Anyone who’s been involved with creating global campaigns has had his or her share of headaches as they wade through feedback from local sales organizations. ‘The Chinese hate it, the Indians don’t understand the headline, the Germans have no word for future-proof, the Italians would like to use another model, the Brazilians are doing their own stuff … and the Americans, well, if we don’t make the necessary changes, they’ve threatened to send in the Marines.’

Is there a remedy (apart from taking a boatload of industrial strength aspirin)? Yes. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, there is the Sandberg Trygg way. We’ve found that to have any chance of succeeding, local organizations have to be involved right from the start. After all, they know their markets – and the cultures that shape them – better than anyone. Their insights provide valuable input to the creative process. And when the time comes to adapt and localize centrally produced materials, they’re in the loop and ready to make helpful recommendations.

If you’d like to know more about our approach to multi-lingual global communications, drop Barbara a line at . She’d be delighted to answer any questions or give you a few tips and ideas.

When I was growing up in England (many moons ago), advertising was liberally sprinkled with all manner of grammatical transgressions.

These ranged from the tantalisingly tautological ‘Domestos – kills all known germs dead’ (they’re already dead if you’ve killed them, right?) to the British Egg Industry’s admonition that we all ‘go smash an egg.’

More recently, there was Butterfinger’s ‘crispety, crunchety, peanutbuttery’, Hyundai’s ‘powercision’ and Snickers’ irresistible ‘Substantialicious.’

The moral of this short blog entry is if you have something to say and others have already taken your favourite words – or the most relevant ones – don’t be disheartened. Just toss the rules of grammar out the window, and start inventing.  It’s not only embiggening, it’ll make you feel beyonderful, too.

PS. Embiggen was first used in an episode of The Simpsons in 1996.

Mark Twain once said ”I didn’t have time to write a short letter so I wrote a long one instead.”
There is, of course, something in what he said. But how do you write briefly and succinctly? Here are some useful tips.

1. Think before you write. Before you start writing – think about what you are going to write and in which order your ideas should come. Your text will be both easier to write and read if there’s a structure.

2. One thought per sentence. Each sentence should only express one thought. Otherwise you risk confusing the reader and giving them an excuse to stop reading. And that’s not the object of the exercise.

3. Keep sentences short. Sentences must vary in length to avoid boring your reader. But the average length should be short. Fifteen to 20 words per sentence would be a good average.

4. Simple English is best. You need both simple and more complex words for clear expression. If the right word is a big word, go ahead. But if a shorter word does the job, use it instead.

5. Avoid unnecessary words. Most texts can be cut in half and still say the same thing. Unnecessary words are often included unconsciously but they just slow things down. Or even worse, confuse the reader.

6. Put action into your verbs. Passive verbs kill sentences. Things happen without you knowing who did them. Active verbs liven up sentences while making things clearer. Here is an example:
Passive: The car is driven to the petrol station to be washed and waxed.
Active: John drives the car to the petrol station to wash and wax it.

7. Sleep on it. Let the text rest overnight. When you sleep your subconscious is working hard, finding a new way to express that tricky sentence.  In addition, you take a break and waken with new fresh eyes, ready to fine-tune the text.

8. Get a reader’s opinion. Ask someone else to read what you have written. It’s a quick and easy way of getting valuable comments.

Don’t be fooled by the ready smile and the polite, friendly manner. Like a bird of prey, she hovers over our printouts, swooping down with her red marker to eliminate stray umlauts, greengrocer’s apostrophes and a thousand other illiteracies. For sensitive American audiences, she happily removes taps and installs faucets, while never straying from the sidewalk to the pavement. In fact, very few words in any language or medium leave the building before she’s cast a critical eye over them – carefully weighing linguistic and cultural subtleties. The people who wrote or translated them wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would the clients. Thank you, Barbara, for not only being a patient sounding board, but also our ultimate quality insurance policy.

PS. If you have any questions of your own about English copy, by all means get in touch with Barbara at

Depends on who you ask. Many in the ad business would say Art Director and Copy Writer. But they aren’t the only answers. That’s why we’d like to tip you off about a website that explains loads of acronyms and abbreviations.

The website is called Acronym Finder and has 900 000 definitions of acronyms and abbreviations. And if that’s not enough you can go to Acronym Attic with 4 million definitions. The site is in English but if you google around a bit, you’ll find similar websites in other languages. And on that note we say KTHXBYE.

No, it’s not a typo in the headline. Happy New Year to all of you celebrating according to the Gregorian calendar. To all others: Happy New Year in advance! Time is, as famously said, relative and so is chronology.

According to the earliest known Roman calendar the month of March and the vernal equinox marked the beginning of the New Year. Other calendars emanate from the autumnal equinox or lunar cycle. No matter which chronology, religion or cultural belonging, the New Year marks the beginning of something fresh and positive, and is worth celebrating.

Other upcoming New Year’s Eves during 2010 are for example the Chinese New Year (14 February) Vaisakhi (16 March), Norouz (21 March), Rosh Hashanah (9–10 September) and Al Hijra (7 December). And there are many more. Why not pay a visit to one of the multicultural calendars online and update your planner. You probably have several international clients and partners who would appreciate the extra thought involved in observing their holiday.

Most of us learnt in school that you should not begin a sentence with “And”. But many copywriters seem to have a preference for starting a sentence with exactly that word.

Who is right, the English teacher or the copywriter?

Let’s just begin by saying that this is not a new phenomenon. You no doubt know the phrase, “And God said let there be light and there was light,” from the Book of Genesis. In fact, nearly every other sentence in the verse begins with “And”.

Sir Ernest Gowers, President of the English Association and champion of Plain English until his death in 1966, had this to say on the matter: That such a rule against using “And” exists “is a faintly lingering superstition. The Oxford English Dictionary gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th Century.” However he did go on to warn against overuse.

So the copywriter is right, but he or she should still think twice when composing texts. Some readers still think that it is wrong to start with “And”. Which is why it is wise to start a sentence with “And” only when necessary for the flow of the text. The whole idea of a text is to get the reader with you – not against you.

And that’s that.

You have no doubt seen the dummy text lorem ipsum many times. But do you know where it comes from?

Contrary to popular belief lorem ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC – De finibus bonorum et malorum. The book is about ethics and is written by Cicero, the Roman politician and author.

Lorem ipsum has been used as dummy text in the printing business since the 16th century. In the ‘60s it was popularised when Letraset released sheets with this dummy text. The text also survived the arrival of computers and appears in several software design programs.

To find our more, visit lipsum.com and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum