Many of you who arrive at the proverbial doors of Call Of The Word are writers and already fully understand the potential power of language. Even if you are not a writer, you are probably more than familiar with the concept of a ‘brand’ - as consumers we are all a bit wiser these days to the tactics of capitalisms’ biggest winners. But, how does the power of language play its part in brand strategy you ask? Well, first we must take a brief look at precisely what constitutes a brand.
Fundamentally, a brand is a shared understanding of the values contained in a name. Now this could be the name of a business, or the alter-ego of a pop star, but the name represents intangible values that by some order invite us all to agree on their existence and properties. How can people from across the world, unknown to each other come to agree on such a specific nonentity? Well, language plays a vital role in this process in two major ways:
The fairly miraculous condition of shared understanding is actually quite significant to who we are as humans. As detailed in Yuval Noah Harari’s quite brilliant book, Sapiens: A History of Mankind, the ability to co-operate in such large numbers is unequivocally linked to the birth of complete language systems similar to those used today. By sharing a language, early humans were able to share ideas and to encourage certain beliefs amongst large groups of people. These beliefs were spread so rapidly because complete language proved to be incredibly efficient compared to any former system for sharing ideas, such as hand gestures or emotive grunts. Thus, when attempting to recruit large numbers of people to engage in specific activities, such as invading neighbouring tribes for our ancestors, or choosing to purchase certain technological products for us more modern folk, the benefits of said activity must first be agreed on a large scale through the shared understanding of a certain belief. How do we achieve shared understanding efficiently? Yes, that’s right - language!
Now that we are all adept at using complete languages to communicate ideas, we can start to look at how to make this process even more efficient. This is achieved not by what you say, but how you say it, i.e tone of voice. As we continue to adapt and develop communication for increasingly rapid information sharing, society has come to possess certain expectations based on language. For example, when reading a contract we expect to encounter formal, complex language designed to inspire a sense of authority and order. On the other hand, when scrolling the webpages of our favourite technology brands, we have come to expect fresh, emotive copy, peppered with aspirational contemporary buzzwords and technological jargon that we aren’t entirely supposed to understand, but should be impressed by anyway. Now that they are firmly established, we can use language to manipulate these expectations, and build upon shared understandings to promote even more shared understandings, until just three carefully chosen words sitting at the top of a webpage can lead us to a host of expectations on what content we will find underneath.
So where does tone of voice come in? Based on society-wide schemas we have around language, choosing a certain tone of voice for your brand can immediately set certain shared expectations about your brand’s values within just one phrase. Therefore, carefully deciding what tone you would like to set can enable you to control the perception of your brand with incredible efficiency. In a capitalist society where return on investment means everything, it is essential to master the ability of promoting your brand with as little cost as possible. Therefore, optimising your message while minimising the amount of language used equals optimising your clicks, likes, and sales while minimising your costs, time and space/data and this is largely achieved through tone of voice. In conclusion, mastering the consistency of your tone of voice can help to promote your brand with remarkable rapidity on a very large scale, while simultaneously encouraging repeated engagement from customers or followers due to increased recognition.
Now that’s all potentially mind-blowing, so let’s leave it there for now. But things get even more exciting in Part 2 when we look to harnessing the very specific power of the written word.
Join me for more!