All posts filed under: Language

More brands should leave more things unsaid

By Mark Di Somma

This is a guest post by Mark Blackham. It’s a huge pleasure to have Mark as my first ever guest blogger at Upheavals. I first met Mark many years ago, and he has been a regular commenter here on reputational and branding issues. I hope you enjoy his perspectives as much as I do. The more I learn about how humans receive information and conceive ideas, the more simplistic most marketing looks. We’re beginning to understand from brain research that a million different experiences, predispositions and feelings go into each human decision. Behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman talks about a ‘remembering self’ that selects the experiences we use to create and define ourselves. Each one of us has this complex bundle of self-selected memories that influence our decisions. Yet marketing is often based on one insight thought to be common across all target customers. When you consider the variance of attitudes possible across individuals, that insight has to be a generality to be accurate. And if it’s a generality, it’s likely to be irrelevant to the …

Brand expression: the fight against dullness

By Mark Di Somma

I’m a huge believer in stress-testing the expression limits of brands. And as a general rule, I’ve learnt that you can push language a long way – often further than you imagined – providing you demonstrate humanity, insight, humility and fun, and you connect in ways that people identify with and find refreshing. People can be very scared of showing humanity, candour or opinion. But brands with character hook people in and make them loyal as hell. Rohit Bhargava has written an excellent book on the business case for authenticity, Personality Not Included. It’s a great read, and there are some telling case studies. Here are my five best tips on how to nudge your language to the borderline: 1. Look at how your competitors speak – if they’re all talking foo-foo, don’t add your brand to that clamour. Instead, find a way of relating to people that makes you the most interesting voice in the marketplace. 2. Stay on brand – your voice should reflect who you are. If you’re a fun brand, be …

Brand language is volatile

By Mark Di Somma

Linguists will tell you that language is constantly evolving and that a number of factors drive the speed and extent of those changes. Language changes as it is passed on; it adapts to movements in society and technology; it reflects shifts in social attitudes as a result of social, economic and political pressures. In the shorter term, words are volatile. New words are invented to describe new technologies, industries, products and experiences. Changes in the ways that individuals speak also fuel language change. And of course words themselves change meaning – but more importantly they change significance over time. Ideas that once carried weight and urgency have been lost in translation or have been diluted to the point where they no longer command the respect they once had. Equally, words that once sat in the relative back-blocks have been elevated to new levels of relevance and importance. Because of all these factors, words shift in value through useage, through adoption and through being redefined. And these changes are critical to understanding how people will engage …

Words always have a wider context

By Mark Di Somma

Perhaps you’ve seen this video about the power of words, perhaps not. The storyline itself may have been attributed to David Ogilvy, nevertheless, it is a powerful story that offers critical insights into how we should think about words and their influence in this age of storytelling. The clear intention is to demonstrate that changing the words in a context can change their impact significantly, even if the message and the intention of the message remains largely the same. “I once read that a word is like a living organism, capable of growing, changing, spreading, and influencing the world in many ways, directly and indirectly through others,” wrote Professor Susan Smalley in a deeply thoughtful post titled The Power of Words. “…As I ponder the power of the word to incite and divide, to calm and connect, or to create and effect change, I am ever more cautious in what I say and how I listen to the words around me.” Marketers should be equally aware of what they think they are saying and the …

Thank you for your interest …

By Mark Di Somma

Has the temptation to template ever been greater? As the volume of conversations between organisations and stakeholders continues to rise, so does the urge to have “ready-to-go” responses. Our interactions with organisations are increasingly governed it seems by autoresponders that look to slow down or divert real contact. Granted, there is too much traffic today for every query to be answered personally – but I can’t help feeling that an opportunity is being missed here; that the lack of personality in the interactions we do have has made them trite and meaningless. People feel fobbed off, even if that wasn’t the intention. When was the last time you listened to the patter that precedes you waiting in a call centre queue? How closely did you read the last rejection letter you got from a publisher? What did the voice message say when you called after hours? You don’t remember – because it doesn’t matter. You’ve heard it all before. And you’ll hear it all again … and again … and again. Too often, organisations miss …

Whose buying – and whose purchasing?

By Mark Di Somma

At first the question appears nonsensical. But only if you assume that buying and purchasing are synonyms. Most financial systems treat them as exactly that because, from their perspective, the result is the same. Income. But there is a difference – and being able to define and quantify that difference is important. Semantics doesn’t just split hairs. It splits customers. It isolates loyalties and behaviours. And in so doing, it potentially defines different actions. But it only does so for those prepared to look for the nuances. As big data hands marketers and decision makers more and more detail, the ability to read between the lines and find the nuances of behaviour in the numbers will be more important than ever. In this case, being able to tell the difference between your buyers (“the people who actively choose to buy from us”) and your purchasers (“the people who happen to have bought from us”) reveals two very different parties in terms of inclination. The first will be back. The second may not. Things become a …

Talking a culture through change

By Mark Di Somma

Change programs are so often about actions. So much so in fact that the dialogue that surrounds and informs those changes can be dismissed as “just talk”. Time and time again, in working on transformation projects, I have faced an uphill battle in trying to persuade decision makers to give their proposed changes the air-time that staff need to talk over and through what’s happening. But such talk is vital. Actions really do speak louder with words – and they do so because they allow people to come together and to work through what is happening. Change presented on a slidedeck is change imposed. Change discussed in forums over time, and with a built-up understanding of its implications and opportunities, is change absorbed and applied. Further than that though, language has a huge role to play in the bedding in of new ways of doing things. Language actually defines a culture because it is literally how people connect – changing it significantly shifts the parameters of, and the context for, what is defined, accepted and …

9 things you should know about branded language

By Mark Di Somma

1. Language is one of the most important definers of any brand. The language you choose, the language you don’t choose and the language you choose to replace are a reflection, and in some senses a definition, of your priorities. 2. Language underpins perspective: it not only reveals how an organisation feels about a matter, it also signals how that organisation might be expected to approach and resolve that matter in the future. 3. Language defines relationships. Your tone reflects how at ease you feel in your own brand skin. Formal brands use formal language, and that formality rubs off into their dealings. Relaxed brands use more informal, chatty language and help their customers feel at ease. If your tone and manner don’t reflect your values and your personality, your communications will always feel awkward. 4. Language is instinctual. You may need rules to start with – but in time you should know whether a communication is “on brand” or not from how it feels. The best brands have language that goes without saying. It …

How do you keep the magic? 7 ways big companies get it so wrong with long-term customers

By Mark Di Somma

By Mark Di Somma Everyone talks at length about customer engagement and the need to converse. The process is relatively straight-forward for high-street brands. They use the seasons, sales and releases to keep people coming back. There are timely prompts. But how do you keep customers engaged when they’re on a contract, for example, that may span several years or even a lifetime? A while back, my company Audacity was involved in a complex, multi-layered change programme to transit a telecommunications company’s customer communications from paper-based to digital. Over the course of many months, we grappled with all the issues you’d expect: what needed to be communicated; when; how; through what channels … But one of the biggest issues we identified and addressed was how to evolve the tone of the communications over time so that they brought people closer to the brand. We identified this as crucial to developing meaningful, valuable and of course profitable long-term relationships. Utilities, banks, telcos, car companies and insurance companies in particular seem to make seven crucial mistakes in …

Shifting brand responsibility

By Mark Di Somma

By Mark Di Somma Let me make a suggestion to brand owners in the interests not just of transparency but of greater consumer belief. Stop communicating your efforts in sustainability, diversity, traceability, environmental contribution, fair trade etc as corporate social responsibility obligations. Instead, act on them, and account for them, as differentiating inclinations. And frame those inclinations within a broader, singular superset: your brand’s distinctive sense of its responsibilities. To that end, let’s stop talking about reporting. It smacks of obligation and compliance rather than commitments and contributions. And I would suggest, change the way your responsible actions are shared to make them more involving. Less paperwork, a wider range of sincere and honest conversations, with more people, across a broader range of platforms. In other words, make the discussions around how you behave ongoing, less formal and truly “social”. Just so we’re clear, I’m not for one minute advocating that the activities identified above go unaccounted for. Quite the opposite. I am advocating a change in spirit. I am suggesting that the underlying question …