Mistakes In Branding, Part 1: Adjectives

Marketing people love adjectives. Adjectives are the de facto currency of creative thinking in the marketing and branding field, and that's why nothing ever happens. As an adman, I used to sit in conference rooms, order expensive sandwiches and shout big power words at flipcharts, like "innovative!" and "dynamic!", which had the fabulous benefit of making me feel innovative and dynamic, but which were useless to anyone else.

We all tried desperately hard to be clever, and we thought that comparing adjectives was the height of sophistication. (The obsession with cleverness even extended to the sandwich chef - I could never eat the damn things, because they were full of stuff like brie with caviar. Very innovative and dynamic, of course, but really rather vile.)

What we were doing was simple, and it had nothing to do with producing the best strategy: we were trying to declare that our personal, subjective, poorly-articulated impression of something was The Absolute Truth and everyone else was blaspheming. So when I said to a colleague, "It's dynamic", and she said, "no, it's innovative", we spent about four months locked in mortal combat over the relative definitions of "innovative" and "dynamic". I won, at least in my mind, and she won, at least in hers. Big winners, both of us; big stars.

So what's wrong with adjectives, exactly? Well, I found out what the problem was as soon as I started doing improv. You can't perform an adjective. You can only perform an action. A verb. It's as simple as that.

Hamlet doesn't walk onstage and say, "Ladies and gentlemen, before we start tonight's performance I should like to inform you that I am angry, confused and paranoid. I do hope you enjoy the play."

Instead, he performs a series of actions. And it's by witnessing his actions that the audience draw their conclusions. This is why actors are called actors, not describers, and it's why directors call, "Action!" instead of "Description!"

There are only two things we'll look at onstage, two things that the eye will be drawn to: emotional movement, and physical movement. Without these things, the audience may as well go and read a book. Physical movement, obviously, involves actions; and so does emotional movement. In order to produce an emotional shift, you have to do something to someone - perform an action.

So if you're running a brand, then I'd invite you to turbo-charge your creative thinking by banning adjectives. Ban them completely, and replace them with actions. You want your brand to be Cool? Then you have to find cool things to do, and do them. Do you want your brand to be Friendly? Then identify what friends do, and do it.

Do you want to be Shallow? Then shout adjectives at flipcharts.