A bizarre press release from Alrosa landed in the Rapaport News inbox in early October, purporting to relay positive results from the “washing season of 2018” at one of its subsidiaries. What exactly occurs during the Almazy Anabara washing season, which “lasted from the twenties of May to the 24th of September”? That much was a mystery. Since the text seemed to be about mining and production, we presumed Alrosa was describing something more critical to its business than how well its cleaners had mopped the floors, or whether the Russian executives’ shirts had dried efficiently in the summer sun. So we carried on reading.
“Such results were achieved due to, without limitation, the advanced diamond-bearing sand processing technology,” clarified Pavel Marinychev, CEO of Almazy Anabara, in the next sentence. “In particular, we have upgraded the X-ray luminescent separation line to decrease workload of dense-media separation units at the Bolshaya Kuonamka deposit and to increase capacity of grading units.”
At this point, the only thing clear to us was that we didn’t understand what this news item was trying to say, and neither would our readers. So we decided not to cover it. Alrosa’s subsequent mention of expansions to “tank parks of fuel and lubricant materials” only left us more baffled, and even less likely to run the story.
The quest for plain language
This is a common problem in the diamond industry, especially among miners — and not just those like Alrosa, where English is a second language. When journalists receive an unclear press release, they either republish it without a thought — which is bad practice and unhelpful for the reader — or disregard it altogether.
We can guess why this kind of opaqueness happens. Many people are involved in producing corporate communications for a company, and they all have interests and preferences. The media teams — who just want good press coverage — find themselves bowing to the technical staff who can’t bear to see their “load haul dumpers” described merely as “trucks.”
“People along the way — those technical people, financial experts — aren’t trained in plain-language techniques, and they’re not really trained in how to communicate to the average consumer,” says Jeff Greer, a director at the Richmond, Virginia-based Center for Plain Language. Even companies that have writing guidelines often ignore them when there is pressure to publish something fast, he adds.
Striking a balance
Among the other miners having such difficulties, apparently, are small-scale producers Diamcor and Trans Hex. Rapaport Magazine contacted them after attempting to process their jargon (see box), but did not receive responses by press time.
Alrosa, for its part, is often trying to strike a balance between plain language and jargon, says Evgeniya Kozenko, the miner’s head of communications (whose follow-up explanations of Alrosa press releases are always far more coherent than the original texts). While the company is working to make its writing clearer and more interesting, she says, it also needs to use terms that have meaning for specialists.
“The core of the problem — if we can call it a problem — is that our industry is very complicated and targeted to different audiences,” Kozenko notes.
Words of hope
Yet some companies do manage to communicate clearly. While many miners publish long and complicated income statements, De Beers condenses its key data into short, meaningful summaries and publishes press releases that say exactly what the company needs to say, in no more words than necessary.
In fact, De Beers’ internal guidelines require it to do so. The people who write and release external communications take content from around the company and turn it into comprehensible English, explains David Johnson, De Beers’ senior manager for media and commercial communications.
“As none of us in the group communications team are immersed in any specific part of the business, we can often use our own level of understanding as a guide for when something is unlikely to make sense externally,” Johnson explains.
“With a growing expectation from society at large for more insight into how companies operate and why they should be trusted, we think it’s important to try to be clear about what we do,” he adds.
Hopefully, those in the trade who haven’t yet grasped this principle will start to follow suit.
Image: Trans HexArticle from the Rapaport Magazine - November 2018. To subscribe click here.