Limited Vocabulary

Everyone does it. You do it, I do it, and all of the people that you meet, know, and interact with every day do it. We cling to little words and phrases, cadence and pronunciation, that differentiate the ways that we talk from those around us. I’m not a linguist and I haven’t explored this phenomenon in great detail, but I do know that a significant portion of the reasoning behind these natural differences stems from the individual, familial, and cultural backgrounds that each of us have.

People from a particular place or region may speak the same dialect; but, dialect isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re just talking about subtle repetition of certain phrases or words that seem to congregate through certain people or groups of people. (It’s like dialect, but on a smaller scale. It’s possible, for example, for this particular phenomenon to exist between a family, a town, or simply an individual.)

In and of itself, this phenomenon is interesting but not immediately important to the worlds of design and marketing. If, however, you can develop a way to discover and target your message or product to these specific groups of individuals in a language that sounds, feels, and breathes like their own, you may be able to establish an unconscious link between your product and your customers.

All the demographic research in the world won’t help you reach a customer if he or she can’t relate (on several levels) to where you’re coming from. Especially in an age in which advertising is literally injected into every minute of every day, it’s harder than ever to get someone to buy whatever it is that you’re selling.

But, by finding a way to make your idea, product, organization, or service sound and feel as though it’s part of your customers world, in effect it is. And, if it is, you’ve just won half of the battle.