Corporate Language Doesn't Make You Look Professional. It Makes You Look Closed.
Why most businesses sound like institutions instead of humans — and the self-test that shows you where.
- brand strategy
- messaging
- copywriting
- switzerland
Corporate Language Doesn't Make You Look Professional. It Makes You Look Closed.
Why most businesses sound like institutions instead of humans — and the self-test that shows you where.
By Mari Miavka · Reading time: 7 minutes
Introduction
I work with businesses in Switzerland — gyms, martial arts academies, coworking spaces, innovation studios. Different industries, different products, different people.
One identical problem.
They all write like institutions. Official. Formal. Polished. Safe. The kind of language that sounds right when you read it back to yourself in a meeting — and creates a quiet wall between you and every person who lands on your website.
Here's the uncomfortable mechanic underneath it: formal language doesn't communicate professionalism. It communicates distance. And distance is the opposite of what makes someone choose you.
A gym wants people to walk in and change their lives — and writes "We offer professional training programs for all levels." An innovation studio wants to attract inventors and adventurers — and writes like an insurance company. A coworking space wants people to feel they belong — and produces ads so general they could be for any building in any city.
Nobody decided to sound like this. It happens by default. Everyone looks at what others in their market write, assumes that's how it's done, and copies the pattern. In Switzerland this loop is especially tight — the market is small, everyone watches everyone, and the official register feels like the price of being taken seriously.
Which creates an opportunity most businesses never see: when everyone sounds the same, sounding human is the cheapest differentiation that exists. You don't need a bigger budget. You need to interrupt the pattern.
What the pattern looks like
A real example from my work. An innovation company — people who help organizations build new products and ventures. Their actual customers: corporations that feel stuck and want to invent again. Their actual spirit: builders, experimenters, people who make things exist.
Here's how their website introduced them:
"From idea to reality. End to end. We design, prototype, validate and build products, services, business models and ventures. From first concept to market-ready execution."
Read it twice. It's accurate. It's complete. It's professionally written.
And it says nothing to the person reading it. It describes the company to the company. The customer — the one with the stuck idea and the pressure to show results — appears nowhere in it.
Here's the rewrite:
"You have an idea. You need it to exist. We help you go from concept to something real — designed, tested, and built end to end. No half-finished prototypes. No wasted months. In 4 to 12 weeks, you walk away with a working product, service, or venture — validated, ready, and yours."
Same company. Same service. Same timeframe. Nothing was invented, nothing was removed. The frame moved — from "here is what we do" to "here is where you are, and here is what happens next."
It's never just one paragraph
It wasn't just the hero section. The same pattern showed up in how they described the problems they solve.
Before:
"Established organizations often struggle to identify and build future growth opportunities beyond existing business models."
After:
"Most organizations are good at running their existing business. But finding and building what comes next — that's a different skill entirely."
The before reads like a consultant wrote it for other consultants. Abstract nouns. Passive situations. Company-centered framing.
The after reads like someone listened to a client describe their frustration — and wrote it back to them. "The ideas are there. The doing isn't." That's a sentence a real person has said out loud.
This is the test, and it's brutally simple: would your customer say this sentence? If no — it's not their language. And if it's not their language, they don't see themselves in it. And people only walk through doors where they see themselves.
Why this happens — the hero problem
There's a book that changed how I read every website, every ad, every piece of business communication around me: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller (now updated as StoryBrand 2.0).
Its central idea explains the corporate voice disease in one sentence:
Every business positions itself as the hero of the story. But the customer is the hero. The business is the guide.
Corporate language is what hero-positioning sounds like. "We design, prototype, validate and build." We, we, we. The company stands center stage, listing its capabilities, waiting for applause.
The customer doesn't want a hero. They already have one — themselves. They want a guide: someone who understands their situation, names it in their words, and shows the path.
That's why "You have an idea. You need it to exist" works and "From idea to reality. End to end" doesn't. The first one opens with the hero. The second one opens with the mirror.
Once you see this, you can't unsee it. I now read websites, billboards, Instagram ads — and I see the same mistake everywhere: businesses talking about themselves in a formal voice, to an audience of no one. I run small experiments constantly. I change one phrase, show both versions to people, and ask what they feel and imagine. The difference in reaction is never subtle.
Does your website sound like you — or like every other company?
What this costs you in Switzerland specifically
In a large market, generic corporate voice makes you one of thousands. Expensive, but survivable.
In Switzerland, the market is small and the pattern is uniform. Everyone writes formally because everyone writes formally. Which means the moment one business in a category starts sounding like a human — naming real situations, using customer language, showing personality — it doesn't just stand out. It breaks the category pattern entirely.
I've watched it happen. The interruption itself creates attention before the content does. People don't think "this is well written." They think "finally, someone is talking to me."
That position is sitting empty in most Swiss niches right now. Someone will take it.
If you want to do this together
Somewhere right now, your ideal customer is looking for exactly what you do — and not finding you. Not because you're not good. Because your online presence doesn't say what you are. I fix that. I go through everything your customer sees, find where the gap is, and rebuild it in the words that make them choose you.
A 30-minute call: we look at your current voice, your positioning, and exactly where the gap is. If you want to work together after, we'll talk. If not — take the insights and run.
Mari Miavka — Brand Architect for Sport & Expert Businesses | I close the gap between what you are and what people see online | Positioning · Brand · Marketing Systems | Switzerland
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