Using Plain Talk in Your Marketing Part 3

The last couple of days we discussed that when marketing use plain talk, like the Chinese talk. Here's more:

Thanks to research, we know that thousands of years ago the Chinese language had case endings, verb forms, and a whole arsenal of unpleasant grammar. It was a cumbersome, irregular, complicated mess like most other languages - including English. But the Chinese people, generation after generation, changed it into a streamlined, smooth-running machine for expressing ideas. It's just like that camera commercial: it's so advanced, it's simple. This isn't just a figure of speech; the main principle of modern Chinese is exactly the same as that of modern machinery. It consists of standardized, prefabricated, functionally designed parts.

In other words, Chinese is an assembly line language. All the words are stripped to their essential meaning and purpose and put together in a fixed order. Word order is as all-important as the order of operations on the assembly line: if you line it up in any other way it doesn't work. If you wanted to say, "I am going to go home" in Chinese, you'd say "WO HWEI JYA" which literally means "I go home." That's it. You wouldn't even have to say "I" because it would be understood. You could just say, "HWEI JYA" or "Go home." And everyone would know exactly what you meant. There are no filler words. If you wanted to say, "I will be going home," you'd still just say, "WO HWEI JYA" which, again, is literally "I go home." If you wanted to say, "She has six books," you'd say, "TA YOU LEO GE SHU" which literally translated means "She have six book." What's more, the she doesn't even mean she. In Chinese, it could mean he or she or it. There's only one word for all three of them. The meaning is determined by the context.

I know it's a lot to learn in a short amount of time, but what they've done in Chinese is strip all the words to their bare meaning and put them together in a simple, predetermined order. They've lost most of the filler words that don't really mean anything.

So let's see what we can learn from what you now know. You need to take the "It's so advanced, it's simple" Chinese philosophy and integrate it into your advertising writing. Why? Because when you're talking to your prospects, you can't bog them down with all the flowery jibber jabber that just takes up time, makes them use extra brain power, and doesn't add any additional meaning to what you're saying. You've got to strip your words down and use plain talk to clearly, concisely, and quickly communicate your point. Remember, the second step to powerful advertising communication is saying it well. Use plain talk and you'll be well on your way to doing just that.

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