Brad VanAuken of The Blake Project and Branding Strategy Insider Blog wrote an interesting post about Branding Clichés And Hollow Claims:
“It seems that every good idea, every admirable quality, at some point gets overused and eventually becomes a cliché. Some qualities become so popular that every organization aspires to possess them or at least claim that they possess them.”
I like his recommended solution of letting your actions do the talking when the clichés come knocking:
“By all means, embrace them as a way of conducting your business and perhaps even as a point of difference. In support of this, even include them in your internal brand strategy documents. But, don’t integrate them into your taglines, elevator speeches or marketing campaign themelines. These are admirable qualities to possess so by all means strive to possess them, but don’t scream to the world that you possess them. Let your actions scream that for you.”
Of special interest to me is that “leader” made the top of his branding clichés list, a term we have dubbed, one of the L-words.
As you may recall, I wrote about Losing the L-Word — a year ago, almost to the day, in fact — a post inspired by attending an excellent Padilla Speer Beardsley program, called: “Thinking Local in EMEA: The Next Wave in European Program Execution.”
Thanks again to Matt Kucharski for putting it all together and sharing some of his pearls of wisdom.