{"id":4644,"date":"2012-08-10T10:12:24","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T00:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=4644"},"modified":"2012-10-23T17:06:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T06:06:14","slug":"poor-communications-laughing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2012\/08\/poor-communications-laughing\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor communications a laughing matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, I went to the launch of the Whitehorse Business Week<\/a> at Headland<\/a> and was entertained by guest speaker Russell Gilbert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although I have seen Russell many times on TV shows and the like, I hadn’t seen a full routine from him before. I really enjoyed it – he was funny and had us all laughing, but also showed he can do magic and sing.<\/p>\n

Two of his jokes in particular were based on communications so I thought I’d share them today.<\/p>\n

Multiple meanings<\/h2>\n

\"wet<\/a>Have you seen one of those yellow signs warning of ‘wet floor’?<\/p>\n

Russell apparently cannot see one of those signs without looking for\u00a0a bucket of water (ok, I’m using a more appropriate source of liquid!) so he can wet the floor.<\/p>\n

In this case, the signs are not incorrect but Russell spotted that ‘wet’ can be an adjective (as intended on these signs) or a verb (as the instruction Russell assumed).<\/p>\n

For any important message, it is worth checking for alternative versions of a word<\/a> to be sure you aren’t saying something you really don’t want to say!<\/p>\n

Clarity through order<\/h2>\n

\"bottle<\/a>Russell also spoke about cleaning products, which may not seem very funny!<\/p>\n

Many cleaning products include the sentence ‘cleans and kills germs’ but Russell asked why would you bother cleaning the germs before killing them?<\/p>\n

Do the germs say ‘I’m dying but I’ve never looked so clean, it’s great!’?<\/p>\n

Ok, we all know they mean ‘cleans a surface and kills germs on that surface’. And it’s good they’ve gone for a shorter version to give their message clarity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They could make their message much clearer simply by changing the order of that sentence – ‘kills germs and cleans’ is much clearer and doesn’t give comedians an opportunity to pick on it :).<\/p>\n

However, kill germs and cleans sounds wrong because we are so used to the other order –\u00a0would you think that’s a negative or a positive for changing the order if you were producing a new cleaning label?<\/p>\n

Do marketers want the emphasis on cleaning or killing germs? Would that be a factor in which order those words are placed?<\/p>\n

Would your label aim for clarity or marketing emphasis or customer familiarity?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* images courtesy of 123rf<\/span><\/a><\/span> and Tash Hughes<\/span>\u00a0<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, I went to the launch of the Whitehorse Business Week at Headland and was entertained by guest speaker Russell Gilbert. Although I have seen Russell many times on TV shows and the like, I hadn’t seen a full routine from him before. I really enjoyed it – he was funny and had us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,1425],"tags":[744,337,273,1548],"class_list":["post-4644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bad-writing-examples","category-business-communications","tag-clarity","tag-funny","tag-meanings","tag-russell-gilbert"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t