You Don't Say...

I love adjectives. They are the flavors behind the spice, the character of a person, the experiences we all have. Branders love adjectives, too. For the most part, however, they don't know how to use them.

Adjectives are visceral. They well up inside of a person – born in the heart, in the gut. They arise and fall out of our mouths like lava, because they can't be contained anymore. Words are not this – words are in the brain, synaptic firings, quick and sparkly. They have no responsibility to the emotions, to the heart and gut. Words represent the meaning behind them – they aren't meaning. Say a word enough and meaning fades away completely. Adjectives are all meaning. So when you write an adjective down, make it a word, and attach it to you, you're diminishing its essence, taking away some of its natural power.

Branding tip: don't bother describing yourself for others.

Let's say you're opening a fashion boutique. You begin to ponder what adjectives can describe the shop. You want it to be "cutting-edge," "fun," "girly," "saucy," "bold," and "quirky," with just a "touch of goth." Now, how do you make that happen?

It's much better to be those things – in other words, to embody those adjectives – than to put the words on your marketing materials and promotions.

Adjectives are important, but not as important as who is saying them. When you put into words descriptions of your own product, the words are coming from the biased ego of the product's creator – you – and are therefore met with immediate skepticism by your audience. People may agree with you, but by telling them what you are, you attempt the impossible: controlling others' opinions of you.

You'll find the more you try to tell others what to think of you, the more resistance and rebellion you will get. Even if they would like to agree with you, they'll find ways to come up with their own words. People want to think for themselves.

The much more effective alternative is to keep the words to yourself, then make sure every day you walk into your boutique you can accurately describe it with those words. If you can do that – if your adjectives are accurate – it's more likely that others will be describing you with the same words, in their conversations and daily lives. Let other people describe what you are. If they aren't describing you in a way that you'd like, change yourself so they change their opinion of you. But don't try to take that power away from them by telling them what to say.

And that power of opinion is incredible. When someone else describes you, their words are exponentially more credible than when you say the same things about yourself. It's because they can be trusted more than you – by their friends, family, and by the very folks who would be interested in shopping at your boutique.

Plus, if your only efforts to be described a certain way is to describe yourself on paper, you remove your own accountability to yourself to be those things. The flawed logic goes: I'm saying it, so it must be true, and you then feel entitled to do nothing else to follow through on that idea. Nothing works this way.

The lazy, ineffective approach to changing people's opinions of you is to slap a new word on your sign.

Branding Tip: Be it, don't say it.