Why is now the right time for a new kind of Vision?
And what’s Vision good for, anyway? Inside every successful organisation, everyone knows the answer to two simple questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? When the CEO has articulated this Vision clearly and aligned everyone with it, there are obvious...
Verbal Identity’s most popular writer training courses
The most popular writing courses we’ve seen for brands The best writing courses for copywriters and non-writers are run by writers. We are proud to work with some of the world’s most famous companies, including Alphabet, Co Op, and many ambitious start -ups....
Why your brand’s tone of voice is much, much more than just ‘tone of voice’
Give up the idea that your brand’s tone of voice is just a ‘tone of voice’: It needs to be flexible enough to work in different channels It needs to deliver engagement to the attention you pay for It needs a more sophisticated definition than just 4 adjectives...
Writing in Real Life®: how departments can write more copy, more consistently, in less time and stay sane
A lunch-and-learn with Chris West, Founder, Verbal Identity. Do any of the following sound familiar? Your team is so successful that it’s now being asked to write more copy for more channels. The only problem is, there’s no more time and definitely no more...
What Las Vegas teaches us about language and business
Visiting Las Vegas is like taking a 72-hour, fully-immersive MBA. According to a recent Economist report1, the city is enjoying record tourism and fast employment growth. It’s easy to see why. Any Ops Director will be impressed by a 7 a.m. walk around the gaming...
How We Work 2
There are many different kinds of client-consultant/agency partnerships. Buying the right one is critical: it means you don’t overpay for what you don’t want. More importantly, it means you and your agency partner understand each other from the start. The only problem...
Stop Talking to me like a friend. You’re a brand
The most successful brands don't talk like they're your friend. They talk like they're in the background while you're becoming self-actualised. Here's how they do it: Language for customer actualisation and transcendence. Yes, really. Make the customer...
How we work 1
Should SCQA and MECE be on your wall? Management consultants aren’t the cuddliest bunch, but they do deserve our respect. They have methods that make sense of difficult problems. MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive, Completely Exhaustive. It’s a technique that tests...
The full stop lives on in Fashionland
A linguists’ stroll down Lamb’s Conduit Street. The full stop is a relic of WhatsApp-free years gone by. Or so it might seem, until you set foot on the achingly hip retail avenue that is London’s Lamb’s Conduit Street, where artfully placed full stops are this...
What’s your brand’s narrative?
Popular conceptions of narrative are fundamentally wrong. But this doesn’t mean some narratives aren’t more enduring than others. Here are our favourites for branding. Previously, we discussed universal narratives. Despite what you may have read, they don’t exist....
Why do brands need narratives?
And how do you give a tangible narrative to an intangible product? Simply, brands need narratives because our brains are wired to look for them. We were able to evolve from a chaos of noises, opportunities, over-stimulation and predators only because we could...
“Jane Walker” by Johnnie Walker
What happens when the 3 levels of your brand’s voice clash? You might have noticed that Johnnie Walker recently released a limited edition ‘Jane Walker’ whisky. It’s received mixed reactions. Some people have criticised it as a ‘patronising’ and ‘lazy’...
DIY brand voice audit
Why you should – and how you can – audit your brand’s voice BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR BRAND VOICE – MEASURE HOW IT’S DOING. We’re working with brand owners all around the world to make their brand voice more distinctive, more valuable. One thing I always say is...
The $1 trillion fraud: the language of innovation
In marketing, life seems easy for the innovators, the challengers, the crazy ones. But what if you're the incumbent- the established brand. What do you need to do with your brand language to win back share of mind, leading customers from those plucky challengers? I'm...
How to help technical people become storytellers
How do you help exceptional people tell exceptional stories? Here comes the science bit… It’s odd. Three times in the last month, with three different clients, I’ve been asked the same question: “Our experts keep confusing their audiences with technical talk....
Finding a name for a changing world
Understanding the evolution of naming trends in cybersecurity As any industry matures, naming becomes a more and more challenging prospect. How do you develop a name creative enough to capture someone’s attention and memorable enough to keep it as consumer needs...
Every business needs an elevator pitch
How to make people notice first time around To you, it’s obvious why your offering is going to change lives. But you don’t have time to talk every investor, partner or potential customer through all the reasons why. This is where an elevator pitch makes all the...
Leading the leaders
The best thinking on building C-Suite alignment with the CEO's Vision Inside any consistently successful company, everyone is pursuing one goal with one set of beliefs. This only ever happens because the CEO has set a strategic Vision specifically to inspire and guide...
25 years of thinking about Vision
How to define what your company stands for and avoid the most common pitfalls Over the last 25 years, the idea of what a strategic Vision is, what it should contain, and even whether you need one at all, has been questioned and refined. In a successful company,...
The sweet scent of 98% margins
What the rest of the world can learn from how the luxury fragrance market uses language A linguistic analysis of the fragrance market, showing how younger brands are using new positionings to stretch the market Who doesn’t want a 98% margin? The fragrance...
Brand language – the magic ingredient in cosmetics?
How smaller cosmetics brands are using language to beat big beauty companies. A linguistic analysis of the boutique cosmetics market It’s 7am on Tuesday morning. You’ve just showered. You reach for your moisturizer. It’s an intimate moment between you, the...
Cold, hard numbers and bright insights from customer comments
Text analytics for marketing and customer experience. Why text analytics? Why now? When customers are freed to express their thoughts in their own words, they reveal more about their motivations: they give marketing and customer insight teams the “Why” to...
Luxury Vs. Ultra-luxury
How the world’s most expensive car brands speak, and speak differently. After 6pm, London’s Mayfair is a mini-Monaco. Light bounces off the chrome detailing of supersized ultra-luxury cars, sitting nose-to-pipe outside exclusive members’ clubs. Meanwhile, a...
Hard proof that better writing makes a better business
A collection of facts and statistics on the benefits of good business writing and the cost of bad. Good writing doesn't just have implications for your marketing team, it has a powerful effect on your bottom line too. In fact, it could cost you $75m. And we can prove...
What happens now that neobanks aren’t new?
How challenger banks can use language to win customers, deepen engagement and survive shakeout There’s a serious threat approaching challenger banks: they’re starting to sound the same. The neo (‘challenger’) banks are approaching the equivalent of the pop star’s...
Why now is the right time for a new kind of Vision
Vision is the thing that happens before strategy: we identify the two key questions that every CEO must be able to answer to build an aligned, efficient organisation and the 4 dominant challenges they face today.
Why every successful organisation has a guiding narrative
How can a corporate narrative make sure strategy gets off the page? It aligns an organisation and motivates its employees. Chris explains.
25 years of thinking about Vision
Chris takes a look at and summarises the best expert opinion and research on Vision from the last 25 years. This is for those of you who want to take a deeper dive into its impact.
Leading the leaders
Vision can’t just stay with the CEO; it needs to be lived by every member of the C-suite. Chris examines a collection of practical advice on C-suite alignment.
Why you need an elevator pitch
The curse of knowledge: you know what’s special about your offering, but it’s so intuitive, you’re having difficulty explaining it to other people. The fix? An elevator pitch. Learn why you need one and how to make your own.
Strategic advice and updates
How do you deal with the business challenges you’re facing today? Chris explores how to define, grow, and align your company.
How do you give your company the best possible start?
Chris’s article ‘A strong Brand Vision is the cornerstone to Start-up Success’, published in Just Entrepreneurs, looks at how a clear Vision right from the start can save fledgeling brands from failure.
Finding a name for a changing world
Naming is a challenge for any brand, but especially when an industry starts to reach maturation. Chris examines different naming types, trends, and processes through the lens of the cybersecurity industry
How to beat tech giants…
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UK’s Marketing Society…
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Neobanks and challenger banks…
Is it time for traditional…
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