THE LOST CONTINENT OF BRANDINGVERBAL IDENTITY

Verbal identity is the consistent delivery of competitive brand language. We’re in a world where conversations and emotional connections count.

So which words are competitive? And how do you deliver them consistently?

You’re entering a future with less brand babble. Where words become brand assets and language analytics link brand and audience psychologies. Where your teams have tools not rules.

It’s all in your hands, right now.

Companies compete with words ™ Verbal identity now is where we were

with visual identity 40 years ago. But words are just as important and brands need to start taking them as seriously.

Michael Wolff - Visual identity pioneer

Visual design is the prince

Brands take design and visual identity seriously. Quite rightly. It’s a market necessity.

In the 20th century it was a source of competitive advantage.

Is that still true?

With verbal identity investment at just 15%, visual rules the brand world.

But verbal identity is virgin territory. It’s yours for the taking.

We’ve charted millions of brand words and know our way around. Get exploring by digging beneath the surface of conventional thinking.

Verbal design is the pauper

Audience world is rich in wordsUnder the glass of mobiles and laptops, words are like plants in a greenhouse. They’re proliferating in technology’s heat.

That means audiences cutting through more verbiage every day. Brands are making their journey too difficult.

Verbal identity is about compelling conversations, not shouting louder. The shortcuts are emotional connections and clarity.

Brands are hard to reachThe FT writes to an audience of post-grads. But they talk to them at high school level, because these are busy people.

That’s not dumbing down, it’s thinking up.

So why do most brands make their readers work so hard?

[ What you’re reading now clocks in at 13.6 ]

Humans act on emotionsOur feelings determine our actions. Yet we’re only aware of a fraction of what we feel.

It’s pointless asking us why we do things. We just don’t know. So we make up a ‘logical’, Spocky responses to avoid sounding stupid. Are you acting on these?

Research treating humans as Vulcans is fair enough closer to the point of sale. But it’s pretty much useless before that.

Linguabrand explores what makes Kirk’s emotions work.

© CBS Broadcasting Inc.

Words are maps to emotions ™You open up the pathway to your unique verbal ID by mapping the words in your market.

That needs quant analytics to read everything.

We reverse-engineer what customers and competitors are saying to reveal their psychology. So you’ll understand what they’re thinking better than they do themselves.

That goes to the heart of what you’re about, too.

Verbal identity maps 3 dimensionsLike all good map-making, identifying your route through the Lost Continent involves triangulation.

The three dimensions are:Your competitive environmentWhat your audiences want to hearYour brand’s emotional truths

Everything we do is based on bottom-up evidence. So we’ve no idea how your market will measure up until the listening starts.

Your competitors What’s generic in one market can be distinctive in another. If you’re in mining it doesn’t matter what airlines are saying.

Everything is relative.

So the first point of reference is to benchmark your market’s language and thinking.

Which competitors are framing your market’s conversation? How do your tone of voice and brand agenda compare to theirs?

Your audiencesAudiences are searching for emotional connections. They take the path of least resistance, turning away from brands making their journey more difficult.

As psychologists we’re interested in uncovering the reality of their attitudes and actions. It’s about how people say things rather than what they’re talking about.

If you want to pull emotional buying triggers just walk their way.

Your brandBefore it can communicate well, every brand needs a view on why it makes the world a better place. And it’s got to fit with its own emotional truths, not its aspirations.

There’s no hiding from this, because audiences really feel it when your words don’t stack up.

That’s because your thinking patterns are put across sub-consciously by the metaphors you use.

There’s good science behind this.

Metaphors are maps to mindsets ™Metaphor is simply the description of one thing in terms of another. Before we speak, we think in metaphors. No other creature on our planet does this.

We all use 6-8 per minute in everyday speech. They frame conversations, reflecting our thinking and feelings. And they run much deeper than words.

Products are metaphors. So are retail environments. And the biggest marketing metaphors of all? Brands.

Brains operate not by logic but by pattern recognition. It is likely that early human thought proceeded by metaphor.

Metaphor is the stuff of thought.

Stephen Pinker - Professor of Psychology, Harvard

Gerald Edelman - Nobel Prize Winner

Growing brands don’t meanderBrands often end up like tributaries feeding into the flow of the leaders. That’s because certain brands frame market conversations in their favour.

Followers unwittingly waste their spend, silting up their own opportunities and helping the growth brands grow faster.

You’ll open up brand thinking by mapping your market’s metaphors.

Precision mapping a new worldCo-ordinating verbal identity gives you a benchmark.

Once you know where you are, you can test where new language will take you. We have a toolkit called ‘Our Brand Voice’ which keeps all your teams on course.

These techniques are applied not just to brand language. They work in research, CRM, HR and on sales proposals too.

Brand agendas are 54% genericThat’s quite a shocking statistic. It means that what brands talk about is only 46% different from their competitors, on average.

So lots of brands are creating more verbiage for their audiences. While paying to say the same as everyone else.

You can move to being 66% distinctive by reducing generics from 54% to 34%. That’s only a 20% re-weighting.

We can show you which 20%.

Selling art and history to Europeans? Visitor numbers have been falling.

The generic New World tourist agenda

Tone of voice: clearing a pathFrankly, there’s more hot air about tone of voice than on any other verbal ID subject. It’s entirely subjective. One person’s ‘approachable’ tone is another’s ‘trustworthy’.

What does it all mean? And how do you replicate any of this stuff?

Tone of voice is a really subtle area. But we’ve made big strides by inventing tone of voice charting. We map brands as though they’re a person.

Brand or bland?The energy sector’s generic tone of voice is pretty good. But despite the resources spent, the brands all sound the same.

It’s a really good example of how writers have come in and ‘de-cluttered’ the brands.

In the process, the reason for the brands existing has been obscured.

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Energy sector vs All businessBritish Gas vs Energy sector

Often words and pictures point in different directions.

We bridge this gap by analysing the market’s visual content alongside its words.

Big picture semiotic stuff has its place. But science trumps opinion every time in our world.

We give you bottom-up evidence that’s framed in a competitive context.

Context is king

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Linguabrand are London based verbal ID developers.We’ve mapped millions of words, pioneering the use of analytics and psychology. It’s a fertile mix that works across brands, sales, strategy and corporate culture.

We work with great clients, agencies and their writers across the world; opening up The Lost Continent of Branding.

You can find out more at linguabrand.com Hear what we’re up to on Twitter @linguabrand Email us at proactive@linguabrand.com Start a conversation right now on +44 [0] 207 608 5077

Measure it to manage itSome brands we’ve mapped

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