The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or two — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

What do the phrases white glove, high-touch, and clean have in common? They’ve changed meaning and use for safety precautions and standards in a global pandemic. But the language shifts we’ve seen go beyond safety: birthday parties, happy hour, weekend getaways, middle seats on airplanes, virtual banking. This week, Michael and Lee welcome colleagues Catherine Farr and Will Howard to talk about words that changed meaning over the past year. And the lifecycle of the pandemic lexicon.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

maslansky + partners newsletter

EPISODE 3 TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Maslansky:
They said what? Welcome to Hearsay, a podcast from the language strategists at Maslansky and Partners, where we provide our take on the smartest, savviest, and stupidest messages in the market today, and what you can learn from their experience. Our philosophy is, “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear,” and that’s why we call this Hearsay. I’m Michael Maslansky, CEO of the firm that invented language strategy, and author of The Language of Trust: Selling Ideas in a World of Skeptics.

Lee Carter:
And I’m Lee Carter. I’m a Partner and President at Maslansky and Partners, and feel lucky every day to get to play with words for a living. I’m the author of a book called Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Seem To Matter. I’m excited to get started in this conversation today.

Michael Maslansky:
Hello Lee.

Lee Carter:
Hey.

Michael Maslansky:
I’m excited to do this.

Lee Carter:
Me too.  So, thankful that we’re in 2021, because 2020 is a year that most of us are going to be happy to forget. The thing about it is that there’s such a big impact that that year has kind of had on our lives, on all of us in so many different ways. But one of the biggest ways, from our perspective that it’s changed, is how we communicate. It’s changed language, it’s changed how we engage each other in so many different ways, and it’s reshaped basic conversation as well.  And it’s not just about COVID. Last year was so filled with so many different topics. There was, of course, the pandemic, there was also a big election, and on top of all of that, we had a huge, huge increase in awareness on equality, on diversity, after the terrible murders earlier in the year, including that of George Floyd’s and the rise in Black Lives Matter. So I think the way that we view the world has just changed so dramatically. So joining us today, there was two people that we couldn’t imagine having this conversation without. The first is Catherine Farr. She’s got a knack for hearing things from other people’s perspectives, and then translating that into messaging that’s going to drive client results and really drive behavior change.  And Will Howard. There’s no one better than Will to talk about the words we use.  I remember very, very vividly one of my first conversations with Will Howard when he joined our firm a few years ago, and we talked about what you want to be known for. I think that was the conversation, and Will said that, “I want to be known as the word guy.” And there’s no question that that’s who you are and what you are, not just to me, but to the company and all of our clients. And I think you were the first one to really talk about the impact on language that all of this was having, like early on. So really, really glad that you’re able to join us today, Will.

Will Howard:
Thank you so much, you’re too kind. I don’t know if I managed to be known as the word guy, I might’ve fallen a little bit short and just be the bad pun guy, but I’ll take it.

Lee Carter:
Well, that too.

Michael Maslansky:
Catherine and Will, it’s great to have you here. And we want to talk about the fact that we cannot remember the moment where the associations with so many words and phrases has changed so dramatically in such a short period of time. Just think about some of these words: high touch, cleaning, normal, hands-on, in-person. They all meant one thing in January of 2020, and today, they mean something completely different. Some of the shifts are obvious and some of them are not, but let’s start just by getting a sense… Will, how have you experienced the changes in language over the course of 2020?

Will Howard:
Man, I think the first thing that COVID and quarantine and 2020 made me appreciate what was different about language is just kind of realizing how much of the language of support, care, affection, service, whether it’s interpersonal or between a business and an individual, how much of that language is rooted in physical proximity and touch. Like whether it’s, “I’m going to hold your hand through the process, can’t wait to meet face to face, I’ve got your back, he and I are very close.” All of this language that symbolizes an emotional connection, or a level of care and service, is expressed through metaphors and language that is based in being physically near to someone. And all of a sudden, that’s all a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit different, and you just have an immediately visceral association to some of those phrases. “I can’t wait to give Grandma a hug,” used to be a very sweet thing to say, and now it kind of sounds like a threat. The way the language is perceived and the way it sounds, I think especially when it comes to support, is really different. And paradoxically, the thing that people want most right now is support and solidarity and care, and I think we’ve noticed people really struggling to navigate that, of how do you express care in a new vernacular? I think the first time we noticed this as a firm was we were doing a project right before all the quarantine shutdowns started happening back in March or February. And I think what you alluded to this already, we did the research and we were testing a banking message with consumers, and one of the very innocuous messages was we offer high touch service. Normally tests okay, and people very viscerally had a negative reaction to it.

Michael Maslansky:
It’s so dramatic how much it’s changed. And you wonder whether this is a temporary shift or whether we permanently replaced some of these terms with new terms. Because it’s hard to get that same level of emotion without those very visual words and phrases that we have. So I wonder if this will be forever or if this is a temporary shift.

Will Howard:
Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to say and it’s hard to imagine. I can certainly see it going one of two ways. One is we slip into some casual phrases or some new phrases that become part of a lexicon and you just express support in a slightly different way, and it’s understood and we all went through it together. So that’s how we talk now.  But I could also see there being a real rebound and a real swinging back the other way, as soon as things snap out of this, there might be something we used to take for granted about physical proximity may all of a sudden mean a lot more. And the fact that you can say, “I can’t wait to give grandma a hug again,” all of a sudden means something more and is that much more meaningful to say.

Michael Maslansky:
Yeah, but… so we’ve got these words that have baggage because of the situation that we’re going through today. Catherine, as we think about the flip side of that, what about words that have come in that now have that additional meaning, are really resonant today, even though maybe we would have never used them in the past.

Catherine Farr:
So the first word that comes to mind for me is mask. I think that COVID has really expanded everyone’s vocabularies. We have this whole new scientific lexicon, pandemic, surge, all of this language that maybe we’ve heard terms like quarantine in the past, but now we’re using them every day. We’re turning them into gerunds. But even though a word like mask, I feel like it had really no meaning or relevance to us except on Halloween, maybe a face mask. But now it’s something that has an inherent benefit to the word. When we talk about wearing a mask, it’s really your lifeline. If you have a mask on, it means that you can now do things that you couldn’t otherwise. That means that you’re keeping other people safe. You’re keeping yourself safe. So that’s the word that I often think. I text the word mask all the time. Like, don’t leave home without a mask, or do you have your mask? I need a mask. And I thought that’s probably a word that I never texted or used pre 2020.  But to talk about some other words that have benefit. I think one example from research that comes to mind, and this was right before COVID, we did work for a food and beverage company and they were using the phrase “hermetically sealed.” And as our team thought that language we thought, well, this is an obvious win, a very easy suggestion and way that we can help them speak in a more plainspoken way. Just say that it was sealed for freshness or sealed to lock in flavor. Why are they using this kind of unnecessary, scientific jargon when we’re talking about food? No one wants to hear about… have the connotation of, of a lab coat or from hermetically… a hermetic room as they’re trying to consume something. But now I think about if we had done that research post COVID or even today, and I think hermetically sealed, it just kind of doubles down on what people want. They don’t just want something that sealed, they want something that they can be even reassured of that it’s completely sealed, which is what we’re trying to convey with hermetically sealed. And I think that just reflects the changes and our expectations around what clean means and the way that we communicate about it.

Will Howard:
Yeah. There’s even less exciting and dramatic ones too, with stuff like ads that are up about hotels these days, like we’re really clean. We cleaned our rooms really deeply and thoroughly. It seems like such a low bar. It’s such an unexciting thing to try to sell people on. But all of a sudden, just being clean is a big deal. And you see people using words like that and leaning into details like that, that otherwise might not have been that exciting, but they’ve taken on new importance and new significance.

Catherine Farr:
Yeah. And I think what we see is that clean was something that you used to take for granted, and now it’s an opportunity for brands to differentiate, so they’re getting much more specific in how they define and characterize what clean is. So if you’re a gym, it’s not just that you clean the equipment, but that it’s sprayed down with this air gun every three hours. Another example, so if you rent a car, you had just get into the car and if it smelled clean that in the past was probably enough reassurance that it was clean and safe for you to ride in. But recently I rented a car and there was a sticker over the door handle, and you have to physically break that seal before you could get in. And that it was a reassuring feeling. It proved that no one had touched that car, the steering wheel inside from me once I entered the car.

Will Howard:
Yeah. And there’s two things you can talk about there. One is new actions like that, that are symbolic that people have brought in, the other is just to take a look at things you were doing anyway. And this is actually something we talked about with clients all the time in crisis response and in other things as well when it comes to positioning and differentiation and telling stories to prove your point. A case study that we love from a car company where they wanted to talk about how they had intense attention to detail, but they couldn’t figure out a good way to prove it. And we found out that everyone on their assembly line has to wear a fabric band over their watches to keep it from scratching the car.  And when we told them you should talk about that because people love it, and it sounds… It embodies attention to detail perfectly, they’re answer was everyone does that. That’s standard operating procedure for an assembly line, but nobody knows that. Nobody ever has visibility. No one outside the company has visibility into that process, and bringing to life a simple detail like that all of a sudden brings some new depth to your claim of attention to detail. But I think we’re seeing that now with clean, but you can find all sorts of little things in your process that you probably do anyway. No one ever touches the inside of a Coke can while it’s being bottled, obviously, but all of a sudden elevating some of those things that you might otherwise take for granted can actually be meaningful.

Lee Carter:
I think to build on this too, the reason I think some of this language has accelerated and tractioned so much is about the amount of repetition. Think about how many times someone’s repeating that something is clean, that it’s sterile, that it’s safe, to wear a mask, to be six feet apart. And I think one of the reasons we have such a new lexicon is not just that we have new words in this environment, but we repeat them so, so often. And I think this is a lesson for really all communicators, because we often tell our clients that if you aren’t nauseous from repeating a message, you probably haven’t even begun to get traction yet. And yet we don’t repeat it enough because we’ll be moving on to the next thing. But in this moment, we have repeated these messages over and over again so that they become emblazoned in our brains and become part of our lexicon and the way that we talk and it’s changed the way we think, it’s changed the way we behave. And that really is the ultimate driver of effective messaging.

Michael Maslansky:
When we talk about repetition, we’re often talking about the context of trying to educate people about new topics and new words, change language. And we hear a common refrain of, if we could just explain to people, or if people would just understand, or if we could just educate people about something, and it’s often an incredibly hard goal to set or to achieve because you don’t get the opportunities for that repetition that you have in this environment where everybody’s focused on the same issues in ways that we really haven’t been in a long time. And these messages or words and phrases are being repeated from all different sources pretty consistently. So if we look at the pandemic as a situation where the focus on personal kind of physical connection has been upended, and we talked about the fact that so much of the language that we use, all of these metaphors words and phrases are about that physical connection. We’ve actually now created a whole new lexicon about the absence of physical connection. You think about words like contact-less, hands-free, touch-less, all of these terms and approaches that once might’ve been nice, but now are essential to how we’re operating today.

Will Howard:
I’d actually go a step further and say they once might’ve been nice, contact-less and hands-free, those were words that were on the rise anyway. But actually all of a sudden… like wearing a mask was sinister, and all of a sudden it’s an act of compassionate protection. Staying away was similarly an act of distancing and all of a sudden it’s a good thing. So it’s kind of both.

Lee Carter:
A lot of these things really were a different way of expressing the idea of convenience.  If I was going to go hands-free or if I was going contact-less, it was like, okay, I can be in and out of there faster. In many ways, that’s what we were trying to convey. And now the benefit to that language is really something that’s much, much closer to our hearts. It’s about personal safety. And so you’ve gone from this idea of convenience, which is a nice to have, which is really… it was amazing when convenience was the ultimate benefit to us, when we’re all just living in a better time. But now it’s like the ultimate benefit is safety and that’s so close to all of us. And I think when you think about how you frame things and the benefit that it gives to other people, what is the most important benefit that you can drive to make something really resonate and matter to drive behavior change? And that’s when you might get to an answer.

Catherine Farr:
Yeah. And I would add to that, so contact-less credit cards have been around for a while and I feel like adoption was rather slow. I know I personally never used it. I think back to QR codes, which I feel like tried to be popular five years ago and no one knew what to do with them. You just had a bunch of photos in your camera scroll with different QR codes. But now the benefit is different. It’s not just convenience, which I didn’t really need before but was a nice to have, now and is adding to my safety and the safety of others. So, absolutely, Lee. I think now it’s the safety benefit that’s driving use as opposed to the ease benefit, which people didn’t really see as a benefit or need before.

Michael Maslansky:
All right. So I have another word for you. Tell me what you think of this one. So “high touch” doesn’t work in this environment. What about “white glove” if we’re talking about service? So is that the one term that threads the needle because it is about physical, high degree of service, but it’s actually in a protected context.

Lee Carter:
I don’t want it. I want no glove near me.

Will Howard:
It still just sounds like a crime scene to me. I’ve never liked that one. Like you’re… or a butler.

Lee Carter:
I totally agree. It’s like dusting for fingerprints, right?

Michael Maslansky:
Okay. So then if you’re a business that delivers what was called high touch customer service or client service, what do you call it now? You don’t call it touch-less.

Lee Carter:
You call it safe.

Michael Maslansky:
All right. Well, listeners, you’ll have to send in your answers to tells us-

Lee Carter:
Well, I think then what is the benefit? I think it goes back to that. So it’s going to be more personalized or tailored or high-end, or I don’t know, we could go through a framing exercise here of what are all the different ways in to describing what the benefit is to the person that don’t include an analogy to touch.

Will Howard:
I mean, I think it comes down to… this isn’t the word, but there’s an idea that’s lifelike or like real life. This is something that I think is going to be really interesting is with the amount of our lives that is virtual now, like it used to be you had banking, which was you go to the bank and you have the virtual banking, online banking, digital banking. And I feel like at this… And similarly you had hanging out and you had virtual hanging out, and they were very different things. And it feels like now that so much of our life is having to take place this way the difference between VR and… or virtual life and real life seems to be breaking down a bit. And so I wonder what the way you update the lexicon is to describe an online banking experience in a way that feels high touch. It’s life like, it’s I’m there in person.

Catherine Farr:
Well, one thing that comes to mind is just that, do you need to talk about it as online baking experience? Because even if everyone is in quarantine and everyone’s stuck at their house and you suggest a happy hour, it’s implicit that it’s the virtual happy hour. And I think that as this has become more and more normalized for people just living at home, being at home, not going out much, you no longer need to make the distinction of whether something is virtual or in person. It’s assumed that it will be virtual, but you can still have a very similar experience.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. I think the word virtual is an interesting one to talk about, because when this all started last year and everything was it’s a virtual happy hour, or a Zoom happy hour, or a Zoom birthday party. I had my daughter’s first birthday party was right at the beginning of all this and we had to have a virtual birthday party, but now you’re right. You just say, “It’s her birthday party and here’s the link,” instead of it being the way it is now. And I think you were the one, Catherine, who said exactly what you’re saying that virtual is just assumed now. And it made me realize maybe we need to go back and update our website because when this all happened, we said virtual methodologies for a virtual world, but now is that necessary? Do you need to say that?

Catherine Farr:
Yeah. I’ve caught myself as well. You put together something and say online focus group. Well, of course they’re online. I don’t think people would assume we’re doing it any other way right now.

Michael Maslansky:
All right. So we’ve got a couple of things happening here. We had the physical proximity language that tended to support that, has been flipped to the language of physical distance. We’ve got language of safety, which used to be a price of entry. Or really the baseline, something you wouldn’t even talk about to being the new standard, to kind of set people at ease, to give them comfort. We’ve got new words that are out there that are kind of entering the lexicon, and really shaping things. Because the world so much has, has kind of changed around us. And the online and virtual flip is probably the third one there, in terms of what the default is for how we communicate. And that’s where the world has changed but it’s not just the world that’s changed, right Lee? We’ve got other things that have changed.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. I mean, there’s no question about the language changing, but the way that we view the world, has totally changed. It’s changed our perspectives, it’s changed our priorities. And what matters most to us today, might be totally different than it was before the pandemic. And I think we talked about that in terms of some language. When you think it used to be about convenience, and now it’s about safety. What matters most to us now is a totally different thing. And so I think a lot of the executives that we’re talking about, marketing executives and communications executives, folks that we talk to, are wondering how do we know what we should be communicating about six months from now? If today we’re so different than we were six months before. And so the conversation is sort of tough to predict. And Michael, I’m curious, I know that you have done a study over a long period of time on perceptions, and how that might impact something like this.

Michael Maslansky:
We talk about the life cycle of language. How long does it last? How do you know whether it’s going to last? And what we see pretty consistently is that in good times, in bull markets it’s often compared to, language will have a long half-life. In moments of dramatic change, these inflection points, then everything can get upended. And in those moments of change, there can be a lot of shifting of priorities for people and the language that we use.  And so the study that we’ve done to really kind of prove this out over time has been just to ask people a simple question about what their priority is, in the financial context. Is it more important to have financial security or financial freedom? And what you see is that in bull markets from the end of a previous recession, until the beginning of the next, financial freedom is on the steady upswing. And in 2019 upwards of 70% of the population would say that they aspire to or find financial freedom most important. And then as soon as something bad hits that flips, and then 75% or so will say that they value financial security more.  And that’s their priorities, that’s not the language. But we know for effective communication, that we have to meet our audience where they are. Our language has to reflect what they believe, what they prioritize at a given moment in order to really resonate. And so you can see how companies shift from really aspirational language to really protection oriented language, when these inflection points happen.

Will Howard:
I think it’s really an interesting jolt to the system for the American, the Star Spangled American advertising lexicon. Which is so much about personal initiative, seizing the moment, Red Bull gives you wings, grab life by the horns, just do it. There’s so much language in advertising that’s about taking dramatic action and imposing your will on the world. And I think 2020 has been an interesting wake up call, that have people shocked a little bit by the fact that they’re not always entirely in control of the world. And there are forces bigger than them that can really come crashing in out of nowhere and upend your plans.  And I don’t know about you, but for me personally, and I think language like, just do it, or grab life by the horns, or an image of the Jeep driving off into the wilderness, kind of rings hollow right now. We’re kind of just hanging on. It’s much more about flexibility, adaptability, the ability to roll with the punches and get through this, endurance. That kind of language of tenacity, as opposed to initiative. That’s almost a shift from proactive to reactive. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Nike should change from just do it to, make it work, or get through it. But I kind of feel that that’s the direction that people are going.

Lee Carter:

I think you’re absolutely right. And when you see something that is off, if you see something now, or somebody’s talking about it being too aspirational, you’re like, are you in touch with the world that we live in? But we also know that people are planning, communicate, not just today, but six months from now. So six months from now or a year from now, do you think we’re still going to want to be talking about hunkering down and endurance, or is there some other insight here that’s lasting? Because Michael, I think when you talk about that study you’ve done over time, the shift doesn’t happen overnight. The shift to security does happen overnight, but then it lasts for some period of time. You’re going to want security now for the next two or three years, because you’re not going to be ready to go out there for a while. So how do you plan around that, or find a language that’s going to work for a long period of time? Because we can’t just react to today, we’ve got to be planning for tomorrow as well.

Michael Maslansky:
Yeah. I think you can almost imagine that when people are coming out of the bunker in those dystopian movies, they peek out at first, and then they go back down, and then they stick their head out and they look around. And then they take a short walk out of the bunker, and you build comfort over time. And I think that tends to be what happens with communication as well. And so today if people feel like they don’t have any freedom to do what they want to do, it may be that we can position things as small freedoms. Like, what is that treat that you can give yourself today, where you can go outside, and you can take off your mask, and enjoy the outdoors, and that is a simple freedom.  And then over time we may be able to gather in small groups and we can celebrate. You might see language or advertising about celebrating the small celebrations, as opposed to big celebrations. Going back and filling up the stadium, or doing a rave, or whatever it may be. And so steadily that will grow. And I think language will follow that. How can you be one step ahead of what people are thinking and kind of give them something that they can aspire to in their day-to-day life, but not so far beyond that they think it’s just not credible for them to be doing today.

Catherine Farr:
Yeah. And a language example that comes to mind is just the term “getaway.” So you hear different travel companies talking about a getaway, which pre-COVID would’ve meant picking up and flying to London or Paris. But now it means getting in your car and maybe driving to a different town.

Michael Maslansky:
A lot of what we’ve talked about is the language that companies can use now, and how they need to adapt to the changing world, the changing perspectives from their customers and their audience. During the course of 2020 companies tried to make the most of their situation. And they’ve put out the best message that they can in the moment. They’ve also kind of changed their operations to adapt to the pandemic, and they’ve made a lot of promises associated with that. No layoffs, no fee increases, no baggage charges, no change fees, no disconnects. As we get back to normal, there is the risk that they have kind of a whiplash effect.  All of a sudden the policies that they felt were urgently important in the moment, they want to reconsider, or they have to reconsider. And so they have to start preparing today for what those messages may be. And particularly if you’re taking away benefits that now all of the sudden the audience has come to expect. And so, Catherine, have we seen any situations that you can point to where, or companies either have to prepare for that, or they have done some of the work to prepare for it?

Catherine Farr:
Yeah. So the airline industry as a whole, they have a ton of work to do in just convincing people that flying is safe. Pre-COVID, I think it was about, pre-COVID flying was challenging on the customer’s part because you felt like you were being gouged by fees, that they’re always trying to take benefits away from you. And now with COVID you actually kind of see the reverse, with both the airline industry and other companies. You’ve seen more flexibility, they’re being more forgiving. And in some ways it’s actually kind of exciting to get these emails from companies where you feel like, finally, I deserve that discount, or I deserve that better customer service, or you feel like you’re finally getting something that’s owed to you, even though we are… Of course, it took a disaster, it took a pandemic to get airline baggage fees waived. But an example particular to the airlines that stands out is Delta. So I believe they are the only currently remaining airline that has still blocked the middle seat. So early on in the pandemic, most all of them had the middle seat blocked off, and Delta’s the only one that has kept that benefit. And I looked into their messaging and I feel like this is something that they could be touting in a much more vocal way. It is a clear differentiator, and it’s something that they’ve stuck with, whereas others have already pulled back. But I would imagine that Delta too knows that there will soon be a day where they can’t have that benefit. So it’s not the thing that they’re leaning into most. They have it just as one proof point, among many things that they’re doing for this New Care Standard, a term that they have created for what it is like to now fly on a Delta plane.

Will Howard:
Yeah, Delta’s done a couple of things that are interesting. One, I’ll just throw out that, I think one of my favorite linguistic flourishes I’ve seen. They have signs up that show all their filters on their planes are the same filters that are in an emergency room, an operating room. So that right there is a perfect example of finding a symbolic gesture. Who knows what that means. But that little symbol is powerful. The middle one is really interesting because you could see them leaning way into it. Middle seats are something that people hate about planes anyway, so it could be not only a safety perk, or a freedom perk, more leg room with no middle seats, come onboard Delta. But then to your point when that goes away, it sort of de-positions their own middle seat, and people might be sad to see them coming back. And I think you see a little bit of the push and pull in a bunch of different places, where you can lean into the accommodation you’re making right now. Because some of the accommodation are basically perfect, in terms of flexibility and forgiveness. You could get a lot of credit for them and be a real hero in the moment of COVID. I think electric utilities, energy companies are a really good example of somebody caught on the horns of this dilemma. Because they’re doing things like forgiving bills, they were not doing disconnections for a while on people who weren’t making payment. They were being extremely accommodating, and this is an industry who got a lot of flack for not being customer focused, and not being accommodating. So they can champion all those things. I guess as the wheel of time turns and they eventually have to start doing them again, if they’ve leaned into it too much, all of the sudden they’re hypocrites. And so you kind of have a fixed number of chips that you could allocate here. You can go all in on being the savior in COVID, and then ultimately betray it later. Or you can play it a little bit more conservative.

Catherine Farr:
I think there’s also a do’s and don’ts for how to deliver this bad news. So this pandemic, no matter our differences, it’s something that has affected everyone, just in different ways. So this is something that truly is a shared experience, we’re all going through it together. And more recently I have started to get emails from brands where they’ll say things like, we’re raising our prices. And a subject line like that really kind of takes you aback. It’s very forward. Okay, they’re raising them. But then as you read on in the email, I see in two different approaches, some who do it better than others. One is this acknowledgement that we are all in this together, we need to keep our employees, we need to keep our staff.  Thank you so much for your continued support. And then, as you get to the bottom line and whatever dollar increase, you’re nodding along and your understanding of it. As opposed to others that I’ve seen that are much more rational and just sharing well, prices and costs have gone up. So, we’re raising our costs as well. And one of those approaches leaves you feeling kind of mad. The other actually makes you feel much more empathetic. So I think our advice would be that, as you are communicating bad news, which invariably brands will have to do over the next few months, the advice would be really, just start from the standpoint of really acknowledging and validating the pain that other people are going through. Don’t focus on your personal pain, but the experience that others are going through. And then also, going really to all lengths to share what you have done to either delay this increase or delay this return to fees. And ultimately, to minimize the impact on the most people.

Michael Maslansky:
One of the lessons that we learn over and over again is that if you are a big company, a big organization, then your customers don’t really care about you as a company. If you’re a small company, if you’re a locally owned company, then you certainly can talk about the survival of your organization, or the need to do things to protect the organization.  If you’re big, though, you can’t. What you can do though, is you can talk about your employees. You can talk about your ability to deliver benefits to your customers. You can talk about other stakeholders. You just can’t talk about yourself and expect to get a whole lot of empathy, even if you’re a much-loved company. It just doesn’t generate a whole lot of sympathy from the public.

Lee Carter:
So on every episode, guys, we ask our guests a few questions. And Will, I’m going to start with you because you are the word guy. Now forever, Will, the word guy, Howard. What’s your either most or least favorite word?

Will Howard:
See, it depends on the context and the day. I usually give the answer to yikes. I like the word yikes a lot. I think it’s extremely flexible. Recently I’ve been telling people my favorite word is abjure. It just doesn’t get used enough.

Lee Carter:
Tell me more.

Will Howard:
Abjuration is the… What? What?

Lee Carter:
Why is it your favorite word?

Will Howard:
I don’t know. It just sounds cool. And it’s written very interestingly. You don’t see J in the middle of a word like that that often.

Lee Carter:
Unless you’re French.

Will Howard:
Unless you’re French.

Lee Carter:
Right.

Will Howard:
I would not recommend your client use the word abjuration around the virus. Unless they’re communicating with me.

Lee Carter:
So I was going to say, when you started to answer the question that you answered it with an, it depends, which is a phrase that I hate.

Will Howard:
Oh good. You’re welcome.

Lee Carter:
So I thought, that’s where you’re going to start. So, I’m glad we learned a new word. And yikes, I agree with you. I love that word. I also love gadzooks.

Will Howard:
Gadzooks is good. Yikes is just so powerful because it changes so much with the inflection.

Lee Carter:
It’s a good text word too.

Will Howard:
It is. It communicates a lot of emotion in the written word. Which, in today’s society, is even more powerful.

Lee Carter:
Thank you.

Michael Maslansky:

I have to go.

Lee Carter:
Catherine, what’s your favorite or least favorite word?

Catherine Farr:
I will be much more concise in my choice. My favorite word is schlep. I think it is an incredibly visual word. It’s a New York City word too. Schlepping up four flights of stairs, schlepping to Bed Bath & Beyond with four bags. Schlep, I think that it is a word that very concisely sums up moving around with difficulty and tons of bags in your arms and running errands and doing a million things. Schlep.

Lee Carter:
I love it.

Will Howard:
I resent the claim that that was much more concise than mine.

Catherine Farr:
I think it was.

Lee Carter:
Fair enough. All right. If you had to identify your superpower, what do you think your super power is, Catherine?

Catherine Farr:
I think I’m a very organized person, if you look at my apartment or any of my belongings, my desk. And I think I have a very organized mind.

Lee Carter:
You do.

Catherine Farr:
Everything has its own compartment up there too.

Lee Carter:
It’s amazing. My mom always said that men are like TV dinners and women are like stew. I always wished I was more compartmentalized.

Catherine Farr:
Mine’s like a bento box up there.

Lee Carter:
That’s amazing. Will, what’s your superpower?

Will Howard:
I make pretty good playlists.

Lee Carter:
You do.

Will Howard:
Yeah. I don’t know if that would get me in the Avengers, but it’s a decent superpower.

Lee Carter:
Fair enough. Okay. Last question. What’s one thing you wish everyone would take away from this conversation? Will, I’ll start with you.

Will Howard:
I think it would just be a year that has reminded us of the power of language and how important it is to be intentional with your words. There’s a lot of words that we don’t really think about where they came from or why they mean what they mean.

Will Howard:
Like we’re close, or I’ve got your back, or holding hands. And it’s just drawing attention to. And the origin of a word, why it means what it means. Where it gets its power and how and when to use it.

Lee Carter:
And Catherine, what about you? What’s one thing you wish everybody would take away?

Catherine Farr:
I would echo what Will shared. And I think that 2020 has brought language into focus in a way that it never was before. As I shared at the beginning, probably everyone could rattle off 10 new words that they learned in 2020. And that they’ll continue using or remember using years from now. So I think there are these hallmark 2020 words. And these events and everything that we’ve experienced together have just… It’s also shown that language is uniting. That everyone has this shared language of 2020 reflecting our shared experience.

Michael Maslansky:
That’s awesome. And thank you both so much for joining us on this episode of Hearsay. And thanks to everybody who’s listening as well. If you want more language insights and to be in the loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing, please follow us on LinkedIn at Maslansky and partners or Maslansky-partners, I should say. And join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. If you’ve got questions or feedback or ideas, words, we love words, phrases that you think are interesting in this moment, please reach out to us at [email protected]. That is all for now. Join us next time on Hearsay. Because it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. I’m Michael Maslansky.

Lee Carter:
And I’m Lee Carter.