Now Explain It To Clarkson

This week, I think I've been handed the antidote to the business BS and jargon problem I shared in last week's 2¢, and yes, the clue is in the title.

In my last 2¢ I was banging on about how people feel the need to write as someone else; no, it’s not the AI slop-bots, but something worse - marketers. Perfectly coherent people in real life feel the need to write unintelligible business speak, jargon, and acronyms.

Well, I have found a cure, via a TikTok video one of my chums sent to me; imagine you are explaining it to Jeremy Clarkson.

I am clearly not down with the cool kids, as this video is probably ancient in social media years; I believe it went viral last year. But that makes it no less relevant.

If you are not familiar with Jeremy Clarkson, aside from being a well-known British TV presenter, he runs a business, the Hawkstone Brewery, and it seems they needed a new ERP solution.

The video shows a snippet of him being presented with this new solution, and yes, he often plays an exaggerated version of himself, formed during his years presenting Top Gear. But his laughing reaction to a term you and I would casually use, “single source of truth”, and then the team trying to translate that into plainer English, and using more business speak, is fantastic.

Often, the advice on speaking in plainer language goes something like: imagine you are explaining it to your Mum, but my Mum has never needed to buy a marketing solution or an ERP system for her brewery, as sadly she doesn’t have a brewery.

It’s an example of words we say without thinking that make no sense to other people, not just our Mums but actual bona fide potential clients.

Last week I was talking about how we use jargon to sound smart or to hide behind a mask, but who are we trying to sound smart to?

The goldfish bowl of peers on LinkedIn or the actual people who will give us money for our products or services?

Like Jeremy.