Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Communicating complicated ideas with others can present a lot of challenges - especially when you don’t share a common language to build on. In my role as a technologist at Capstrat, I can assure you that the toughest part of my work isn’t doing technical stuff, but rather creating understanding between technologists and non-technologists. You have to be able to communicate about technology so you can communicate with technology.

But how do you do that without all the techo-jargon mumbo jumbo? Should you even try? In my work, I’ve stumbled across a common bear-trap which I call the French Menu Syndrome. It goes something like this:

Suppose you run a fancy French restaurant. You’re going for discerning diners and elegant haute cuisine. You hire classically trained French chefs from Paris, and give them the equipment and ingredients they need so you can offer the best in fine French dining. Authenticity is the key.

The French chefs construct a painstakingly-crafted menu of carefully chosen, wonderfully creative and enticing dishes. The menu is like poetry; a sonnet sung in honor of fine French cooking. You welcome your guests and proudly present them with the menu your chefs have so lovingly authored. There are some raves, but you’re surprised when the majority of your guests aren’t as impressed as you thought they’d be.

Your fancy French chefs composed their opus in French (naturellement). But it turns out there are lots of folks who like French cooking and fancy French restaurants who don’t actually know any actual French. No problem - we’ll just translate our menu into English, and that way people will know what to order.

Except that most of the French dishes have proper names that don’t translate into English.

OK, no problem again. We’ll just include a little description of the dish in English alongside the name, and all will be well.

Except now, your guests are just as confused by all the cooking jargon, and some of the ingredients don’t translate cleanly either. Turns out that around here, not everyone knows the difference between a bechamel and a bearnaise.

In an effort to embrace your full audience, you eliminate anything that could potentially be confusing. Before you know it, you’ve changed the name of your restaurant from “Chez Jacques” to “Jack’s Place” and your menu reads like, “Beef cooked French-style in a creamy sauce with veggies. Yum!”

Hold on a sec, wasn’t the whole idea here to be fancy and authentic? Didn’t someone mention discerning diners? Come to think of it, those rave reviews have dried up and the discerning diners don’t seem to come around any more. Not only that, but now your fancy French chefs shout curses at you (at least you think they’re curses) whenever you get near the kitchen.

Even at a strategic communications agency, we get caught in this same paradox when we’re not careful. Our government relations, graphic design, PR, video production and technology teams have all occasionally had our respective varieties of jargon end up in front of people who need our services, but only understand those services in layman’s terms. Even worse, we sometimes create communications in broad, general terms that leave our clients’ in-house experts (like their internal IT teams) with too many questions - not least of which is, “do these guys have the chops to do the work”.

So where’d we go wrong with our fancy French restaurant? At what point do we stop looking for baseline common denominators? How do we satisfy our discerning diners who expect authenticity without narrowing down our clientele to just a few fickle foodies?

If you’re running a fancy French restaurant and you’re not in Paris, how about this: throw away the menus. Hire chefs who can also come out of the kitchen and meet guests. Invest in some really fancy, really talented, super-knowledgeable fancy French waiters. Don’t compromise on authenticity, but realize that the biggest part of your task isn’t being authentic, it’s helping your guests experience and appreciate the joy of fine dining. You may not win over the Golden Corral crowd that way, but c’est la vie.

The point is that there’s no shortcut. There’s no menu in the world that can connect with each guest and gauge their respective comfort levels with french and cooking jargon like a person can - any more than a single proposal, project plan or statement of work can serve as a one-size-fits-all channel for communicating an idea or a solution that has some kind of specialized expertise behind it. That’s why when you work with Capstrat, you’ll probably end up face-to-face with the graphic designers, user experience designers, web developers and other specialists who’ll be working on your project.

And they’ll speak English.