Speak like you've had your spinach
There are so many weedy words out there these days. Wimpy words. Words that couldn’t fight their way out a sugar paper straitjacket.
Like everyone’s favourite gibberish-spouting, be-anchored, olive oil-loving sailor, you need iron. You need to steel yourself so you don’t get washed away with the flotsam and jetsam.
You need to take your weak words and beef ‘em up. And they almost always fall into two distinct categories.
The 1st category is made up of impenetrable, feeling-less robot words. Think words like ‘leverage’, ‘utilise’, ‘facilitate’. They’re almost exclusively used when people want to come across as intelligent and professional. And maybe they were in the earlier days of literacy.
Maybe there was a point in the 19th century when a gin-sipping street urchin was impressed by someone saying ‘we facilitate management solutions’. But, since almost everyone is literate now, almost everyone has the ability to use these words and so almost all of their former impressiveness and power is gone.
Now, these hoity-toity words just seem a bit silly, a bit try-hard, and a bit archaic. Your website doesn’t come off as profesh and capable when you speak like this. It just looks like you’re trying very hard to cover up the fact you’ve got nothing to say.
The 2nd category is made up of the words that try (and fail) to remedy the first category. These are your garden variety preachy, wishy-washy faux-emotional guys. When brands try so hard to tell you they’re ‘warm, approachable, and caring’ it starts to sound like they’ve got some PR and/or HR skeletons in their closet.
They ask you how you are. They use soft, encouraging words that make you feel better. They do the baby voice at you so you know they’re nice. The only problem is that they don’t actually demonstrate nice, caring qualities – you’re just supposed to take their word for it, OK?
‘Memorable’ is another one. The percentage of brand guidelines that use the word ‘memorable’ is very high. The percentage you can actually remember is very, very low. People want things so quickly these days that it’s so much easier to claim kindness or excitement or sustainability than it is to actually do it.
The thing is though, people are cottoning on.
If this lazy, disingenuous type of writing was actually successful, we’d be less inclined to blow the whistle on it. But it doesn’t work. The public nose for insincerity is at an all-time high, so saying things in a precise, candid, and fitting way has never been more important.
There’s a direct correlation between the sharp rise of these weak words and the uptick of non-writers doing professional writing.
Being able to move our arms and legs doesn’t make us a champion MMA fighter. Knowing the words to Waterloo doesn’t make us Agnetha, Björn, Benny, or Anni-Frid. And being literate doesn’t make us a commercial copywriter.
When you take the meaning and the purpose out of your brand’s words, they’re just hollow sounds. ‘Red’ is just a tongue roll and an opened mouth followed by clamped teeth.
But don’t lose heart – there’s a way to train up your weedy writing.
Use language with life in it. Some get-up-and-go.
Make your brand tone of voice about big, juicy words you can’t ignore.
Pungent.
Bounce.
Scoff.
Whisper.
Be a little different while still being true to the brand you’re trying to shape. Because if you keep using the same words in the same ways in the same brand guidelines…you’ll look the same as everyone else.
And you’ll have wasted your marketing budget on being indistinguishable from the competition – the exact opposite of every single one of the world’s existing marketing strategies.
So get some spinach down your words’ necks.
For more thoughts from the best brand agency in Edinburgh – discover other articles on the StudioLR blog like our recent piece, 'Instant Mashed Potatoes & Extraterrestrials’.
