Which cohort are you in?

Are you in the cohort that uses ‘cohort’?

Or, are you an individual who uses original words that have something to say?

Cohort is a word I love to hate.

In business copy migrate, avail, impacts and delivering are others.

How about we deliver migration strategies that impact customer cohorts to avail of sustainable solutions going forward?

Anyone?

It sounds like everything you ever wanted to know about strategy but were too afraid to ask. It’s the type of management speak that blinds us with bling and stuns our imagination into submission.

Cohort (meaning a division of an ancient Roman legion) has invaded language recently, conquering simpler, peaceful and defenceless words such as group. It’s now ubiquitous, yet before the pandemic, I don’t remember hearing it. ?With a deadly stealth it infected politicians and management consultants so fast they didn’t display any symptoms of shame. The rest of us might have felt a shiver, but all too late.

We use words such as cohort to make us sound clever, perhaps. But using a word everyone else uses (often incorrectly) is not original and rarely clever.

The words consultants use, business speak, legalese, bankspeak and jargon all need to be unmasked for what they are – unoriginal, aloof, arrogant and usually in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Words are like people, some we welcome, some we do not. That’s why tone of voice does so well conveying a brand’s personality. Tone of voice is as much about connecting as it is about the words we use.

Instead of mindlessly paraphrasing what someone else said, we can sound original by using ordinary words in extraordinary ways. Choose words that are quick for their brevity, bright for their sound, fast for linking, aromatic for effect, tasty for flavour, active for their connections and sensual for our imagination.

Think

Of

Something

Original.