On words, from the marketing classic Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
Playing the positioning game
Some people have trouble playing the positioning game because they are hung up on words. They assume, incorrectly, that words have meanings. They let Mr. Webster rule their life.
You must understand the role of words
As general semanticists have been saying for decades, words don’t contain meanings. The meanings are not in the words. They are in the people using the words. Like a sugar bowl which is empty until someone fills it with sugar, a word has no meaning until someone uses it and fills it with meaning. If you try to add sugar to a leaky sugar bowl, you won’t get anywhere. So, too, if you try to add meaning to a leaky word. Much better to discard that leaky word and use another. The word “Volkswagen” won’t hold the concept of a medium-sized luxury car, so you discard that sugar bowl and use another, “Audi,” which holds the concept better. You don’t insist that because it’s made in a Volkswagen factory, it must be a Volkswagen. Mental rigidity is a barrier to successful positioning. (While Volkswagen faltered in the American market, Audi boomed. Currently Audi outsells BMW and is breathing down the neck of Mercedes-Benz.) To be successful today at positioning, you must have a large degree of mental flexibility. You must be able to select and use words with as much disdain for the history book as for the dictionary. Not that conventional, accepted meanings are not important. Quite the contrary. You must select the words which trigger the meanings you want to establish. But is this ethical? Remember, words have no meaning. They are empty containers until you fill them with meaning. If you want to reposition a product, a person, or a country, you often have to first change the container. In a sense, every product or service is “packaged goods.” If it isn’t sold in a box, the name becomes the box.
You must know how words affect people
Words are triggers. They trigger the meanings which are buried in the mind. Of course, if people understood this, there would be no advantage in renaming a product or selecting emotional words like Mustang for an automobile. But they don’t. Most people are “unsane.” They’re not completely sane and they’re not completely insane. They’re somewhere in between. What’s the difference between sane people and insane people? What exactly do insane people do? Alfred Korzybski, who developed the concept of general semantics, explains that insane people try to make the world of reality fit what is in their heads. The insane person who thinks he is Napoleon makes the outside world fit that notion. The sane person constantly analyzes the world of reality and then changes what’s inside his or her head to fit the facts. That’s an awful lot of trouble for most people. Besides, how many people want to constantly change their opinions to fit the facts? It’s a whole lot easier to change the facts to fit your opinions. Unsane people make up their minds and then find the facts to “verify” their opinion. Or even more commonly, they accept the opinion of the nearest “expert,” and then they don’t have to bother with the facts at all. So you see the power of the psychologically right name. The mind makes the world of reality fit the name. A Mustang looks sportier, racier, and faster than if the same car had been called the Turtle. Language is the currency of the mind. To think conceptually, you manipulate words. With the right choice of words, you can influence the thinking process itself. (As proof that the mind “thinks with words” and not abstract thoughts, consider how a language is learned. To be really fluent in a foreign language, say French, you must learn to think in French.) But there are limits. If a word is so far out of touch with reality, the mind just refuses to use the word. It says “large” on the tube that everyone except the manufacturer calls a “small” toothpaste tube. It says “economy” on the tube that everyone calls “large.” The People’s Republic of China is usually called “Red China” because no one believes it is a “people’s republic.” (Inside the country, the People’s Republic of China is undoubtedly an effective name.)
