When you use another company’s or person’s branding or their phrasing or their tag line, you’re immediately making your thoughts and ideas a subproduct of that other brand. If I write a blog post called “The Tipping Point of Professional Baseball,” then I’ve invoked Malcolm Gladwell. If I write about “Purple Cows Make Better Hamburgers,” I’m lighting up Seth Godin’s branding. Now, while this isn’t bad or wrong, it does push your idea into their frame.
Marketers do this all the time. They use the current reigning champ’s language and write counterpoint to it. Lesser brands draft off the bigger brands’ positioning. We take (whether consciously or not) from the value of what we’re doing when we phrase it in other people’s language.
And yet (and this is a big “and yet”), there’s something lovely about when phrases and words catch on. I love that people are using terms like trust agents in the wild. I love that people talk about workshifting (client) as a verb that makes sense to them. When we talk about things like the tipping point and purple cows, it’s a shared language.
So now what? My thought: there’s a time to use the term we all understand and there’s a time where your words should be free of other people’s “logos.” Understanding when might be a mix for you. What do you think about it?
photo credit kevin dooley
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