Most marketers believe their messages are clear because the words make perfect sense inside their organisation. Yet many customers hear something entirely different. When teams use internal language, category labels, or acronyms that only insiders understand, they unintentionally confuse the very people they hope to reach. The book The Nursery Rhyme Conundrum by Roger Jackson and Dr. Tim Holmes highlights why this happens and why it damages communication more than many teams realise.
When Internal Language Becomes a Barrier
Inside a company, labels are created to organise information, structure processes, or group products. Over time, these labels become normal. People use them in meetings, documents, and conversations without noticing how unusual they sound to anyone outside the building, from where the communication problem begins.
The authors provide examples, such as referring to cupcakes as informal baked goods or calling crisps salty snacks. These labels may be suitable for internal planning, but they do not align with how real customers perceive things. Customers do not ask for informal baked goods. They ask for cupcakes. They do not shop for salty snacks. They shop for crisps or chips. When marketers use internal labels in their external communication, they replace everyday language with code that customers cannot easily interpret.
The Curse of Knowledge at Work
The book explains that once a person knows something, it becomes difficult to imagine not knowing it. It is known as the curse of knowledge. Marketers work closely with their categories, products, and strategies every day, so internal labels feel natural and obvious to them. They forget that the audience has no such background.
This cognitive blind spot leads to unclear ads, confusing messages, and campaigns that assume more understanding than the customer actually has. For example, a brand might describe a service using an acronym that means everything internally but nothing to someone encountering it for the first time. To the customer, the message feels vague, incomplete, or irrelevant.
How Groupthink Makes the Problem Worse
Language spreads quickly inside organisations. When one team uses an internal phrase, others adopt it. Soon, everyone speaks in a shared code. The more common the code becomes, the harder it is for anyone to question it. It is groupthink in action. Teams believe they are being precise, but in reality, they are drifting further from the customer’s world.
The book shows how this pattern affects packaging, websites, and advertising. When organisation-focused language enters public communication, it weakens clarity and reduces impact. Messages that should feel simple become harder to understand, and potential customers move on.
Reconnecting Language With Real Life
To rebuild clarity, marketers must translate internal language into words customers already use. Start by identifying the labels and phrases that are common inside the company but uncommon in everyday life. Next, test messages with people who have no connection to the brand. Their reactions will quickly reveal what is unclear.
The frameworks in The Nursery Rhyme Conundrum encourage teams to pause and ask whether their communication reflects the customer’s thinking or their own internal habits. This simple shift leads to clearer, stronger, and more relatable messages.
For marketers seeking to enhance clarity and reconnect their communication with genuine customer language, The Nursery Rhyme Conundrum by Roger Jackson and Dr. Tim Holmes provides practical guidance and valuable insights.
Grab your copies from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1970749032/.
Here is the full podcast where the author dives deeper into the message of the book:
Spotify link:https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LwnCYYPNYOEOIZ51UEuVr?si=yC2xIf0QQja18gztiBw0_w
