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
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