The alliterative headline to this piece was one I submitted for my latest article on TechCrunch and was somewhat prosaically replaced with ‘The limits of social influence? Big Ben is influential on… drugs’.
Still you can’t win them all and while the piece was all about the so-called measurement of influence through social networks, it underlines how people perceive the use of words, and how the words themselves influence people.
I once had the great fortune to win a £5,000 photography prize in a national newspaper competition and while the picture isn’t bad, the caption I sent in with the entry probably swung it… and as I write this I realise already that this editorial is already all about me, me, me so I’m going to change direction.
In a world of constant content creation and that ‘orrible word ‘curation’, words are as important and crucial as when Shakespeare was talking about necessity being the mother of invention. With more than a million ‘business words out there’ brands are increasingly using analytics to ensure they gain a competitive advantage by doing so.
A Brighton start-up agency Linguabrand purports to do exactly that by putting analytics behind their creative processes by measuring and mapping brand differentiation. The way they do it is not only by analysing their clients’ wordprint but, more importantly, by teaching them how to understand ‘what makes brands the same’.
“Companies compete with words so how do they know which words are competitive?… By listening very carefully to brand messages and connecting them to audience psychologies mean emotional attitudes to that brand deepen”, said Alastair Herbert, Managing Director of Linguabrand.
All of which is extremely interesting and will no doubt make Linguabrand a pile of money, language that everybody understands. However, the only two words that I can hear at the moment are ‘Easter’ and ‘break’, so I’m stopping here and turning off the computer.
Words fail me…
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
