Don’t be a Maybot – answer the question
Does it drive you mad when people don’t answer your questions directly? The Prime Minister is the indisputable master of the genre.
A few months ago, she told the BBC that the UK needed “strong and stable leadership” when asked about Harry Potter’s mugwumps. More recently, when asked by Channel 4 if the critics who called her robotic misunderstood her, May droned about “getting on with the job” and “delivering for people”. No doubt this wiped the smirk off those critics’ faces.
When people answer a specific question with an evasive declaration, it wastes your time. It insults your intelligence. It’s plain disrespectful: sort of like placing Ivanka between Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde at the G20 negotiating table.
So when a brilliant exception to the rule comes along, it makes you very happy indeed. Last year, I decided to register a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority. Some obscure insurance firm started sending me advertisements for funeral insurance, and – in what some low-grade marketing exec no doubt thought was a touch of genius – they arranged their ads in the form of a personal email.
So one fine morning last February I woke up, opened Outlook, scrolled through the headlines and, among a few inane press releases (“Ground-breaking research reveals: (75 per cent) of the UK workforce consider personal development to be valuable”), I saw the following message leer at me from the screen: “ELENA, START PLANNING YOUR FUNERAL TODAY”.
In the weeks that followed, the insurance firm waged a malicious campaign against me – or, as they no doubt thought of it, alerted me to a valuable service – and every morning I woke up to a morose message urging me to plan my funeral. I tried to change my email settings, unsubscribe, block the firm’s email address – but in vain: like a highly contagious disease, the funeral message obstinately crept into my inbox.
I dreaded contacting ASA, as I imagined that the process would be mired in mind-boggling bureaucracy, but then the situation became too disturbing to ignore. I was pleasantly surprised. Instead of endless questionnaires I thought I would have to fill out, the ASA website contained just three entries: my name, link to the advertisement and, in my own words, the explanation of why I had found the advertisement offensive.
So I wrote ASA a letter. I told them that I definitely, resolutely, decidedly did not want to plan my funeral today. Indeed, that I was hoping not to plan my funeral for a very long time. In fact, that I did not care about planning my funeral at all, because – as much as I might enjoy the pomp and ceremony now – after the unfortunate event, these would hardly matter.
The ASA response came a couple of weeks later. It showed correct analysis of my complaint and sympathy with my sentiment. It was logical and coherent. It was written eloquently and with perfect grammar. It contained two average-size paragraphs: just the right length to get a point of view across without being verbose.
At the end, ASA added a blurb about its commitment to protecting consumer interests. This was straight out of the PM’s book and unnecessary: I could tell that ASA was committed by the way they handled my inquiry.
Unfortunately, ASA did not uphold my complaint: although in a bad taste, the insurance firm’s advertisement stopped short of breaking the law. No matter: as the ability to answer questions goes, ASA stands alone and I applaud it.
Now perhaps ASA could give the PM a tutorial in lucid communication?