Brands bring life into focus
Great brands bring life into focus. And sharply, too. But, as any brand builder will tell you, this is no easy task. Success in this endeavor depends in part on how well brands elevate the art of language, so that new contexts of richness can prevail. Unfortunately, this process is increasingly difficult because certain forces act to debase language so it actually means less.
When meaning is drained from language via spin or hype, customers lose, brands lose, and companies lose. There is simply less context to go around. There’s less to stand on, less to share, and less for great leaps forward.
Preserving the richness of language
The BBC’s John Humphrys has some interesting observations on preserving the richness of language. From an excerpt in the Telegraph:
Word by word, we are at risk of dragging our language down to the lowest common denominator and we do so at the cost of its most precious qualities: subtlety and precision. If we’re happy to let our common public language be used in this way, communication will be reduced to a narrow range of basic meanings.
That, of course, would be rather convenient for the snake-oil salesmen, unscrupulous estate agents and (dare I say it?) even some politicians who might prefer not to be pinned down to anything too precise. But why should the rest of us settle for the lowest common denominator of communication?
Brands are the poetry of products
Let’s not forget that brands are the poetry of products. As the self-appointed poet-masters in this ‘hood, brand-builders have an investment in vibrant structures of meaning. They stand to gain mightily from advancing subtlety and precision in all they do. It’s up to them to show the way.