“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.” – George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 12 May 2008
Whatever the legacy of George W. Bush, one thing is certain – he’s left his mark on the English language. After eight years of amazing comedic fodder, odd malapropisms and a slew of new words, we simply can’t “misunderestimate” the soon-to-be ex-President’s impact on the way we use English.
Thanks to President Bush we now have the words truthiness, mential, subliminable and ooching at our disposal. And we can speak freely about touchy subjects like “women of cover” and the “embitterment of mankind.” Not without a sense of humor, President Bush once publicly read aloud from a book of his quotes and laughed at his own mistakes. Now known as Bushisms, here are some of his best moments:
“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” – LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 18 October 2000
“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” – Greater Nashua, New Hampshire, 27 January 2000
“I hear there’s rumors on the Internets that we’re going to have a draft.” – Second presidential debate, St. Louis, Missouri, October 8 2004
“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” – Saginaw, Michigan, 29 September 2000
“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.” – to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, 4 February 2005
“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” – Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September 2004
“They misunderestimated me.” – Bentonville, Arkansas, 6 November 2000
“Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?” – Florence, South Carolina, 11 January 2000
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” – Washington, D.C., 5 August 2004
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” – Nashville, Tennessee, 17 September 2002
“People say, well, do you ever hear any other voices other than, like, a few people? Of course I do.”— George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., 18 December 2008
If bank interest rates are not doing it for you right now, this eBay-style investment site might - and it could give you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside too.
Whilst looking around the site, I came across a blog post from one of the co-founders with a very clickable title (which I’ve borrowed). The 10 benefits are:
1. It causes you to get more creative.
2. It forces you to make the tough decisions.
3. It thins out the competition.
4. It makes you realize you can’t take anything for granted.
5. It reminds you that real wealth isn’t about the stuff you own.
6. It fosters out-of-the-box thinking.
7. It makes it easier to abandon business-as-usual.
8. It brings you back to the basics.
9. It accelerates change.
10. It causes you to be less wasteful.
I think these benefits can pretty much be applied to any business. What about your company? Are you going through any of these right now? Are there more benefits you can add to this list?
(If you’re really having trouble answering that question, I can tell you he was not. He was a composer.)
In today’s world, it seems that unless you offer solutions then you’re a nobody. But for me, ‘solutions’ is just a most common example of lazy writing. It doesn’t actually tell you anything – and good writing should tell you all you need to know.
Eye for Image is not a provider of communications solutions. We write. And we give strategic advice. And we coach your communications team. We do all those things. And saying we offer ‘communications solutions’ sells us, and the reader, short.
Another thing with solutions: it comes from solve. And you solve problems. So if we offer solutions – and you want them – then you must have problems. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes people just want something written. Or they want strategic advice. Or they want to be coached.
English has thousands of words. More than 500,000 according to Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. So surely we can find the right one for every situation. But all too often, we look for an adjective or adverb instead - and the result is heavier, wordier, less precise text.
This is explained concisely by Andy Maslen in his book Write to Sell:
“Unless they provide extra information, adjectives and adverbs are just a lazy writer’s excuse for not thinking harder. Here’s how to use more precise words instead:
Not a huge house, but a mansion
Not a forward-looking executive but a pioneer
Not a respected company but a standard-setter
It works for adverbs to:
Wherever you turn (in Denmark, anyway), someone is talking about branding Denmark. Recently, there was even a whole conference about it.
I was particularly interested to hear what the nation branding expert Simon Anholt had to say. We’re on a quest to find out how Danish companies can base their communications on being Danish. Simon Anholt seemed like the perfect person to provide answers to our questions. But instead of hearing great insights and wisdom into how countries can build and improve their brands, he said that nation branding was quite useless. And that you can’t really shift perception anyway - without some sort of revolutionary change.
A slap in the face to all marketers?
Then he asked the audience why Danes aren’t satisfied at their current ranking of no. 14 in his most recent nation brand index. Isn’t that good enough? He teased the Danes for wanting to move into the top 10, because Denmark is doing terribly well in the big scheme of things. I think it’s since slipped to no. 15 – but it’s still well ahead of a lot of other powerful countries.
Well, I think it’s great Denmark is so ambitious. What better way to break free from the grip that “Jantelov” has over the country? Anholt has a point, however, when he says it’s no use for countries to try to change perception simply by advertising or with a clever tagline (that no-one will really believe).
I wonder, too, if the efforts of nation branding are misguided. Surely, it’s mainly down to the actions of individuals and groups who happen to represent the country. Their achievements and results reflect on the country – and boost its brand.
For example, have you heard of the “All Blacks”? Probably. Know what sport they play? Maybe. Where they come from? Probably not (unless you’re from the UK, Australia or South Africa).
The All Blacks are a strong, memorable brand, which is built on consistently high performance and unrivalled success in the sport of rugby. Since they have a close association with the country of New Zealand, they boost the brand of New Zealand. But New Zealand does not boost the All Blacks’ brand. The brand is not any stronger simply because it comes from New Zealand.
I believe that a country’s brand is made by the individual performance of companies, teams, artists, musicians, writers, politicians, journalists, and the like. And of course people who just travel and interact with others around the world. So instead of Denmark putting so much effort into branding the nation, when even Simon Anholt says it’s not going to have much effect, isn’t it best to invest in the individual efforts of its champions?
At least not according to Apple. And now a study, run by the Future Laboratory and Nokia, is inclined to agree. As the devices in our hands become more powerful, it’s the impact they have on our life experience that sells them, not how many Giga hertz or Mega pixels they boast.
G is not for Geek
The new approach to marketing is called ‘G-tech’ - short for ‘girl tech’. Though not 100% politically correct at first glance, G-tech is really just about designing and writing about products in a way that appeals to the right side of the brain. That means moving away from literal and logical messages about the way gadgets work and emphasising their empathic and intuitive qualities - how you experience a product, and how it can enrich your life.
What boys and girls want
It’s worked wonders for Apple - the iPod is the archetypical G-tech product. And now other manufacturers are following suit. At Eye For Image we’re finding more and more of our clients are responding very positively to our ‘demystify the tech’ approach. At first they were worried about talking down to (geeky) customers. But now they realise that the boys like the right brain approach just as much.
After all, boys, as well as girls, just want to have fun.
Here’s a short video in which the boys talk about G-tech (in quite a geeky way!). Most of the meat is in the last minute and a half.
The value proposition is a powerful statement that (preferably) captures the mind and the heart, and reveals a unique, highly relevant advantage or appeal. It is usually expressed as a tagline and a clear set of statements that form a platform for communicating a company or product brand.
A value proposition can be thought of as a distinctive position in the “mind’s eye” of the customer, based on perceived emotional and functional benefits. It is often a promise of customer experience. It’s a single idea you own that makes someone more likely to choose you. It’s the essence of the brand’s benefits – functional and emotional – that current and potential customers should expect to receive when experiencing a brand’s products and services.
A value proposition is most akin to a positioning statement. Personally, I prefer to use the words “value proposition” instead of “positioning statement”, since it focuses attention on the number one need – establishing value. After all, what’s the point in blowing big media budgets on promoting something that, even if it manages to capture your target audience’s attention (the ad campaign won a prize regardless of whether the product sold), people don’t feel there’s enough value to bother trying the product or calling you for a meeting?
In search of meaning
There are plenty of ad agencies out there that create pretty meaningless statements about their companies and/or their products. Stuff like: “The preferred professional partner” or “We do it a little bit better”, or “the leading provider of xxxx”. Statements like these are, quite frankly, useless.
A true value proposition can take many forms. For example:
- We’re No.2 – we try harder (reason to prefer: “I appreciate the values of modesty and a will to make things better, and I expect that a company that makes such a honest statement really does go the extra mile”).
- Design for the people (reason to prefer: “I want designer furniture, but I can’t afford top-end brands – here’s a company that appreciates my position”).
- A thousand shades better (reason to prefer: “This hearing aid delivers the best possible sound quality, which I understand is the most important single factor when choosing a hearing aid”).
You can arrive at your value proposition by considering:
- What functional benefits might our customers want from a company like ours?
- What might grab their attention?
- What might appeal to their hearts? Capture their imaginations?
In a world where people are disinclined to give you even a split second of their attention, nailing the value proposition means identifying one key message you can say about your offering that will make people want to know more. Then you need to support it with no more than three sub-messages that make the main message even more compelling.
For example (for a new hearing aid):
Main message:
“The No.1 choice for an active lifestyle”
Three sub-messages:
ReSound Live™ is the No.1 choice when you want to be:
- Physically active – whenever you need to move your body
- Socially active – whenever you’re together with friends or family
- Mentally active – when you want to be at your focused best
Translating can be a tricky business - but this is an error that you’d never think could happen. When officials sent a road sign to be translated into Welsh, they thought the reply they received was the translation. Unfortunately, it was the translator’s out of office reply. The result was a road sign with the Welsh text: I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.
(It should have read: No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.)
According to the BBC story, much blame is being heaped on officials, but surely some fault has to lie with a translator who only includes one language version of their out of office reply.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Check out the other road sign cock-ups:
If you live in the UK, it seems that the answer to that question is ‘not as easily as you would think’.
118 118, one of the UK’s leading directory assistance suppliers (or in non-corporate speak, the place you call or website you visit if you want to find someone’s phone number of address), ran a promotion recently in which the company gave away £118 to random callers. The problem was of the 288 winners, 89 refused to accept the money.
The promotion worked like this: anyone who called the service between certain times was entered into a draw to win the money. The winners were then called back by 118 118 and told that they’d won. But the problem, it seems, was that people had to give their name and address in order to receive the check in the post - and at least 89 people were afraid they were being scammed. 118 118 had run adverts for the promotion on commercial radio stations, but still people weren’t prepared to give out their details.
Looking at reader’s comments on the related article in the Guardian newspaper, it becomes fairly clear that this fear - and lack of trust of strange callers asking for information - is fairly common in the UK. (Someone also points out that considering the service provided by 118 118, they wouldn’t need to ring in order to get the name and address of someone.) But surely, the promotion by 118 118 is also to blame.
1. Thou shalt create a sense of urgency.
2. Thou shalt offer a highly motivating prize or incentive.
3. Thou shalt create a belief that the prize is winnable.
4. Thou shalt have a promotion with a natural tie-in to thy business.
5. Thou shalt create a promotion with a strong appeal to prospects that fits thy customer profile.
6. Thou shalt provide ease of entry or access to the promotion.
7. Thou shalt back up the promotion with high-profile advertising to get the word out.
Llok at 118 118’s promotion and it could be argued that they scored a ‘hit’ on six of these. But the natural tie-in with the business was weak: simply having the amount of money the same as the phone number is lacks imagination, and does nothing interesting to promote the company or service. (It’s actually very similar to the free shop concept but in the free shop, people don’t have to give away any personal details - they are simply told when they get to the til.)
So what makes a good promotion? Here’s one I like - and although it may not score a perfect 7 with Mr. Cohen, it’s a lot of fun:
The Gingerizer (may be able to spot our very own Fiona Tod in there).
A tool: (noun) a person who is impressionable, easily used by others; LOSER; WANNA-BE. “That guy is such a tool. He would do anything to be accepted.” (www.onlineslangdictionary.com)
The word tool has long been used in both the UK and US to describe someone in negative terms. It can even be heard in classic films, such as the 1987 comedy Withnail & I (When Withnail is pulled over by the police speeding on the motorway, ‘I’ comments, “You’re full of sctoch you silly tool”.)
As you can see, the packaging even includes a photo and the names of the two tools who designed the product. But don’t be put off, it really is a good product.
