Funny how we all have blind spots. When it assesses industry advertising, ACCC is keenly aware that a simple, clear message impacts on ordinary people, and that complicated T&Cs and small print aren’t taken on board.
But when it communicates with those same ordinary people, ACCC can forget all about the power of the main message and descend into baffling lawyer-speak.
ACCC should engage a marketing expert to offer input into its recall notices and consumer notifications. If it wants to communicate important messages, it should use the skills of a communicator.
We’ll look at a couple of examples and analyse what goes wrong.
Example 1: Enclosed court orders
In one recent case, complicated court orders running to many pages were made as a result of ACCC consumer protection action. They were, as you’d expect, in highly formal language that only lawyers are comfortable with.
For reasons known only to ACCC, it wanted a full copy of the actual orders delivered (with other documents, providing some explanation) to a large number of potentially affected consumers from a generally educationally disadvantaged background.
It was a bizarre exercise. Some of these recipients, receiving a wad of paper and pulling Federal court documents from an envelope would have been terrified. (So would many highly educated people. Court documents in your mailbox are scary things.) Few, if any, of them would have gained any value from this alarming, confusing missive. Only a lawyer could conceive otherwise.
A communications expert would have said: ‘This is not a document to send to ordinary people. If there’s something within it they need to know, let’s translate it into a simple, clear document with a main message.’
Example 2: Product safety recall
In an important product safety recall, ACCC required a retailer to write to purchasers of the unsafe product. The resulting ACCC-approved draft was highly officialese. The need was to tell parents that their kiddies could die but this key message only dimly made it through the verbiage.
When we saw the final ACCC-approved letter, we commented to a colleague that most readers would probably read three lines and throw it in the bin, saying, ‘I’ve already voted.’
Why ? Documents like this are conceived and generated by lawyers. Not the first people you’d go to for clear communication.
And when the PR team does the job, they show how
In an interesting contrast to the product recall letter above, that almost buried the critical message, here’s a powerful quote from an ACCC media release in another product safety matter:
‘Children have died from hanging and strangulation after their heads have become trapped in gaps in bunk beds that did not meet the requirements set out in the mandatory product safety standard,’ ACCC Deputy Chair, Mr Peter Kell, said today.
’Children have also suffered serious head injuries and fractures after falling from bunk beds that did not have the prescribed guard rails.’
We imagine that this powerful message was designed by media and communications staff at ACCC. It is far more direct and striking than anything that was sent to a population of parents who were actually known to have children at risk.
If Deputy Chair Kell’s words were crafted by the legal team, they should hold that thought when communicating with ordinary people.
Presumably there’s nobody to make this point inside ACCC
When a consumer case is running, it’s lawyers’ business, right ? There are ACCC lawyers and external lawyers and judges (who are lawyers too). So how would a communications specialist ever get a chance to have input ? This is lawyers’ work … move aside !!
This is serious
If some of the ACCC-approved documents we have seen are the best that its present processes can do to inform ordinary people of important matters, the system must change.
Documents aimed at the general public need to be very, very clear. Clarity is a skill, and not one that lawyers or public servants specialise in.
If these messages really do matter, use an expert.
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