Which businesses are most successful at using language?

Good language changes people’s thoughts and feelings. When you can shape your businesses language, you shape what people think of you. And now, with more channels than ever before, businesses need to be able to talk directly to their customers at all times.

Those businesses that get it right create brand voices that attract customers, deepen loyalty and de-position rivals. Those that get it wrong lose customers and find their missteps pointed out across social media.

So, Which businesses are most successful at using language?

“No one wants a friend with features. Everyone wants a friend with benefits”

I was sitting in a board room when I blurted this out. Around me were 12 stern-faced, very experienced VCs, private investors and most importantly to my mind, the CEO and leadership team of a data science business: my client team.

Not one of them smiled when I said it.

12 months before, the business had sailed through Series A funding off the back of winning contracts with some of the world’s biggest pharma businesses.

Since then, things had been ‘interesting’.

They’d delivered on their contracts, but perhaps too well: each of the contracts had slightly different offerings and so they’d lost sight of who they were as a business.

Their reaction was typical: talk about the features of their offering.

Unfortunately, just as is the case for a number of tech businesses, they’re pioneers.

The market doesn’t know why it needs them. Yet.

And so talking about wonderful features means nothing.

And that’s when I blurted out that statement.

What it illustrated, I hoped, was the key thing about new tech businesses:

You have to persuade your market that they really want it.

If you’re introducing a new product into a market, you have to find a new way of talking about it.
You have to answer their unspoken, eternal question: WiiFM.

What’s in it For Me?

The businesses that talk to WiiFM, and do it in a language that cuts through, have a disproportionate impact.

Let’s be honest, there’s no reason why Tesla should’ve succeeded. The guy was selling climate-sensitive, electric vehicles into a world where no one was really talking about the climate and the only electric vehicles you and I had seen were milk floats and golf carts.

I didn’t want an electric car. I wanted a real car: something that could get me where I was going faster than I could walk there. And I didn’t want to turn up at a restaurant in a milk float.

So how did Elon go about changing our minds on his car?

He could have spent another €100m making the body styling look more racy, maybe put a wing on the back.

He could have delayed production another few years to create a faster engine.

But Elon knows that’s language is the fastest, smartest, cheapest marketing tool you can use.

So he looked at what he should call his speed boost modes for the car.

Not ‘fast’ and ‘faster’.

That was obvious.

And obvious doesn’t get noticed. Or remembered.

Instead, he called the speed boost modes something that would illustrate just how fast his cars were. ‘Ludicrous’ and ‘Insane’.

Now when people talked about the car and someone said, How fast does it go? There was a simple, quick memorable way of answering that question.

Great tech pioneers know that language frames expectations and creates new space for the tech in people’s minds.

Have you listened to a16z’s podcast series? Of course you have. But even before you did, perhaps your mind stopped for a moment to check the title: a16z. That’s smart.

Who can remember how to spell Andreessen Horowitz?

Who’s even got time to type it in?

But by using language, they provided a neat short cut, and scored a quick goal in your mind: we’re fast and to the point.

Great tech pioneers also know that language makes an experience more valued

Imagine you’ve produced a device that your customers relied on, but you knew it would go wrong occasionally. So, the obvious thing is to set up a ‘Returns’ phoneline, or desk at a store.
But ‘Returns’? That’s a bit 1990’s and a little bit negative isn’t it? You wouldn’t pick that, would you.

We’d all be a bit more positive and call it something like ‘Customer experience desk’. Where most of us stop with language, Steve Jobs used to start.

‘Customer Service’ is boring. It doesn’t differentiate. It talks features, not benefits.

So he called it The Genius Bar. And the people working there? Often they’re students on part-time work. But we’re happy to be helped by them because they’re not Customer Service executives, they’re Apple Geniuses.

(Compare this with the language used on a lot of banks’ counters: “ We will not tolerate abusive language or hostile actions to our staff etc etc” In this case, language is also having a powerful effect. It’s making me think: What kind of a place is this? Should I really be in here? It sounds like a Wild West bar.)

But language is more than just the individual words we use. Language is so rich, that there are a 100 different ways of saying the same thing. The choices we make illustrate our deepest beliefs and what we want our readers to believe as well.

That starts at what we call the 10,000 foot level: the overarching narrative.

What’s the world we want to create? And if that’s the case, what do we stand for and what do we stand against?

When we answer those questions, it’s clear what we should be talking about and the angle we want to take.

Then you can come down a level to 1000 foot: what’s the personality that we want to use in the language, so it reflects the personality of us as founders and our business? Confrontational (the world needs to change!) or wooing?

When you’ve got a personality that’s true to you and aligns with your narrative, only then can you start looking at the Ground Level Details: how much jargon should we use? What are the words and phrases we do/don’t use?

Luckily, my own language in that client boardroom worked. After a second’s pause, the CEO laughed and slapped the table so hard he spilt everyone’s coffee.

The greatest tech pioneers understand this intuitively: language works and it works hard.
More than that, language is part of your offering. Language is highly valuable.

When Steve Jobs took on an established marketplace of mp3 players with a less technical product, he looked to his ad agency to explain it.

He needed it to be memorable. He needed to explain why the iPod was great. Why it was ‘better’, even if it actually wasn’t. But he didn’t talk features. He talked benefits.

“1000 songs in your pocket”

5 memorable words. Which kickstarted a $b revenue stream for Apple. When you’re a tech pioneer, by definition you’re already different.

All you need to do is show the world you think different. And talk different.

Written by Chris West

Chris West is the Founding Partner of Verbal Identity and author of Strong Language: The Fastest, Smartest, Cheapest Marketing Tool You’re Not Using. Available now and an Amazon #1 best seller.