If you want to improve your business writing, be more like Satan.

That’s the advice John Simmons offers at the end of his Writer’s Materials Trilogy. Don’t worry. We’re not talking Satan in the epitome-of-all-things-evil kind of way here. Rather the Satan who appears in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Now for those of you not up to speed with your 17th century blank verse epic poetry, Paradise Lost begins with Satan and his dark angel buddies being banished to Hell by God, after a failed attempt at taking over Heaven.

The thing is you can argue that Satan doesn’t really deserve this punishment; that really he’s just a bit of a rebel who’s standing up for his individuality by socking it to the man.

Simmons certainly thinks so. And he argues we should adopt this same spirit of rebellion when it comes to writing for business.

You see the trouble with business writing is that by and large it’s cold, dry, conservative and dull. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We need to write with more conviction, self-belief and personality, according to Simmonds, because these are the qualities that bring brands to life.

He cites brands like Innocent, Lush, Egg, Guinness and Unilever as examples of companies who have benefitted from investing in their verbal identity. In doing so they have achieved the ‘Invisible Grail’: created a brand that audiences want to engage with.

Ok, ok, so not every brand can be as cute and quirky as Innocent. But the point is neither should they always be bland and corporate-y either.

The trick is to encourage more creative freedom. Employ an in-house creative writer; encourage your staff to be more playful with words; draw inspiration from poetry and literature. After all, why should your business writing not aspire to buzz with the same energy and vitality that, say, a James Ellroy novel does?

David Ogilvy once wrote, “You can’t bore people into buying your product.” I wholeheartedly agree. Ultimately I think people will read anything they find interesting. So yeah, let’s be dark angels. Better to rebel now than be damned for all eternity in the greyness of business jargon and the blandness of corporate-speak.

Tags: Brand, business writing, Creative, David Ogilvy, Egg, God, Guiness, Heaven, Hell, Innocent, James Ellroy, John Milton, John Simmons, Lush, Paradise Lost, Satan, Unilever

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