If you’ve ever had to get sign off on a press release from a non-communications leadership team, you have probably played strikeout bingo. The red pen has deleted many a ‘delighted’, ‘strength to strength’, and ‘game-changing’. There are many, many more, that give us comms people the ick but that non-comms people try to weave in to their edits. We left them out of our well-crafted draft for a reason.

But last week, I nominated the BBC (and I’m a big BBC fan) for the weakest, and most inauthentic line ever in a press statement. Devastatingly, the absolute broadcasting legend that is THE Liza Tarbuck has hung up her earphones (I’m not sure that’s a stock standard radio land phrase!) and announced (in a very quirky way) that she’s left her prime Saturday night BBC Radio 2 slot. I am one of the many left bereft, but this is not about me. The resulting statement from the BBC with the line ‘we wish her luck in the future’ is just so weak. 

I do suspect there is a bigger story here. And that just maybe the beeb were caught on the back foot by the hand written Instagram post at a random 8pm on a Wednesday. But as far as I am aware, her show is the most downloaded show on BBC Sounds. And the show that gets (alas, got) the largest volume of listener messages. So, much loved by all the metrics available to me and that was the best they could do? Even if they were on the hoof. It smacked, to me, of insincerity and inauthenticity, which is my point – I got there eventually…It sounded like someone had thought – ‘how flipping dare she – ah flip, we need to put a line out – this’ll do’.

Does it come across if you are being insincere in copy? I think it does. Granted, not everyone will be able to tell, or indeed will have the same view, but as a general rule, I’d argue sincerity matters.

Most of the time, our writing is trying to connect with people. Can we connect if we are being insincere? I say no.

If there is a shred of doubt about sincerity, then it will cast doubt on other aspects of your product/service/organisation. In a ‘if they are lying about that are they lying about this’ kind of way.

I’m not big on Americanisms as a rule, but I do like the phrase cookie-cutter, which is great way of saying identical, formulaic, one-size-fits-all. I’ve seen freelance gigs with a clause about using your authentic voice and not using AI – for freelance copywriting work! It kind of implies that people are using AI, and it may be easy for the recruiters to spot this.

In a similar vein, I keep seeing the same female business owner heading up loads of local businesses. Clearly not. They are AI-generated, and it shows. There appears to be a one-size-fits-all (cookie-cutter) AI image generated generic local female business owner. It’s decidedly odd, and very samey.

My heartfelt (snark intentional) advice would be…

Ask yourself – are we being honest? Are we being sincere? Are we being authentic? Being honest, sincere and authentic will actually now make you stand out (bonkers, I know) and give a competitive edge.