The Platitude Sickness: The Trash of Corporate Writing

There’s a plat­it­ude sick­ness in cor­por­ate writing.

I’m a PR pro­fes­sion­al.
And I some­times hate what I do for a living.

Most nor­mal people hate cor­por­ate bull­shit. As a writer, I loathe those cor­por­ate plat­it­udes with a fever­ish intens­ity. But my cor­por­ate broth­ers and sis­ters cling to them. And it seems as if it’s get­ting worse.

What can we do about this plat­it­ude sickness?

It’s Not My Fucking Fault, I Swear

As a cor­por­ate writer since 2005, one could eas­ily assume I am respons­ible for at least two hun­dred shitty press releases. But I’m not, I swear.

Every time I present some­thing to an organ­isa­tion, I speak plainly. When I write, I always rewrite to avoid clichés. I strive to add some bounce to my copy — if noth­ing else, to pre­vent tired and stale sen­tences that ring too famil­i­ar. ¹At this point, I should point out that English is my second lan­guage and that I do most of my writ­ing in Swedish. Still, I strive to improve my busi­ness English.

I do my best to avoid plat­it­ude sickness.

“A plat­it­ude is a trite, mean­ing­less, or pro­sa­ic state­ment, gen­er­ally dir­ec­ted at quelling social, emo­tion­al, or cog­nit­ive unease. The word derives from plat, the French word for “flat.” Platitudes are geared towards present­ing a shal­low, uni­fy­ing wis­dom over a dif­fi­cult top­ic. However, they are too over­used and gen­er­al to be any­thing more than undir­ec­ted state­ments with an ulti­mately little mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion towards a solu­tion.“
Source: Wikipedia.

But my efforts don’t always pay off.

While some organ­isa­tions appre­ci­ate my efforts, a size­able por­tion of everything I’ve writ­ten for cli­ents has passed through numer­ous fil­ters before publication.

And the res­ult is noth­ing but a dwind­ling tirade of cor­por­ate cringe.

Not. My. Fault.

Oh, How I Loathe Corporate Cringe

I’m not alone in being frus­trated. We’re all exposed to cor­por­ate speak. Whether you’re in mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions or not, you’ll see these plat­it­udes everywhere. 

And for some reas­on, plat­it­udes are becom­ing the go-to format for all cor­por­ate texts. It’s get­ting worse, not better.

I some­times think this is a pidgin lan­guage for dif­fer­ent busi­ness tribes. We fall back on cor­por­ate plat­it­udes to let every­one know we belong in this money-mak­ing space. Ensuring we belong to a com­munity is more import­ant than mak­ing sense. ²Pidgin lan­guages are a mix­ture of two or more lan­guages, and they typ­ic­ally devel­op when two groups in con­tact with each oth­er can­not speak each oth­er­’s lan­guage. Many pidgin lan­guages have evolved … Continue read­ing

It’s mind­bog­gling how many hours organ­isa­tions spend pro­du­cing utter garbage.

The “Carpe Diem” Business Mafia on LinkedIn

Corporate plat­it­udes are such a waste of edit­or­i­al space. Unfortunately, plat­it­ude sick­ness tends to do quite well on social media.

A text loaded with obvi­ous state­ments and no actu­al sub­stance can still attract a lot of social engage­ment. People often hit that “Like” but­ton (emoji but­ton or whatever) without read­ing the linked article. 

Yes, I’m look­ing at you, LinkedIn.

It’s essen­tial to have a strategy.

Always put the cus­tom­er first.

Be pro­act­ive and think long-term.

Publish epic content.

The “carpe diem” busi­ness mafia on LinkedIn can­’t get enough of that stuff, right?

Signs of the Platitude Sickness

An Uphill Battle: Welcome to the Resistance

Yes, get­ting rid of cor­por­ate plat­it­udes is an uphill battle. There are so many fil­ters and so many read­ers that don’t mind.

Still, there are no excuses for giv­ing up. As com­mu­nic­at­ors, we’re in the busi­ness of catch­ing people’s interest and mak­ing it worth their time. As we fall deep­er into the atten­tion eco­nomy, rel­ev­ance and sub­stance are the only things that can save us.

We might nev­er win this fight, I admit. But even if we can­’t win, we can at least make life a bit more dif­fi­cult for every­one who com­mits cor­por­ate BS.

So, how do you com­bat plat­it­ude sick­ness in cor­por­ate communication?

Make it your mis­sion to find plat­it­udes and des­troy them. And don’t let your col­leagues get away with using them, either. As this becomes a ritu­al, you’ll devel­op an “allergy” to cor­por­ate plat­it­udes — and remov­ing them will make you feel better.

Welcome to the fight. You’re in the army now.