Thanks to Leighann Franson for writing this up!
Over the past year, I’ve heard the same response uttered from new clients across various industries, “We want the voice to be real, honest, succinct. No Bullshit.” Of course, this always leads to the conclusion that, in the past, copywriters have been asked to be deliberately deceitful, overly ostentatious, and painfully longwinded. Whatever your assumption, this growing response begs the question—could this be the beginning of a new trend?
Of course, this burgeoning tonal style is an attempt to capture the next generation of consumers. Call them Gen Y or Gen Next, 
these digital natives grew up online. On top of their keen perception and fleeting attention span, they know how to move fast and process things quickly. They’ve developed a massive BS detector that enables them to sift through the glutton of marketing messages that screams at them from every medium. So if we want them to hear our message over the din of puns, cheeky clichés, and cumbersome adjectives, we’ve got to make it real. Drop the superfluous language or, like a blood hound, they’ll sniff out our crappy metaphors before we’ve even finished writing the sentence.
As a writer, I find this candid approach quite refreshing. I get it. In fact, I welcome it. It requires me to strip the language down to the bare essentials. Be less formal and more conversational. With even shorter fragments. And quicker wit. It requires creativity and math skills in order to fit five major copy points into a 135-character space or ten seconds of air time.
My husband, a freelance graphic designer, describes this trend well. He said, “this simple, uncomplicated approach is the Helvetica for copywriting. It’s so neutral and unobtrusive that it’s a style unto itself.” Perhaps he’s right. This is the new Helvetica for a generation of kids who are smarter, quicker, and faster. It’s a trendy BS filter for an era that demands transparency and truth. Of course, trends come and go. I wonder how long this one will stick around.