An apology to Paul
Posted by Trey Reeme on July 24th, 2007
I broke a rule yesterday. It’s not just a blogging rule, but a rule that should apply to any conversation – online or off.
I criticized without being constructive.
@Paul: I hope you’ll forgive my indiscretion. I’d encourage you to speak in the same voice on your blog that you have here:
Since yesterday morning, I have received 61 emails through the blog. Some are people from here expressing their hope that the blog makes it and offering good, sound advise for helping us be successful in the future. Others are from ISU students who are telling us that they “think the blog is funny but has really good information” or “when are you going to post something on the difference between a debit and credit card?”
. . . . Our philosophy is that we are NOT willing to stay on the side line any longer….it’s time to get into the game. As I said earlier, if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work but if we didn’t try, it would have NEVER worked! There is nothing fake about the blog….very hard work by very dedicated people who are committed to success. If it’s not in this form, trust me when I tell you that we will not quit. This is so important to us that we provide this education that we will keep improving until it sticks.
I hoped the discussion in the comments would yield honest feedback and suggestions for improvement to your campaign. How you’ve responded has instead helped me.
You are a class act, Trey. I look forward to seeing you in October. Too bad I didn’t have my presentation ready for my new biz in time to try out for the free space on the podium. Boy have you guys grown (in more ways than one).
While we are being constructive, this blog really needs to take a step back and look at its vocabulary. It’s an awful mashup of an attempt at modern slang with unsightful occurences of 40 year old lingo. Examples:
“Visit our survey to get some free shizzle nizzles.” The dude should look up that last word at UrbanDictionary.com and see if he should still be using it.
“sh… oops, sorry, stuff”. Seriously. No body says “oops” and the really either just use the word or find out what kids are really calling it now days.
“Cruisin’ for the ladies, taking my friends to chow, racing down Elm St. only to have Barney and his doughnut gut pull me over, man” I’m 25 and seriously had to read this sentence several times to even know what ‘Barney’ was…and I haven’t heard it called chow since Happy Days.
This goes back to the transparency/authenticity talk. If you want to go down this road…do it…but you better sell out to it. Shoot, if you have to, hire an ISU translator. Write your posts in normal speak, then email them to a kid to get urbanized. Better yet, publicize the translator. Acknowledge that you have no clue how to communicate to the kids and that you’re working on it.
That’s all I got.
@Trey: Classy indeed. I can’t wait to meet you at the marketing conference, and later the symposium!
@Paul: What is the point of the voice of the blog? Is it an attempt at literally trying to speak a younger person’s language … or is it a means of being comical when communicating info about financial services (which we all know can be dry as a tumbleweed in Death Valley)? In other words, is the Dude a nerd that is trying to act cool while talking about nerdy stuff?
Perhaps if I watched the Big Lebowski I would know the answer … (?)
Ron Shevlin suggested a new expression: “Bad is the new good.” ;-)
It’s a matter of taste, of course, but I like the cheesy, hammy style of language. It should seem pretty obvious (to people of all ages) that this is intentionally written as some sort of parody, heaping huge servings of “I-so-desperately-wanna-sound-cool” cliches on top of one another.
And is there anyone who can point to a site
- published by an organization -that successfully deploys the voice and language of Gen Y? Anyone?? Anywhere??Or is it just a harsh reality that any corporation trying to reach Gen Y by trying to talk like Gen Y is going to get labled “poser” no matter what?
Is the slang of Gen Y so subtle that it can’t be summed up and defined?
And don’t forget the “First Law of Slang”: Any slang term starts to be uncool minutes after its minting.
Trey: I, too, was a bit hard on Paul’s blog.
For me, authenticity and genuineness on a blog tends to reflect the writing style of my legal background. My generational context is a blended Gen X + late Boomer dialect (unmistakeably NOT pure Baby Boomer). “Pure Boomers” came of age during the Vietnam War era, and have vastly different generational context values very different than those of folks coming of age in the early 80s.
Good for you Trey. I know the feeling! The net is a humbling place sometimes.
Can we call this an a-paul-ogy instead?
“Criticize, but be constructive” isn’t a rule. It’s a choice. If you choose not to make that choice, fine. Plenty of bloggers choose not to follow it. And the ironic thing is that if you criticize them for that, then….
But I’ll share with you a rule I’ve instituted for myself: Don’t post in hast. I sit on critical posts for sometimes weeks at a time.
I mentioned to Colin the other day (in email) that an entry I recently posted took me two weeks of toning down the language before I had convinced myself that it was what I really wanted to say. It took me two weeks to convince myself that I really wanted to take a shot at who I was shooting at.
“haste” not hast. sorry. (2nd rule: PROFF READ). Just kidding.
@Trey
You truly are a class act and your apology, while unnecessary, is accepted! The comments and criticism of the blog are healthy. It helps us grow as we move forward. As I have stated on the last post on the other thread, we really are not trying to copy the language of the GenY’s, we are simply trying to put together a fun, goofy site where I can act stupid but get the information out. I believe that there may be some over-analyzing going on and that is human nature and completely understandable. Try to look at the Dude site for it’s content and try not to let the language deter you from the message. It is certainly in the test phase and as I have mentioned before, if it needs changing, I will change it. For now, it is being embraced (for the most part :-) and we will see what the future brings. Thanks again, Trey….very classy!
@Paul – thanks for the info, I appreciate it. And I wish you all the success in the world with this venture.
I agree with the folks on here who have stated ... much more eloquently than I ever could … that writing clearly would probably help.
Seems to me that’s the nice thing about Social Media though – if your members get it and like it, it doesn’t really matter I think.
Rock on, Dude.
@Paul -
While our CU isn’t as strongly tied to a university as yours – we do have 1 service center location on a college campus / focused on the student (and to a lesser extend the faculty/staff) market…
Are you using elements of your “youth oriented” voice to speaking to your student members in-lobby, in print, etc.?
One of the things we’re working on is balancing the use of our “normal” CU voice with the voice we use in our Free College Checking / First-Time Borrower type materials….
We are using actual college students who are part-time employees of our credit union to help spread the word. We are also going to be hiring students to wear a shirt advertising the blog and handing out flyers all over campus. The print materials support the theme and playfullness of the blog. Hope this helps.