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 client — 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™.

You know your company or product is different. But does it sound different? Sometimes all that differentiates you from the competition is your story. The right language can change behavior, perception, and drive sales. How that story is framed matters more than you think. Using examples like “zero proof” non-alcoholic beverages, a “no hoops” rewards credit card, and an insurance company that “looks for ways to say yes,” President Lee Carter, CEO Michael Maslansky, and Vice President Will Howard highlight the tools you need you stand out from the crowd.

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Lee Carter’s book, Persuasion

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

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EPISODE 2 TRANSCRIPT:

Lee Carter:

We spend so much time in brand strategy, trying to make sure that you have that shelf space, but how do you find that linguistic space? How do you find that quick distinction that language is going to create that mental shortcut for you, it’s gonna change the game, drive sales, make you win in the marketplace, try the results that you’re really looking for? That’s what this is really all about. They said what?

Welcome to HearSay, a podcast for the language strategist at maslansky + partners, where we give our take on the strategy behind the smartest, fabulous, and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is, “It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” And that’s why we call this HearSay.

Michael Maslansky:

I’m Michael Maslansky, CEO of maslansky + partners and author of The Language of Trust. I am excited for today’s episode, where we’re going to talk about categories and distinction and how we use language for really powerful outcomes.

Lee Carter:

And I’m Lee Carter, president of maslansky + partners and author of a book called Persuasion.

Welcome back to another episode of HearSay. You joined us in a last episode where we talked about the broader applications of what language strategy is, what it means and why its essential. We really wanna talk about one specific application, which is how do you create distinction, um, and differentiation? How do you stand out in a crowded space?

One of the things that I hear from our clients all the time is, “ We know we’re different, but how is it that we sound different?” And so we brought in one of our vice presidents of language strategy, Will Howard. No one captures the power of individual words and differentiation better than Will. So I’m really excited to have you here today, Will.

Will Howard:

Thank you. I really appreciate how you gave me such a unique and differentiated value proposition in my introduction there.

Lee Carter:

(laughs) We’re gonna dig right in and we’re gonna be talking about how sometimes all that differentiates you from the competition is language. As much as we wanna say that things are truly different, if you think about you mutual funds or credit cards, there’s very little that distinguishes them. How you describe them can really change how you view them. The right language can change behavior, can change perceptions, and it can drive sales. So what does that look like in practice? How can you activate language to really differentiate? Where do start?

Will Howard:

First of all, we’re talking about differentiation and distinction. We use those terms interchangeably and they actually are very different. When we talk about differentiation, uh, we’re often trying to find something that itself is really different. We’re trying to find that elusive thing and then when in fact distinction is really what you want. Tide is not really any different as a product except everybody knew that the orange box with the round circle logo was Tide. It create a distinction and therefore it stood out in the marketplace and you would look for that. It creates a distinct proposition in the marketplace that others have difficulty owning the association with, even if they do the same thing. And that’s what allows you to stand out.

Michael Maslansky:

This question that we hear from clients all the time, how do we create a differentiated proposition in the market? Clients know that they need differentiation, but it’s much easier to say that you need it than it is to find out what it is that can differentiate you because of what you said. That products out there, that, uh, while there might be differences from the consumer’s perspective, it’s hard to find something tangible, something that is different enough that it can stand on its own. We end up needing to go deep to find something that’s not immediately obvious. That’s where we turn to people like Will and we say, “All right, Will, help us figure this out. What do we do?”

Lee Carter:

(laughs)

Will Howard:

For me, it, it all starts with a little bit of a zen-like mindset shift for the client. There’s a quote I love, which basically amounts to, uh, we are all identical in our deeply held belief that we are different or special (laughs). When we sit down with a client, they’re often approaching a differentiation challenge from the perspective that, man, if people only knew how different we truly are. We’re a disruptor coming to this market space, um, if only people knew how different and better we are than their negative perceptions of the category that they have currently, or we’re on the opposite end of the spectrum, we’re, we’re the best in this industry and yet we’re being disrupted or having market sh- share stolen by someone whose products aren’t materially different or better than ours. Why do people like them so much and not like us? And this place of frustration starts with the mantra of, “If only people knew.” And the approach differentiation challenge almost like a scavenger hunt where they’re searching for that secret fact or that secret thing that’s truly different about them.

I often find it helpful to take a step back and sort of accept that, you know, you’re not that different from a business perspective, especially to an external person who’s looking in from the outside, and you need to embrace the fact that this is fundamentally a perception challenge. It’s about who can sound different much more than it is about who’s… is different and that opens up a world of possibilities for how you position yourself.

Michael Maslansky:

There are two things that strike me that I think are really important in that. First is that we often find that our marketing and comms clients, they’re not the ones doing the product development. By the time, you know, we’re having these conversations. Even if it’s early in the lifecycle of, of getting ready to launch the product, there are certain things that are out of their control from a communication perspective. Whether or not its differentiated from a feature perspective or the way that the product is built, uh, it’s usually not up to the communicators.

And the other thing is that you say, it often comes down to the language that we use to describe it. That is usually the most important thing. It is about highlighting what really matters to a consumer while the rest of the marketplace may be focusing on something that they thought was important, but wasn’t really all that important.

Lee Carter:

For us, it becomes really intuitive to take a step back. But for our clients, and we have conversations them in the very beginning, we’ll say like, “What what makes you so different?” And they’ll say, “It’s our people. Our people are so different than the people that work at another financial services institution.” Or if we’re talking about how something is done, they’ll say, “It’s our process that’s so different.” So often our clients are going in with this hypothesis of what makes them different, and we have to help them see things differently. So Will, when you say you take a step back, how do you help do that?

Will Howard:

Uh, there’s a couple ways. Recently, we did a project for a client who is working to increase their kind of recruiting efforts and we ask, “Why should you come work here?” And the, the first answer was of course, “Oh, the people. It’s the people.” We pulled up websites for their kind of immediate competitors and found it hilarious to see literally almost verbatim, it’s like a picture of everyone with pizza boxes, holding arms around the team of admins, it’s like, “One word, the people.”

One of our roles as an outside consultant and as a team of researchers is that we help them take outside-in approach instead of an inside-out approach. If you ask someone to think about what makes them different, they very often start with the things that feel different to them in their day to day or, or that they know to be different about the company because it’s how they experience the company, the people, the culture, the process. Um, they don’t necessarily think about how that translates to a materially different experience, uh, or shows up f- from an external perspective.

Michael Maslansky:

We’re fortunate to work with really smart people, yet there’s often this moment when you get into this, this question about what makes you stand out where, uh, where people suspend their disbelief because they operate inside the organization, they get to experience the people or the process. And part of what we’re often trying to do is to get them t- to look at their own business as an outsider might look at it, as somebody who hasn’t had the opportunity to experience the service or the people or the process, uh, might experience it and start to think about things that are on their face interesting and different from what they might get with somebody else.

Lee Carter:

Will, if you think about some of your favorite examples out there of how-

Lee Carter:

If you think about some of your favorite examples out there of how a company or a product really distinguished itself, can you tell me about that shift?

Will Howard:

Yeah. I mean, the most recent example that comes to mind was walking down the aisle at Whole Foods and I came across some non-alcoholic spirits, which is obviously a category that’s really booming right now. But, what I thought was extremely clever about this particular brand was that the label, in giant letters, said, “Zero proof.” We’re not a non-alcoholic spirit. We’re A spirit, we just happen to be zero proof.

The first example of why the way you can use language to compare yourself to your competitors si by using language to determine which competitors you’re being compared to. The language you use to articulate what category you’re in and how you first introduce yourself shapes the competitive set that you’re up against.

Lee Carter:

I love the example of zero proof because what you’ve done, if you’re gonna be, like, the best non-alcoholic beverage, right, that means you’re comparing yourself to other non-alcoholic beverages, which are usually subpar an experience. But if you’re a zero proof alcoholic beverage, it’s almost putting in that category of, you’re gonna get the same great taste without the intoxication. It sounds like that would be a really easy things to do. Once you see it, it’s like, “Oh, well that’s so obvious. I would’ve done that, too.” Except that’s really hard. How do you go about doing that rather than just saying, “Here’s my competitive set.” How do you start to broaden it so you can see things different?

Michael Maslansky:

I’ll jump in. As we think about how the, how the human brain works, we’re often trying to categorize things. We’re trying to put things in these buckets as quickly and as intuitively as we possible can. An when we categorize things, it helps us make sense of the world. And so it’s important, if you’re a company, to think about what category are people putting you in. Where are they starting from, are they lumping you in with all other mutual fund companies? All other beverages?

You know, the interesting things about the zero proof example is how many different levels of categorization you’ve actually got before you get to a zero proof beverage sub-category where you’ve got, you’ve got all beverages, which is one category. You’ve got, um, spirits, which might be a broader category, kind of assumes alcohol. But the original non-alcoholic beverages were almost like a, uh, meant to position themselves separately from the alcoholic spirits. And then zero proof, at least as a brand, was trying to distinguish itself by trying to imply that it was a little bit like the non-alcoholic spirits, but also a little bit like the alcoholic spirits, in that the only difference was the level of proof.

You’ve got all these different levels of categorization and, and the first step for a marketer, or a communicator is to say, “What category am I in? Is that the category I wanna be in? Can I put myself in a different category so that I stand out, uh, and distinguish myself from the competition?

Will Howard:

I often tell my teams to start by looking at the nouns. That’s often the way that you complete the sentence. We are a blank. What is the noun that you’re putting in there? Could it be a different noun? What, what would be the advantages of that noun versus another noun? And then, that’s kind of your, your category. For example, we are a beer. Is that what we wanna be?

And then you could look next to the noun for the modifier. That’s often where you have the opportunity to start to think about whether you could be a sub-category, like a light beer. We’re not just a beer that’s low in calories, we’re actually a light beer and we’ve created something else. Starting with the nouns and then looking at the immediate modifiers can be a really practical way to start to think about that question.

Michael Maslansky:

The answers are really all around us. Until we start paying attention to it, you don’t realize just how much of marketing is about category definition. The light beers were a sub-category created off of beers. The non-alcoholic beverages, you know, came from the broader beverage category. The minivans or SUVs were categories of cars. You know, everywhere you look, whether it’s in technology, pharmaceuticals, finance, you see that we create whole new industries basically by re-categorizing or sub-categorizing, uh, an existing category.

Lee Carter:

It’s often a really challenging exercise to try to find a thing that makes you different. Differentiation, I think can be really hard because, yes, it’s all around us, but sometimes the question is, where do you even begin? Sometimes it’s a fun exercise to go in and figure out how do you de-position by positioning yourselves. An example that we’re all familiar with is on the COVID vaccine.

Moderna and Pfizer came out with their mRNA vaccines, they both had two doses, and there was a fight over efficacy. Then comes Johnson & Johnson, third to market. Now, they could’ve just gone into the same market and said, “We’re the third COVID vaccine, and you’re gonna measure us against what they’re measuring each other against, which is efficacy.” But that’s not what they did. What they did is they came in and said, “we’re the first single shot COVID vaccine.” Which puts it in a different category. So, if your barrier to getting vaccinated was about the downtime of having two shots, or having to miss work twice, or maybe the two times that you’re gonna go through the side effects, they’ve eliminated it by creating a whole new category.

We see these kinds of de-positioning positionings all the time. That use of language doesn’t bash the competition, but it sets you apart. You’ve now addressed one of the biggest problems in the category that you’re in.

Will Howard:

What you just talked about is so important, which gets to the heart of why categorization is so important. Categorization is a way for the brain to take shortcuts to get to a bunch of associations and assumptions. Whatever category I place myself in, COVID vaccine, insurance company, credit card, you’re gonna have a bunch of immediate associations with that category, for positive or negative. And so much of choosing your category and shaping your category and standing out is understanding what those obstacles are. But we also see it with our clients when there’s even less material difference between the products, you can do it.

For example, we work with an insurance company who was looking for a way to talk about the level of service they provide. We uncovered in research that people had this assumption about insurance companies, that they were basically trying to refuse claims. There’s a vested disinterest that the insurance has in giving me my claim. And so the positioning we came out with was what if we flip that on its head and we said, “We’re the company that looks for ways to say yes. We’re trying to find ways to say yes.” And in so positioning ourselves, we are playing off of existing baggage to work in our favor while casting into question the competitive set.

Um, and I know we’ve done similar things on credit cards as well, if you wanna talk about-

Lee Carter:

Yeah. Years ago, we were working on a credit card. We tried to think of every different way we could position this credit card. A cash rewards card, you got the same rewards every time, no matter how you spent it. It was a 1, 2, 3 rewards card, meaning you got 1% on one category, 2% on another, 3%. So we tried to do the 1, 2, 3 card. We tried to do the simple rewards card. We tried to make it the better rewards card. Every single time we were met with resistance. Because people are sitting there thinking, “Why do I need another cash rewards card? I’ve got one.” We were at a loss at this point.

And then, we started thinking about, you know, “What if we looked at the footnotes, the small print in the competitor’s cards and see how people reacted to that.” We’re in a session with customers and we started listen to them talking about the small print. And they started, you know, talking about the rotating categories, and you have to remember to sign up every quarter. And what we heard from the customers was, “Oh my gosh. I’m so tired of the hoops I have to jump through. It’s always too good to be true.” So what we found in listening to what people were saying were the problem with the category was, this was a no hoops credit card. What we were doing is positioning it on the problem that everybody had with cash rewards card and it ended up being a huge blockbuster success card for our client. They ended up having 64% increase in sales in just the first mailing after that.

Lee Carter:

… having 64% increase in sales in just the first mailing after that.

Michael Maslansky:

There is something really important in that example about, you, you know, when you’re looking to drive a differentiated proposition or be perceived as different in the markets, many of the other credit card companies, it was a features arms race. It was who had the best one, two, three benefits, who had the 3X, 5X benefits and rewards. And in the futures arms race, the challenge is that you spend all of your time trying to one up the competition and none of your time effectively establishing a distinct brand in the minds of consumers. Right? Because you change your rewards, they change their rewards and it’s a battle back and forth, but there’s no immediate association between your brand and the best rewards.

And what was so powerful about the no hoops rewards cards is that you change the conversation. Instead of making it about who had the richest rewards, you made it about something else, and to the extent that that created a subcategory of rewards cards that were the, almost regardless of what rewards there were, they’re the easiest ones to capture. You could become the brand, or Bank of America in this case, could become the brand most closely associated with that credit card. And that’s really key, because the brand that is most quickly and easily associated with the category is going to lead in that category. And it’s very difficult to remove them from that. So it’s about establishing a category, creating a strong association with that category so that every time somebody says, ” I want the card with no hoops,” I automatically go to Bank of America.

Will Howard:

I would also say that once one of those associations has been established, it can be quite difficult to change. And that goes for negative associations as well. A lot of times, we’re working with clients who are a little bit frustrated because there’s a perception of their brand that they feel is holding them back and they want to try to change that. Often what we end up doing is telling them that fully changing that is very difficult, it takes a lot of leverage and a lot of time and effort to swing it around. Is there a way that you can lean in to it or flip it on its head in a clever way where it can actually be a strength for you?

For example, if you’re a healthcare provider that’s known for having great primary care but not known for really having great cancer care, instead of saying, “We’re not just great at primary care, we’re not just the primary care docs, we’re actually a really good cancer facility,” instead say, “Because we are so good at primary care, we’re really good at identifying cancer early and carrying with you through the whole journey.” You’re leaning into the limiting perspective and finding a way to turn it into a strength.

One of my favorite campaigns of that last two years, an oat milk brand, Oatly, they had a giant sign, which said, “Milk, except for humans.” And I thought it was brilliant, because it takes the, the limiting perception of oat milk, which is that this isn’t real milk, and it instead flips on its head-

Lee Carter:

(laughs)

Will Howard:

… and says, “Yeah, and that’s a good thing, because real milk came from a cow’s udder.” (laughs)

Lee Carter:

(laughs) So you can differentiate on what things aren’t. The other thing is finding that thing that no one else is thinking of. One of the things that we’ve talked about internally is, through COVID, how things that everybody took for granted, we suddenly are now promoting. The airlines are suddenly talking about their filtration system, which before we all took, you know, took for granted. But now the airline who positions themselves on having the cleanest air, the best filtration system can really position themselves as one of the safest airlines to fly.

I can remember working for an auto manufacturer and, you know, you’re taking a tour of the first time of a manufacturing plant, and everything that we saw was amazing. And when we asked questions about, like, you know, “Why do they wear sweatbands over their watches?” And then somebody says, “Well, that’s to make sure that you don’t scratch the paint.” And they’re like, we’re like, “That’s fascinating.” They’re like, “Everybody does that.” They’re like, “Everybody does that.” And we’re like, “No, but nobody’s talking about it.” And as communicators, how do you find those things that no one else is seeing to really create a new category or something that people aren’t thinking about?

Will Howard:

It goes back to some of what we talked about at the beginning where, first of all, you have to embrace cynicism about your claims. And then second, you have to start from that blank slate and think, “If I didn’t know anything about this industry, what are the, the little things that might stand out to me?” Now, a lot of that comes down to the power of kind of symbolic actions, how effectively you can kind of structure and present information in a, in a way that stands out.

For some reason, one of the kind of ultimate differentiation exercises that stuck out to me over the years is that, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance,” from Geico, because if you really unpack the claim, it’s an extremely weak claim. You could maybe save as much as 15% in maybe 15 minutes. It’s a very weak claim. It’s probably true of many other insurers as well, but they’ve structured it in a very simple and memorable way. And the format of that information makes it feel different.

Michael Maslansky:

In many ways, the auto insurers are probably the most talented industry at creating these kind of clear differentiated positioning in the marketplace. You know, if we were to ask you the taglines of 20 different companies in different industries, uh, you’d probably be most likely to get the taglines for, you know, “You’re in good hands with Allstate,” or, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” or, “15 minutes will save you 15% or more on car insurance,” um, because part of what they’ve done is they, is they’ve just picked a one thing and really put all of their weight on that idea. But, you know, as an old NBC campaign use to say, “If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you.”

And, and it’s true here. Right? If you’re the first ones to do it and you own it, then you can often create distinction out of it. Brand fortunes have been made on the fact that other people haven’t done it and you do it first. And that is, I think, really key to being distinct in the marketplace.

Will Howard:

And there’s certainly some principles at play that can help you anticipate what is going to stand out or not stand out. Like, if I put in front of you a description of your end-to-end process or your business, you could go through with a marker and circle the spots that might stand out. It comes down to understanding what are the things that people are gonna latch onto, small symbolic actions really stand out. Parallelism stands out, like the 15% in 15 minutes. It sticks in people’s minds. And some of this is marketing 101, and some it is deeper behavioral science to understand principles of the things that are gonna stick.

Lee Carter:

We use to have a lot more time to communicate through creative advertising. And now language has to do so much more work than it ever had, because we don’t have the same amount of time to get people’s attention. Sometimes it’s just a phrase that you have to create a mental shortcut that changes somebody’s mind about something.

I’ll give you an example of something that we did in the birth control space. Our client created a new kind of long acting birth control that was in your arm. And they were really excited, because the differentiation was it’s in your arm. Except when people heard that it was in your arm, patients thought, “Well, that’s not so great, because are people gonna be able to see that I have birth control on my arm? Like, is my mother gonna know that I’m on birth control, or are my friends all gonna know that I’m on birth control?” Other patients saw it and thought, “Oh my gosh, could it move? Like, what’s it doing up there? Could it possibly be as effective?” Doctors heard that it was an arm implant and they thought, “Oh my goodness, now I’m gonna have to learn a new procedure, spend more time with clients, go through all kinds of billing problems.”

So the differentiation actually was causing baggage for it. What we’ve found with a category of long acting birth control was that it was all in your uterus. Many women are concerned about the, the impact that’s gonna have on their fertility in the future. So if there was an option that was actually not in their uterus, they’re excited to hear about it. Just by changing the term from arm implant to non-uterine implant, we changed all the associations. It was instantly a quicker conversation. That mental shortcut was able to happen quickly.

Women were able to say, “It’s not in my uterus? It’s not gonna have longterm implications on my fertility, I’m in.” Doctors say, “It’s not in the uterus? Oh my gosh, it’s gonna save me from all those long conversations I have to have with women who are concerned about this.” It addressed a problem, and it was quick and it was speedy. And if you think about 140 characters or less that you have to communicate, it did so much work for them.

Lee Carter:

Characters or less that you have to communicate, it did so much work for them. We spend so much time in brand strategy and trying to make sure that you have shelf space. But how do you find that linguistic space? Or how do you find that quick distinction that language is going to create? That mental shortcut for you that’s going to change the game, drive sales, make you win in the market place, drive the results that you’re really looking for. And that’s what this is really all about.

Michael Maslansky:

Well how’d you do it there?

Lee Carter:

In the discovery process of trying to understand what are all the different ways that you could talk about this RMM Plan, that’s one of the things that we heard from people, was that the benefit of it is that it’s in your arm. And that was something that people were talking about up front. What they were talking about there, is what it is, not what it wasn’t. And when we go through the disciplined exercise of trying to categorize what are all the different ways that you can talk about this thing that you’re trying to talk about, it includes going through, like, “What are all the different ways we could talk about what this is? What are all the different ways we could talk about what this isn’t? What are the other phrases we could talk about? What categories are we up against?”

Michael Maslansky:

So ultimately, as we’ve gone back and we’ve looked at all the different ways that companies create distinction, using different approaches to language, Will, you’ve been really instrumental in helping us kind of codify the approach that we take to framing. What are those categories, those broad categories that we use to help us go through the framing process?

Will Howard:

Yeah. The formula that we’ve kind of noticed over the years, is that, as you start to think about how you could frame yourself, there’s really three levels. So the first is, “What are we? What is this?” And that gets back to the nouns. Um, it’s the difference between a beer and a light beer. It’s the difference between a healthcare company and a health company and a wellness company. Right? It’s the difference between what you’re saying you are and all the associations that will come with it.

The next layer is we think about what it is that you do, or what it is that your product does. If the first level is about identity, the second level is about function. What does it make easier for my life as a user or customer? What negatives does it remove? What positives does it add? Uh, what are kind of those functional layers? And, and that’s often one of the easiest places to start because you can really look at the list of benefits that your product has.

And then the last level is probably the hardest, um, which is, “What does this product mean?” Um, it’s the hardest because in some ways, it’s also the most flexible and the most creative. You can take a step back from the actual functional truth of what your product is and, and really think about, symbolically, what does it stand for? What values is it appealing to? How does it make people feel when they use it? How does it make other people feel about them when they use it? And this space of what it means, how it feels, why it matters, gives you a lot of room to really explore, uh, an emotional territory.

Michael Maslansky:

And then you, you can go deeper. Right? ‘Cause even in, like, the what it is, there’s often the what it is not. Zero proof is, in many ways, a what it is not categorization.

Will Howard:

Yes.

Michael Maslansky:

For each of these, you start to go through the process of looking at the elements of categorization or function, or meaning, and then you can twist them and turn them and, and play with them in all different ways to frame that differentiation in a way that stands out, that really will disrupt the way people think about your product or the category.

Will Howard:

We’ve been talking about finding differentiation as an exercise. And if there’s one takeaway for people, uh, as we kind of come to the end of this, I want to encourage people to, to approach this less as finding differentiation, ’cause that’s kind of that scavenger hunt for, “What’s that one thing we’re doing that no one else is doing,” that you’re gonna really tire yourself in knots searching for in a really competitive market place. And instead, think about framing differentiation. How can we present this story differently, um, in a way that’s gonna alter perceptions and drive sales?

Michael Maslansky:

Because it’s not a eureka moment. It often doesn’t feel super powerful, you know, the first time that you say it. Right? And one of the big challenges here is that finding that distinction often requires taking that leap of faith (laughs) and committing to it, because we’ll hear it in our focus groups or, or we’ll see it in survey data. But it won’t feel like it can stand on its own until you bring it to life. And then you start telling stories about it. And you reinforce it in different ways. And all of a sudden something that seems superfluous or secondary or just not a big deal becomes the centerpiece of how you’re known in the market place.

Lee Carter:

Often when we present to our clients the idea on, “Here is your category,” it’s not that exciting to them. Because it’s not about what’s most important to our clients. It’s about what’s important to their customers.

All right, so Will, what’s the most interesting framing shift you’ve seen this year?

Will Howard:

We just worked with a, uh, a group that works on behalf of what’s known as the scrap recycling industry. They’re the ones that are kind of the industrial backbone of recycling in a circular economy and making sustainability a reality for the long term. But we ran into this real challenge which is that if you talk about scrap and you call yourselves scrap recyclers, people get really focused on, on the waste stream and the trash and the things that are coming into the process. And they think of all these mental images of junkyards. And it’s just not the kind of green positive association that the industry, frankly, deserves. In our shift for them, the language that we helped put into place was moving from focusing so much on the inputs and the scrap to focusing on the outputs. What is it we actually make? And, and so that we, we’ve helped them reframe from being just a scrap recycling industry to being the recycled materials industry, which is a kind of renewable sources of high quality materials for the everyday items and essential infrastructure that people rely on. That shift has the potential to really change the way people see the industry.

Michael Maslansky:

Will, Lee, awesome to talk about this. Uh, it’s a little geeky but, uh, (laughs) but never dull. Uh, and everyone, for 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. And join our mailing list at maslansky.com/connect. If you’ve got questions, want to tell us how wrong we are, please send us a note at [email protected]. And that is all for now. Join us next time on HearSay because when it comes to truly effective communication, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.