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™.

Season One of HearSay ends with a bang: the smartest, savviest, + stupidest messages of 2021 so far. Michael and Lee are joined by HearSay veterans Keith and Katie to give their takes on the messages that have stood out: from Voltswagen, to Harry and Megan’s Oprah interview (and the royal response), to President Biden’s infrastructure plan and the true pronunciation of “cheugy.” They focus in not just on some of the biggest language moments of the year so far — but what we can all learn from them. 

Listen below or on your preferred streaming platform:

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

maslansky + partners newsletter

EPISODE 10 TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Maslansky:
All I can say, Lee, is that you’re the Bouba and I’m the Kiki

Lee Carter:
They said, what? Welcome to “Hearsay,” a podcast from a 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 Lee Carter, president and partner at Maslansky and Partners and author of a book called “Persuasion: Convincing Others When Facts Don’t Seem to Matter.”

Michael Maslansky:
And 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:
I can’t believe that we’re already at our 10th episode of “Hearsay,” and this is the final episode of our first season. It’s been a great time, and I’m looking forward to this discussion today.

Michael Maslansky:
I can’t wait for the wrap party. It’s going to be a blast.

Lee Carter:
And finally in person.

Michael Maslansky:
But since we are close to the midpoint of the year and coming to the end of our first season, we thought it’d be a great time to look at some of the actual, our picks for the smartest, savviest, and stupidest messages of 2021 so far. Not just as critics, but to see what we can learn from the examples in each case, because in every case, the impact of good messaging goes far beyond the messaging itself. We know from the work that we do that great business strategies fail without great messaging. That change doesn’t happen if we don’t have the right message, that movements don’t get built without the message built on a core insight. For us, getting the message right is not just a nice to have, it’s actually a must have.

Michael Maslansky:
And we think that language strategy is the difference between being interesting, something that we could talk about on a podcast for example, and effective, actually making things happen. That language strategy, what we do is what makes ideas stick. And so to talk about these things, to talk about what really has stood out for us in the first six months of the year, we have brought in our partner, Keith Yazmir and Katie Cronen, now a frequent flyer on “Hearsay.” Welcome, both.

Keith Yazmir:  Hey guys.

Katie Cronen:
Hello. I’m waiting for my five timers jacket. It’s in the mail?

Lee Carter:
Yeah, it’s on the way. So as we say in the intro, we do this podcast to talk about the smartest, savviest, and stupidest messaging in the market today, so let’s just dive right in. And we’ve been talking about some of the smartest, and I know Katie, one of the things we talk about is how you find messaging that really breaks through and makes people think differently. A lot of our clients were talking about, how do we stand apart in the sea of sameness? And so I know you had a favorite example this year, that not everybody thought was so good. Some might’ve even thought it was a joke, so why don’t you tell me about why you thought it was so great and what it was.

Katie Cronen:
Sure. I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about Volkswagen today. So back on March 29th, Volkswagen of America had this press release that quote unquote, “Leaked.” It was labeled as an unpublished press release, and it actually had a date on it that said, “To be released April 29th,” but it was quote unquote, “Accidentally posted March 29th.” And it was a press release about the company’s declaration and their investment in electric vehicles. And as part of that we’re going to be called Voltswagen with a T. And people are like, “Wait a second, is this real? What is happening?” Reporters called in. I think Volkswagen confirmed it at the time to Associated Press, maybe some others.  And later they confirmed that it was an elaborate April Fool’s joke, just meant to highlight the launch of their all electric SUV. Now you could just say that was a pun, right? It was a cringey pun, depending on your opinions of puns. I of course, happen to love them. But I like this example for Volkswagen, for a couple of reasons if I think about trying to stand out in a crowded space. So I think it potentially is a little controversial because there are some reporters out there when they found out that this was an April Fool’s joke, they were pretty snarky about it. “They lied to us. Where do you get off lying to the public?” Especially if you think about the trust issues that Volkswagen has. They were caught cheating on emission tests, and now they’re just going to play fast and loose with the truth again. And the SEC is involved because their stocks rose upon the announcement, and then promptly fell when they revealed it was a joke.  And so there’s this debate about whether or not they’re false statements are legal liabilities, but here’s why I think it was smart. I think if you think about their audience, and in this case, I’m going to call their audience the general mindshare of consumers when it comes to who are leaders in this crowded category of automakers who are all trying to show their commitment to electric driving. I don’t really think that you thought about Volkswagen much. You probably thought of Tesla. You probably thought of Toyota, maybe Nissan, but everybody is trying to broaden their leadership in electric vehicles, and they’re all talking about their fleets and their new releases. You even have Biden giving a shout out to F150.  So this is a really crowded environment, and rather than simply saying, “Let’s make a big deal about our first all electric SUV,” they made a commitment to it that was bigger than that by saying, even as a joke, “We’re going to be called Voltswagen.” I thought it was catchy. I thought it was disruptive. And so I think actually at the end of the day, people are going to give them less flack about whether or not they were playing fast and loose with the truth. And I think there are going to be more people, probably myself included, who will accidentally now call them Voltswagen, And it will just further their mission.

Lee Carter:
Well, I was on air that morning and we did a segment on it, and everybody was talking about it. We would never have done a segment about it, talked about electronic vehicles of Voltswagen, had that not happened, unless they brought cars to the studio, which occasionally people do. But it’s still not going to have that kind of an impact. And I know there was some backlash, but I can guarantee that conversation would not have happened had they not done this. And I can also say that every time I say Volkswagen now, I think about it. I now think Voltswagen, I think look at electric vehicles somehow, which is pretty clever, I guess. I don’t know. Keith, what do you think?

Keith Yazmir:
Yeah, no. I mean, we’re looking for stuff that we can all have a good, juicy fight about, but I think we’re pretty much in agreement that this was smart. I like, Katie, your use of the term disruptive. I mean, for better or worse today, if you have a chance of breaking through, you need to do something that pisses some people off and that garners some media attention, and the best way to do that is to go out and go push a little further than your reflexes tell you perhaps you should.

Lee Carter:
Come on, Michael. I know I can count on you to offer a counterpoint here.

Michael Maslansky:
Come on, of course I can give a counterpoint. I think in a lot of ways, the strategy was a really smart strategy, except it seems like it was incomplete because what have they done since April Fools? They got all of this breakthrough media coverage, and yet they didn’t have a campaign on the back of it where they kept the attention front and center on the car. And so it seems like it was either premature to do it because they weren’t ready to support it with the media that they should have in order to really advertise and sustain the perception or it was an example of comms and marketing being disconnected, or something where strategically, they made it so far and it’s so hard to do that, to change the conversation and make it about your brand, but then what? Where’s the rest of it? And so that’s where I would say that they missed a big opportunity.

Katie Cronen: Are you saying that they… I mean, I think part of the beauty of tapping into April Fool’s Day is that you can say, “Just kidding. We’re not actually changing our name.” But what would you have told them to do as a strategy in a campaign afterwards?

Michael Maslansky:
Well, I think they now obviously need to sell cars.

Lee Carter:
That’s part of the objective, you think?

Katie Cronen: Slide two, sell cars.

Michael Maslansky:
Now that you’ve got everybody’s attention, what do you do with it? How do you get people into the dealership? And presumably at some point, they’re going to advertise around it. Maybe they are, and we haven’t seen it, but I certainly haven’t seen it. And so it seems like the logical thing to do would be to tee it up, have that conversation and then have a really clear strategy for whether it’s local dealerships getting people in to try it out now that you’ve heard about it. Maybe making fun of themselves a little bit, that they had done this April Fool’s joke and kind of staying light. But the fact that it was here and now it’s gone, people will have forgotten it and moved on.

Lee Carter:
So let me ask you a question, do you think that there’s a chance… One of our favorite conversations is sometimes when legal gets in the way of a good message. Do you think that there’s a chance that maybe it was legal who said, “Uh oh, we’re making a claim here. We could get in trouble. We better stop it.”

Michael Maslansky:

So, I think it’s certainly an interesting question that legal obviously cleared the initial piece of work, and so the question is, was marketing not ready with the follow-up work? Did they have it, and they stopped it? Somebody will tell us at some point, either in response to this, or down the road, we’ll find out about it, but it just seems like they hit pause on a lot of momentum. And again, that’s a missed opportunity.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. I do think this is a really great example though of just changing the conversation really, really quickly and while it doesn’t mean that we all have to play an April Fool’s Day joke, I feel like this is a really good example of how do you do something that’s going to change the conversation? How do you create that moment of pause or make people rethink who you are by doing something unexpected.

Michael Maslansky:

It was very easy, the fact that they came up with this clever idea of changing a couple of letters in their name, and so nobody had to ask, “Well, what do you mean?”

Lee Carter:
Yeah.

Michael Maslansky:
And those two ideas together are really powerful.

Lee Carter:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I’ve got to say that if there’s any of our clients out there who are listening, or maybe potential clients, and they want to come up with a shameless pun that’s disruptive, they should call Katie Cronen. That’s my takeaway.

Katie Cronen:

I know some of my fellow Maslanskyers who would be very sad to find out that I would be the point person on puns, but yeah, call me. Let’s talk.

Michael Maslansky:
Alright, so you may all know that cars drive on roads and roads are infrastructure and that brings us to our next message.

Lee Carter:
I like what you did there.

Michael Maslansky:
How about that for a segue.

Lee Carter:
Transition award.

Katie Cronen:
Wow.

Lee Carter:
10th episode, and you are a pro.

Michael Maslansky:
So here’s the challenge, here’s the question. You’ve got a new administration and the new president wanting to launch a huge plan for the country to rebuild in the aftermath of the pandemic. And the question is, do you kind of… And come up with a plan that is your own come up with new names and new areas of focus? Or do you take an existing term that you already know has a lot of support in general with a whole host of new ideas? Take that empty vessel. In this case, the Biden administration chose the term infrastructure, but they didn’t just use it to refer to the things that we would consider typical infrastructure. They added all sorts of other aspects of infrastructure. There was physical infrastructure and human infrastructure and technological infrastructure. And it has not been without its critics and certainly with its supporters. Keith, break it down. What do you think of this approach?

Keith Yazmir:
Wow. Here, I think we’ll have a pretty good discussion because I certainly am a big fan of the use of infrastructure in this case. It ties it to something that everybody knows about, everyone’s been talking about for years and years there has been widespread bipartisan support for. And it was the path of least resistance, but also most familiar resistance, which doesn’t really make sense. But I mean, we talk to our clients a lot about how are they going to craft their story? How are they going to introduce new things to marketplaces that frankly, aren’t always open to buying new things. People love the idea of new. They don’t always love buying new. Going back to Katie’s conversation before about Voltswagen. We all talked a lot about back in the day when the first electric cars were coming out and the Chevy Volt of all names was probably spoken about by their CEO at the time, by Chevrolet’s CEO, maybe about 30% of the time that he was at a microphone. It, of course, represented about 2% of their potential sales ever. And when it came out, they switched their campaign from revolutionary, which is what they used in their ads, to more car than electric. They were like, “Hey guys, this is familiar. This is what you know.” Now, sorry, I’ve taken us off back to the Volt piece, but here there is a connection because what they’re doing is they’re anchoring their program in something that is familiar, that is popular. And they’re saying, “This is what it is. Now, let’s fight about what that word means.” And of course that’s what’s been going on since. So here’s the bucket, it’s a bucket everyone knows and supports. What we’re going to do is we’re going to place the argument about what goes in that as opposed to the argument about the bucket itself. And as you guys well know, this is what we do with our partners all the time. How do you characterize the information you’re trying to send in the most palatable way possible?

Michael Maslansky:
So Katie Cronen, think about home care in the category of infrastructure. We’ve got all kinds of things that if you asked people to describe it, they would never have said infrastructure before this.

Katie Cronen:
True.

Michael Maslansky:
Do you agree with Keith or you have a different perspective?

Katie Cronen:
I agree with Keith probably 80 to 90% of the way. I think that there was a missed opportunity where the administration should have gone out of their way to add a sentence afterward. And to say the bridges and roads to a stronger town, to stronger communities are not just made of cement. They’re made of things like childcare.  Actually, I think it’s pretty sneaky, but in a great way to tap into, “Yeah, no we’re calling this infrastructure.” I would have liked to have seen a consistent second sentence that acknowledged the fundamental disconnect that a lot of people are going to have with this.

Keith Yazmir:
And one, so artfully put, as you just did, the bridges and roads too, right? I mean, it’s certainly doable. I think we agree 100%. I agree with you Katie.

Katie Cronen:
Oh, okay. All right.

Michael Maslansky:
Lee, how about you?

Lee Carter:
I’d like to see a modifier rather than a sentence post, but I do think that I thought a lot about this. And initially I was kind of annoyed because I felt hoodwinked. I felt like, “Wait a second, nobody’s paying attention.” And he’s flying under the radar and he’s getting all this stuff done while nobody’s looking. And then I thought about it and I said, “Wait a second. That’s exactly what he’s doing,” right? And afterwards, he can talk about all he got done. Because I was having this conversation, I think Keith you were a part of it, where somebody is like, “Oh yeah, Biden’s like a modern day FDR.” And I was like, “What? He’s what?” And then I started thinking about it. He’s getting all of these really big things done and he’s trying to, but he’s doing it while we’re all sort of looking somewhere else because he’s doing it under normal terminology and ways that are kind of under the radar. So in some ways I think it’s a smart strategy, in other ways I feel like there’s an opportunity to get people excited about what it is. This is a modern day infrastructure plan. This is about getting us ready for today not yesterday or tomorrow. There’s opportunities here, when we’re talking about a digital transformation story, we’re talking about the ability to provide people the infrastructures they need to live their lives, not just to get from place to place. And so I think while in some ways it’s smart to tie into something that is wildly popular, you say ask Republicans, Democrats, independents, if they support infrastructure, they’re all going to say yes. I think there would have been as much support and more enthusiasm for it if he had contextualized it for us so that we would all say, “You know what? It’s about time we get with the program and have all of these things that we need to live better, more meaningful lives in this country.” So I would say it’s a C+, but at the end of the day, it’s his job just to get it done. Then the answer is, good job.

Keith Yazmir:
And how would you have contextualized it? I’m curious with that idea. I think it’s a really interesting one.

Lee Carter:
Whether it’s just giving it a modern day infrastructure or infrastructure to live your life, rather than just get place to place. Or there is some language embedded underneath that I thought was interesting about digital and life infrastructure, which I think I would want to play with and tinker with a little bit, maybe in one of our language labs. But I think it’s about giving a broader meaning to what infrastructure means so that it expands the definition for all of us. Rather than feels a little bit like he’s burying it underneath something that nobody’s looking at.

Michael Maslansky:
Yeah. So I think what’s interesting is, and I have not gone back to do this, I don’t know if you have. Is if we went back and we looked at the original introduction and the way surrogates came out and talked about it, whether or not they actually tried to do that. Because my sense is that actually there was a fair amount of contextualizing it and of putting it in the context of digital infrastructure and why all of those are critical to getting the economy back. They’re all the foundation of how we operate and that they didn’t make it through. And I think that, that’s probably a combination of how the opposition, media, they wanted to center in on the problems with it, as they should, as it would happen on either side of the aisle. And the core message was not strong enough to withstand that. And so it kind of opened it up to a certain amount of criticism, but I think it was there, it just got lost.

Lee Carter:
I know that they did use the word digital infrastructure, and I know that they did use the word human infrastructure. Because it reminded me of a project, Michael, that we worked on eons ago that talked about human sustainability and people thought, “Wait, is that about plugging people in?” And I remember thinking, “Human infrastructure, what is that? Is that my spine? Is that my skeletal system? Is that…” It didn’t really click with me. And so I think that’s part of the problem. There was not that instant, “I get it,” kind of language that you got with say Voltswagen. I think it just fell short. And as a result, everybody just talked about infrastructure. But I do think that the ultimate name of the bill, and somebody can correct me on this, was just about being infrastructure. And it’s in stark contrast to something like when you look at AOC’s Green New Deal where it was they’re talking about many of the same issues by the way, but making it seem much more revolutionary.

Michael Maslansky:
That was part of the strategy, right? I mean, the decision not to call it a new deal, that would have doomed it as it doomed the Green New Deal.

Lee Carter: Totally.

Michael Maslansky:

And so strategically, if we think about what he was trying to do, it seems like it was a win. And I think this idea of anchoring to familiarity, which we see a lot in the work that we do about the benefits of trying to take something that is existing and there are positive associations with and add to it is a powerful idea. I think the other thing is that what it did, and I mean, we’ll see how it ultimately plays out in terms of making it into legislation. But right now, every Republican reaction has to be about whether or not it is infrastructure. And that is a win for the Democrats because it’s very well known. And we’re often on the other side of this with our clients, when it comes to myth de-biasing, as they talk about it, every time you repeat the other side’s language. And so Republicans can complain about this not being infrastructure or being infrastructure, all they want, but every time that they say that the plan is about infrastructure, they are talking about the Biden administration proposing infrastructure. And ultimately I think that in the minds of people who aren’t paying as close attention, it is ultimately reinforcing the association between the Biden administration and infrastructure. And that is to the good for them.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. I mean, I always say, you can tell who’s winning the debate by who’s acting versus reacting. So clearly the Republicans are spending all their time reacting to the Democrat messages, which means it’s winning in some ways. But my question is, as you watch Independents in all of this, and I do a fair amount of that, one of the complaints they have is they feel like politicians don’t level with them. They don’t tell them the truth. They aren’t transparent, they hide things, and they don’t like pork spending. They don’t like all these things when you try to get a whole bunch through with bills. And so I just wonder, and I think part of the problem is that Republicans aren’t reacting in the right way. But I sort of wonder if there’s not an opportunity for Republicans to reframing all of this.

Katie Cronen:
Yeah. I was going to throw out a counterpoint that we, historically, are so anti-jargon and this is a very jargony, insider, DC word. It’s one that has a lot of popularity. So maybe that’s the exception, but it does feel like we should point out, this is jargon. And usually we’re on the side of saying, “You have to be way more plainspoken.”

Michael Maslansky: (32:56)
So, I think it’s interesting as to whether or not there are terms that start out as jargon and then become common usage. And so I would put infrastructure in the bucket formerly known as jargon. Now, people might say, it’s just roads and bridges, if you ask them open-ended, but that’s pretty close in my mind.
All right. So a little bit of a mix there, in terms of what we think about the strategy behind that

Lee Carter:
I also think sometimes it’s about where you focus your energy, right? Because the decision could have been, do they focus on the novel parts of it? Or they focused on the parts that we already knew. A lot of our clients want to focus on what’s new and exciting and innovative and different. And not on what they’ve always done or what we expect from them. And sometimes the answer is that people want to hear, you’re just going to get the basics done, right?

Katie Cronen:  That’s the sound of me nodding.

Lee Carter:
All right. So speaking and anchoring the familiar, let’s talk about two people that I feel like we all know really well, although probably don’t know at all. How about that?

Katie Cronen:
Well done for, two for two.

Keith Yazmir:
I know them.

Lee Carter:
And that’s Harry and Megan, my buddies. That’s why I can call them by their first names. There’s been so much conversation about the interview that they did and how they did. And then afterwards the Royal family’s reaction to it. Really, I think that the unsung hero from a messaging perspective is the Royal family. So Katie, what is the biggest lesson for you out of all of this?

Katie Cronen:
I think that the way that she used examples of what the past couple of years have been like for her and her family was particularly effective and powerful as a means to show, “Hey, you might think that I was trying to have it both ways, but what I was looking for was really pretty basic. Or I was looking for a certain amount of fairness.” And so, when I think about the details of the examples that she shared, when I think about how she said things like, “I was told I shouldn’t meet my friend for lunch because I had been out twice in four weeks and I was overexposed.” That’s a kind of ridiculous example. So I can immediately feel for her being trapped in this palace. And it’s not just because I started watching The Crown. But you think about how she would also talk about how she had to turn in her passport and her keys and her license. So she couldn’t just call an Uber to get out for a day from the palace. Of course, when she got into these bombshell revelations about how there were… She went out of her way to say there were multiple questions and concerns and conversations about how dark her baby’s skin would be. Obviously that was such a bombshell moment, but the idea that she was willing to be that specific I think really helped her. Because otherwise you’re having a conversation where you’re just talking broadly about the firm and the institution and how much control there is, and you think, okay, yeah, I get that it’s not always a day at the picnic, but I don’t feel bad for you. But with these stories, she made it real and she made it very memorable.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. I think in particular, the story about the color that baby’s skin is the one that really, to me, legitimized everything. Because I went in, like you, very, very skeptical. I feel like they had a pretty high bar to get over because you say that you’re leaving because you want to live a more private, philanthropic life. And then the first thing you do publicly is go on Oprah and have a tell-all interview. So to me, it was a big walking contradiction alert, which means it’s really hard then to overcome. But that, I think, example in particular stuck with me, and I think it’s one of the only things, frankly, that really, really sticks with me now from the interview. I shouldn’t say one of the only because there’s something else that I want to talk about now, which is how she and Harry, I think, really carefully tried to separate and create a distinction between the Queen and the firm/institution in a way that protected her, but really put a shadow over everything else. And I don’t think that’s easy to do because ostensibly the Queen is the CEO of the firm/institution. So any other time, wouldn’t she be held responsible for the behaviors that fall underneath it?

Michael Maslansky:
So it was obviously a very intentional decision to separate from the firm or from the institution, and I think an effective one. I think it kind of tied into something else that I thought that they did particularly well, which was even as they were doing this prime time, kind of tell-all interview, they seemed to be kind of fairly reticent to tell all. They didn’t seem to relish the moment. As when Harry said, there was one of the questions that he refused to answer. And I think it felt authentic to me, even though I agree the bar was pretty high in terms of overcoming skepticism. I think all of it was meant in many ways to respond to the position that they had been put in by the media or by the firm itself. And I thought that they did a really masterful job of that, actually.

Lee Carter:
I’m curious, thinking about it from the other side of the pond, and you’re in the palace and you hear this interview. You know it’s coming, right? They postponed it because Prince Phillip was in the hospital. They had some to prep for it. Imagine being in that crisis communications room, how do you think they did? Keith?

Keith Yazmir:
So what’s so amazing about this is we work with clients all the time who are in somewhat similar situations, but these guys had it 10 times worse. You had Oprah with this interview that got watched by everybody in the universe, including Michael Maslansky like 10 times. That doesn’t happen very often. You have, as Katie so eloquently put it, you have these personal stories that make it real. Lee, you often talk about almost visual language. You can picture it; you can feel what’s going on here. And then you’re sitting there, by the way, with The Crown airing around the world giving you an even worse master narrative enveloping your response, and trying to figure out, well, how do we respond? Do we respond? What are we going to say? Things are not looking good here for the Royal family. And before I tell you why I was so impressed with how they responded, a disclaimer. Racism, terrible. A lot of the things that we heard about in this interview made us all squirm. And there was just a lot of clearly troubled interactions going on underneath this. Taking it to the communications perspective and how they responded from a very tactical and really a strategic perspective, there’s something really impressive. And let me tell you how they responded and listen to this. “The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan. The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Harry and Meghan and Archie will always be much loved family members.” Mostly we would look at a reaction like that from almost anybody and say, What are they doing? Passive language, passing the buck, this isn’t about us. This is about these other folks out there. Yes, it’s concerning. All of this language that is very distancing from the actual subject at hand, right? So it would be very hard to see us working with any of our partners and saying, “This is the language and the framing you want to go with.” However, it gets back to a fundamental truth of the work we do and all the communicators listening do as well, which is what’s the objective? What’s the context? What are you actually addressing here? Because while all of us are dealing with the minute to minute media cycles that are going on out there, the Royal family thinks in centuries. They think in the long term. It’s about history. It’s about keeping going and avoiding disruption. Can they do that? Of course not. But the way they’re communicating is allowing their narrative to continue forward in the most consistent way possible.

Lee Carter:
Yeah. When I saw it, I at first felt it wasn’t strong enough, and then I realized it was sort of perfect because it acknowledged the concern, particularly the issue of race, which I think is the one that was the most damning, frankly, and made it a family affair. It took it from this is the future of the monarchy to this is the Royal family with systemic racism to this is our future of the UK, to this is a private affair. It was a very interesting pivot from acknowledging concern to making it just about something that they needed to deal with internally.

Michael Maslansky:
The objective, very often in a crisis response situation, getting to neutral is a win, and getting out of the news cycle and sucking the oxygen out of the conversation is the ultimate victory. And so I think this was very successful in doing that, just looking at kind of how things have played out in the aftermath of it. It really didn’t kind of add fuel to the fire. I think often when organizations come up with anodyne, overly lawyered statements that seem to say nothing, it actually adds fuel to the fire because it sounds like a denial. None of this really sounds like a denial. While some of the recollections may vary kind of suggests that there’s another side to the story. It is not a rejection. It doesn’t say that they were lying. It doesn’t say that they were making things up. It’s saying that different people may have different perspectives. And so it actually sounds like there is almost a genuine concern that comes particularly from the last line, I think, of saying that they will always be very much loved family members and then they followed it up with there was outreach happening from family members, and that was obviously intentionally made public so that it sounded like there were things going on behind the scenes that paid off dealing with it privately.

Keith Yazmir:
The passivity, the passiveness of the language is something I think we all jumped on when it first came out. It was not stepping up and claiming appropriate responsibility, which is a very different thing than saying, “Yes, we did that.” But saying, “Yes, we’re part of this conversation.” But one of the things, not to get too corporate here, but it’s exceedingly on brand. And what we see happen so often in the broader world is you have companies, for example, consumer companies that are dedicated passionately to the wellbeing and the happiness of their customers. And that’s the brand they’ve built. When they do paid media and advertising, they’re talking about people and families and joy and togetherness and all sorts of different things. And the second something goes wrong, they flip that approach to defense, legalese, et cetera, which is wildly, of course, then off-brand. And that’s part of why it sounds so wrong to our ears and not credible.  Here, you could see, change a couple of words, and they could just be giving their annual holiday greetings to the British people.

Katie Cronen:
What stood out to me is the statement is very short. It’s like 60 words, somewhere around there. The word family is used three times which is a lot for a 60-word statement and yet it doesn’t necessarily feel rammed in there, to me. But to draw a contrast from what I think a lot of companies should do in a crisis situation, because they’re tapping into this is a family thing, this is a family thing, this is a family thing, I think we’re saying they get away with saying that these issues are taken seriously and will be addressed by the family privately. Whereas we would say if you don’t have the benefit of a family narrative to fall back on, you’d have to be more specific about what you’re doing to address this. So points for them that they actually get it in there and say, “We will be addressing this,” and I actually think the future tense there is really credible and important. But if you’re a corporation, you’re going to have to list out a couple of the things that you plan to do to address this. And what we found, too, is that there are a lot of things that you can point to as credible actions. Listening and understanding can be an action. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean that everything is going to change tomorrow, but you’d have to be more specific about the steps that you’re taking.

Lee Carter:
It’s interesting though, as you’re talking about this and we talked earlier about how Meghan and Harry tried to talk about this as an issue with the firm or the institution, not the family, right? They went out, carved a very careful distinction. “It’s not grandma, it’s the firm, it’s the institution.” And what they did in this is they reframed it, “It’s not the institution, it’s the family.” They took it right back to the family.

Keith Yazmir:
That’s great.

Lee Carter:  

I never even thought about this as an exercise in reframing, but that’s what they did.

Michael Maslansky:
So as we come to the end of our episode, instead of talking about or asking about our favorite or least favorite words, we’re going to do something a little different here for the final show of the season. We’re going to ask what are some other examples, quick examples of what language that you liked or didn’t like from the first half of the year? So anybody want to start us off on this lightning round?

Katie Cronen:
Sure. I’ll start.

Michael Maslansky:
Go for it.

Katie Cronen:
I’ve recently come across the word cheugy which-

Lee Carter:
Is that how you say it?

Katie Cronen:
Yeah, it’s

Michael Maslansky:
I think it’s cheugy, isn’t it?

Keith Yazmir:
It’s cheugy.

Katie Cronen:
It’s cheugy.

Keith Yazmir:
It’s cheugy.

Lee Carter:
cheugy, it’s cheugy.

Lee Carter:
It’s like higgie I didn’t know how to say that either.

Katie Cronen: I’ve watched videos. I’ve watched videos.

Keith Yazmir:
It’s cheugy.

Katie Cronen:
I’m pretty sure it’s cheugy. Okay, well other than its pronunciation issues, I hate that word but I’m going to say it’s language I like because it’s visceral. So I feel like if you need to create a label for something that somebody doesn’t want to be, cheugy’s a good one.

Keith Yazmir:
And what does it mean, Katie?

Katie Cronen:
It’s like millennial in a basic way. It’s like a new version of basic, and the best example-

Michael Maslansky:
Is it like bougie?

Katie Cronen:
I think so, but I’m not of this generation that made up this word so I feel like I’m learning a little bit here. But I’ve seen examples that include the live, laugh, love signs and I do think those are terrible, so I’m on board.

Keith Yazmir:
There you go. I want to talk about the word jab which we’ve all heard a lot recently. And it is, of course, used in the place of vaccine or shot. I like it a lot, not just because I have two daughters under the age of six, for whom the word shot is about the nastiest, dirtiest word you could ever think of and they go shrieking off into the corner, but because I think it gives a much softer impression for people more widely, right? Vaccine, shot. I don’t like vaccines or shots. Jab feels a little softer. It’s a little easier. It sounds a little British harking back to our discussion about the Royal Family, but it just lessens the sharpness, no pun intended actually, of that term. I think it’s a good one.

Katie Cronen:
Have you all heard of the Bouba Kiki effect?

Lee Carter:
No, but I love the sound of it.

Katie Cronen:
Okay, this is a linguistics thing. This is a linguistics study. It applies not to every language but a lot of them, and especially English. Linguistic researchers had illustrations of two items. One was round, kind of looks like an amoeba, little curvaceous. And the other one was pointy, kind of looks like the pow call-out sign if you’re reading comics. And they would ask everyone a lot, a lot, a lot of people, “Which one is the Bouba and which one is the Kiki?” And extraordinarily, consistently Kiki became the sharp pointy object and the Bouba, round blob. And actually jab versus shot is a perfect linguistic example of this.

Keith Yazmir:
It’s true. And I like your scientific description of they asked a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of people. I immediately, once you started describing it, I did remember this and what was fascinating as well is they asked a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of people in a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of different countries and cultures and socioeconomic groups so they were really looking to see whether this was attached to one or several languages. And what they found was pretty consistently, it wasn’t. So love it, jab and Bouba.

Michael Maslansky:
All I can say, Lee, is that you’re the Bouba and I’m the Kiki.

Lee Carter:
It’s totally true. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be called a Bouba.

Michael Maslansky:
We always have that conversation about round edges and-

Lee Carter:
Square edges.

Michael Maslansky:
… sharp corners and square edges. And so with that, I will say thank you so much to Keith and Katie for joining us on this final episode of the season of HearSay, and thanks to everybody who’s listening as well. We are starting to plan for our second season and we’d love to know what you want us to cover. I hope to be bringing in more and different guests for next season, and so please be in touch with us at [email protected].

Lee Carter:
And 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-Partners. We also invite you to join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. And like Michael said, if you’ve got questions or feedback or ideas that you are interested in hearing in this moment, please reach out to us at [email protected]. That’s all for season one of HearSay. Please take a minute if you feel so inclined to rate or review us wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll see you next season because it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.