Passion Jumps the Shark

While the fashion for "passion" is still in style, we need a new way to talk about it. After all, once we declare that we're passionate about everything, what power does the word "passion" - let alone the emotion - still hold? As professional communicators, let’s express our passion through our work, through our words, and through our ideas and intellectual capital instead of merely stating our passion as a matter of fact. An all-too-common sentence like “we’re passionate about your business” – which ends up somewhere in every new business presentation these days – expresses about as much sincere passion as a soap opera character on her deathbed. It’s rote, it’s expected, it’s meaningless. We owe it to ourselves and to the clients for whom we claim to feel so passionately a more genuine emotion, one that we can honestly express. Words, after all, have power. “Passion” no longer does. Words can empower, too. “Passion” no longer does. We’ve used it, overused it, and abused it. We’ve hyped it and typed it. “Passion” has become so popular it’s come to mean its opposite – it no longer telegraphs a robust, compelling enthusiasm; instead it's become a word to use when we don't know what else to say or do. It’s a lazy-man’s-out, a boring word describing a feeling instead of the feeling itself.  Along with you, I want to feel good about what I do (and I do) and I want to believe in what I do (and I do) and write with passion (without, from now on, using the word itself). We shouldn't have to say we feel passionate about our clients for our clients to know we're doing our best for them, that their money is money well spent. I don't think telling our clients we feel passionately about their business wins business. Good ideas, well written, win business. Proven track records, well described, win business. Innovation, well demonstrated, wins business. Integrity wins business. I don’t want to just function. I want to feel passion, not just write that I feel it. I want to act passionately, not just label myself that way. Let’s revive real passion by being passionate about thinking of new ways to write about how we feel and function. When we write about how we feel and what we do, let’s show, not tell.

Comments

[Michael McCullough]

Wholeheartedly agree, Dan. And while you are going there, how about a plea to banish “excited” and “pleased” from all press releases in 2008.

[Nabilah Said]

Hi Dan,

I like the idea of letting people know that you are passionate without having to say it.

Perhaps businesses can start thinking about their brand identities are photographs:

How can I create photographs that allow clients the freedom to come up with their own captions, and yet ensure that these captions say the same thing: This company really cares about us.