Romantic communications

Love is in the air – well according to Hallmark and the 24hr supermarkets that were still selling flowers at midnight to last minute love makers.

In the rather chilly month of February, you can set your heart aglow with some commercial tat from the loved-up shops. Over-priced flowers (unless you made it to Tesco in time to buy the £5 dozen red roses it had on offer – who said romance was dead?), bumper boxes of chocolates and cuddly teddy bears that will spend the rest of the year gathering dust before you recycle them and that garish heart cushion in time for next year's haul. 

Don't worry, I am not going to cast misery over this rather marvellous love-drenched day. I am someone who is always happy to throw my full and sometimes quite frankly ridiculous support over all traditional events. (I am renowned for my annual Grand National party, not to mention Eurovision – although things haven't been the same since Tezzer's departure.) I just think it's amazing that we need a day to help us to communicate how much we love/like/fancy someone.  

Generally, words come easy for me as I spend my days tapping away at my computer at Elliott House Towers but for those that just can't confess their all, perhaps they need a nudge from Mr Valentine and his cohort of romantic retailers. 

Maybe we should celebrate that we have at least one day in the year when lovers, partners, husbands, wives, admirers and stalkers can actually say how they feel or at least get some help with expressing it. 

It's just a shame that we have to rely on the retailers to put those words in our mouths. Often the cheesy lines and forced innuendo mask any originality and personality. 

As silly as it sounds – it's a problem that often crops up in the corporate world. Now, I'm not suggesting that people should confess undying love in their company communications – but language is a powerful thing and should be used wisely. 

We often plump for words that we wouldn't normally use in every day talk. Using February 14th as an example, would you say: 

"I would like to utilise today to leverage my feelings for you so that I can yield a high return." 

Perhaps, we should just dump all the jargon and say, I love you. 

Much easier. More understood. And will probably get a much greater return on investment. 

So, on this day of loving and giving – here are my top words and phrases to 'dump' from your comms and some new, much better looking versions for you to fall in love with: 

DUMP                                  DATE

Utilise                                    Use 

At this point in time               Now 

Commence                            Start 

A large proportion of            Lots

Paradigm shift                       Major change 

Outside the box                     Creative

Blue-sky thinking                  Creative

Actionable items                    Things to do 

Buy in                                    Agree

Deliverables                           Tasks

Going forward                       In the future/from now on (if you need to use it at all)

Operationalise                        Do

Ramp up                                Increase

Strategic solutions                 A plan

Happy Valentine's Day from Elliott House Communications!