out the title, the needle on their gauge measured “scorching” and their translation machine said:  “Getting to know your customers by using Facebook and Twitter.” They were having a very productive day.

The Social Media Strategy Senior Vice President [person in charge of talking to customers online] of a large sugar-based snacking and inter-meal energy provision multi-national [big chocolate and sweets company] said that she was intending to alter her strategic youth-oriented media allocation from traditional broadcast network spend to a narrow-cast/one-to-one focus via developing interactive channels [moving some budget from television to the internet].

“That’s funny,” said the man on Bert’s right. “She could have said that she was moving some budget from television to the internet, without wasting all that hot air.”

Al and Bert were intrigued but horrified. If humans found a way to reduce their hot air output, there would no confusion-based energy for them to collect. Their planet would be doomed to cold and darkness. They decided to keep a close eye on this man. Al leaned over and extended his hand in the UK’s recognised form of greeting a fellow business person [to shake his hand] .

“Al,” he said, “I am privileged to make your acquaintance.”

“Nick,” he answered, “Great to meet you too.” (The hot air meter measured nothing at all.)

“And this is my colleague, Bert.”

“Yes!” said Bert, as his superior intellect processed the new information Nick had offered them. “You are exactly one hundred percent accurate.” (The hot air meter measured “very warm”.)

Then they all settled back to listen to the Director of Tactical Response to Online Customer Metrics from the Department of Social Responsibility of a company that sells phones and the hot air collector whirred round productively all afternoon.