The Invisible Grail: In Search of the True Language of Brands First Edition

…Simmons offers a real potpourri of delicacies — Marketing, 10 April 2003 (Book of the Week)

Simmons wants to add linguistic spice to corporate stodge a slice of ginger in boiled rice and his aims cannot be faulted. — Design Week, 13 March 2003

I was staring out of the train window gathering thoughts for this article, when the guard announced: “We will shortly be arriving at London Waterloo. Please remember to take with you your belongings when you enlighten from this train.”

Ah yes, we’d all like to exist in a state of enlightenment, but does it arrive as a result of train travel? I ask semi-seriously because one chapter of The invisible grail was written while travelling on tube trains. I found some kind of enlightenment in the constraints I imposed upon myself. And perhaps that’s one message for all of us trying to be better writers for business: don’t expect all the conditions to be perfect before you set to work. Indeed, you can strain against constraints – let’s call it a brief – to produce thinking and writing that you didn’t imagine you had inside you.

The main constraints I’d like people to rebel against when writing for business are the self-imposed ones: the thoughts that we assume are true but don’t challenge. For example, that there is an accepted way of writing for business: which means writing without individual personality; the heavy use of jargon and impersonal language; abstract management-speak; the use of words and phrases that you would never use in a normal conversation.

The main challenge facing you as a writer is to engage with your readers. “Only connect” as E.M. Forster put it. I use the word “engage” in The invisible grail, noting that it has been used increasingly in recent years as companies and brands try to establish better connections with their audiences. Then Simon Caulkin, writing in The Observer, pointed out another relevant use of the word. Perhaps because I’ve never had a love affair with the motor car, I never associated the word “engage” with gear boxes. Simon established the link for me. In bemoaning the poverty of language used by “management”, he observed that there is widespread dislocation in business caused by language failing to engage. Organisational hypocrisy is the result.

“Organisations say one thing and do another. Sometimes the two don’t engage at all; like a gearbox stuck in neutral, the engine whirrs but nothing happens.”

My passion is trying to improve the language of business and brands. Here in this notion of engagement lies the convincing reason why brands really do need to pay far more attention to their language. People who have dealings with brands will cheerfully say: “Brands live in people’s imaginations. They’re powerful because they make connections with emotions. They’re invested with meaning and relevance to the individual.” Then they seem to stop there, they don’t follow through with a question like “but how do they do that?”

The short answer is they use words. Words that engage, that connect people with people through many kinds of conversation. Words that enable people to identify with other people and, in doing so, to feel more of their own individuality.

Or they do none of these things, because their language has become old and stale, reflecting the exhaustion of the idea behind the brand. Brands die because they become sad old gits whom no one wants to be locked in a conversation with.

It seems clear to me that the secret of a successful brand is its ability to bring people together. Think of Starbucks, embodiment of the ‘third place’ between home and work. Think of just about any drinks brand, even one like Guinness which is about ‘inner strength’. Think, while we’re located in this web medium, of Amazon itself, directing readers with the message “people who liked this book also liked”.

Or think of a failed brand. Strand cigarettes failed miserably because they promised “You’re never alone with a Strand ” but people really want to be with other people, not alone with a cigarette.

Of course, brands survive even when they no longer connect with audiences in a meaningful way. Size has its own momentum and it can take a while for decline to become evident. Marks & Spencer didn’t notice for years, then it took a few years to recover – by engaging again. Big corporate brands develop big corporate personalities. They develop personality traits that go with being big and corporate – let’s say arrogant, aloof and autocratic, just to start with the ‘a’ words. These are not traits that we love.

That’s why I find some of the newer, smaller brands particularly interesting. Brands like Innocent Drinks, Lush and Egg have engaging personalities. They achieve this through the way that they communicate with their customers. They have good products, yes, but what makes these brands truly distinctive is the way they use sparky, daring language to engage with people.

My argument is that if they can do it, so can others. It just takes the will. Big, corporate brands want to be loved, perhaps even more than the new kids on the block. So what’s stopping you? There are no impossibilities in this area, a fact reinforced for me by a friend who visited Australia and told me about roadside adverts she had seen for a chain of undertakers called Simplicity Funerals. The ads read:

“You don’t have to dig deep”
“Stay in the black after the funeral”

Language is full of possibilities that challenge perceived impossibilities. Think about it, read about it. Language is there waiting to be used more creatively than you have used it previously in business. And you don’t even have to dig deep.