Divided by a common language

Listening to Barack Obama’s speech yesterday, I was reminded of Shaw’s quote about how different we are in our use of language. Obama’s genuinely inspiring speech, referencing Martin Luther King in his call for supporters “to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day” while magical in a US context, sadly wouldn’t work for our politicians.

If, for example, David Cameron became Prime Minister and started quoting Churchill in the tone of a US politician on the podium, he’d be derided as pompous, possibly crazed and certainly a bit ‘up himself’.

The differences continue in business language. A favourite US phrase at the moment is ‘reach out’ as in, ‘company x is reaching out to its customers’. I quite like the feel of this phrase but put that in front of a British journalist and they’re unlikely to read any further.

The best a PR can do is write the release in the language and style of the publications they are targeting and in the UK this means free of any hyperbole or blatant self promotion. If this is done well, the release may appear verbatim in the target publication – the ultimate accolade for the anonymous PR.

Incidentally, one other thing that doesn’t always translate is abbreviation. Hearing one supporter referring to Obama as BO was a bit of an eyebrow raiser.