“Are You Being Serviced?”

There on TV was a contrite JetBlue spokesman, assuring us of a new commitment "to better service our customers." CNBC found the words significant enough to display on screen as they ran the vidio clip.

Good reminder that trying to talk like a corporatee honcho instead of a person is perilous.

"Serve" is a basic verb that doesn't leave much wiggle room. "Service" must have been a misguided effort to sound more corporate. But what do you suppose it meant?

The verb to service has several meanings. Two come into play here. Let's call them the suburban meaning and the rural meaning.

In the suburbs, the verb means to maintain or repair. We take the SUV to be serviced. If the laptop crashes, it may need to be serviced ("Had to put in a new motherboard"). Doesn't seem likely that JetBlue wants to change its customers' oil or replace their hard drives.

That leaves the rural meaning. If you heard faint gales of laughter wafting your way from the great horse farms of Virginia, Kentucky or Florida, now you know why.

In rural parlance, to service is to do what Barbaro looked forward to doing. Had the 2006 Derby winner not succumbed to his tragic injury, he might even now be lining up dates with dozens and dozens of grateful mares.

So I guess that's what the JetBlue exec meant: “We're going to [service] you like you've never been [serviced] before.”

Think I'd rather fly Delta.

Lesson for marketers

Words matter, especially in this multitasking age when nobody seems to be paying full attention, and nobody has time to really listen. Whether you’re composing a sales pitch, a brochure on asset-protection trusts or (perish the thought) an apology, plain, clear writing and plain, clear talk will serve you well.

Granted, achieving "plain and clear" often translates into hard work. Sometimes it even requires thinking. But imagine how much happier JetBlue would be today if it had thought more about its operations as well as its words.

Recommended reading

Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. We should consult this classic at least once a year, just to cleanse our minds of all the consultant-speak that seeps in. The 1979 edition is the last edited by E.B. White, and that's the one I'm going to try to get for my granddaughters. You can easily apply his rules to 21st-century words that the author of Charlotte's Web never heard.

Abraham Lincoln's presidential speeches. Oratory got pretty florid in the 19th century. Lincoln excelled by turning to plain talk that a country bumpkin could understand, and that writers and poets still admire.

Far as I know, Abe never proposed to have a single citizen "serviced."

Barbaro family note

Barbaro is survived by his parents and a little brother. Another foal is expected this spring. Siblings of Thoroughbred superstars almost never turn out to have the same great gifts. But wouldn't it be fun?