Last week Matt Guarente got schooled by a Frenchman on language compression...
There's a French lesson in comms that goes "Ici, on vend de belles oranges pas chères."
Allow me to explain. It means, 'here, we sell good oranges cheap'. It's actually a comedy sketch by Fernand Reynaud, and it's very funny even if you can't (like me) fully understand what he's saying. He comes across like a bemused Lou Costello.
The setup is that a fruit stall owner asks his assistant to write a sign to sell more oranges. He writes the sign, and the owner comes back to assess the work.
Ok, the owner says. The sign is right on the stall, so you don't need 'here'. And it's clear we are selling them, so you don't need 'we sell'. The oranges look good, we probably don't need to tell people they are good. And the price, well, maybe not so cheap as others. And finally, it's pretty clear they are oranges.
In the end, no sign is needed.
I was advising a large corporate client in France last week. And this welcome interjection in our comms session came about after I said to him, 'the problem you and every other person I advise has is this: you know too much stuff, which increases risk.'
I always work through a way of downselecting to the core ideas people need in order to deliver a given comms objective, and leave other ideas alone. For him this triggered a memory of Reynaud's sketch.
Regrettably, his business isn't quite so simple as selling nice oranges on a stall... but we did find a way of expressing what he does in a clear and compelling way.
Guarente + Company is a leadership communications advisory business. Email us at matt@guarenteco.com to get in contact.
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