Language keeps us human
"Language is a living force, an inhabitable space, a space for encounter." -Renee Gladman
In a world where so much has become automated, how do we maintain our grasp on humanness? The value of aliveness, uniqueness is indisputable. It’s integral to individual identity and intrinsic to brand identity.
Language creates live, ownable space for brands; porous, responsive, agile atmospheres primed for community and connection. A space for encounter. Authentic messaging facilitates intelligent connections between people and experiences that stand the test of time, competitors, and the deadening interactions of an automated world.
Your audience is smart. Automating your brand identity, voice, or messaging will result in the loss of meaning. So how, when everything is changing so fast, can you maintain your brand’s grasp on humanness?
First, be human. Write like a person talks. Center your audience’s desires, interests, and aspirations in your messaging strategy.
Next, be savvy. Show your audience you’re truly listening to them. When you tell stories in email or on social, contextualize the problems you solve within real-life circumstances. Talk to your audience. Ask pointed questions that pull you in deeper, beyond the surface. Audit and interrogate your communication to ensure it’s real, original, and agile.
Finally, be soulful. Engage with your audience in a connected and empathetic way. Listen actively, be responsive and truthful. Express your brand through human thoughts and feelings with a pulse and perspective others can’t claim.
Is your brand using language to craft active, living, ownably unique spaces for encounter? If not, we’d love to help.
Truth Serum: Hannah Levintova
Hannah Levintova is the special projects editor at Mother Jones, reporting on business, corporate accountability, debt, and financial inequality. She serves truth by translating the financial mechanics behind major social issues, making abstract numbers relatable to readers, breaking from the pack mentality of business narratives in journalism, and living by her favorite Russian phrase.
Antonym in synonym: Our collective creative loves
Renee Gladman's My Lesbian Novel delivers an extraordinary meditation on writing and the writerly process. Guided by her ongoing interview with an unidentified narrator, their conversation unfolds as Gladman reflects on her ideals for a lesbian romance novel and the deconstructed, non-linear process that guides her work and ideation. Extraordinary. You'll have never read anything like it.
We'll spare you our treatise on the importance of the high and low in any cultural diet and get straight to the point: not only is The Traitors Season 3 a fascinating romp through the human psyche, Alan Cumming is electric, on fire, and absolutely tantalizing in some of the best (and best-dressed) work of his career. The new season, and the entire franchise, are a balm for weary minds and a boon for those who relish reality TV.
The Christine Sun Kim retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art (also traveling to Walker Art Center in Minneapolis) explores sound, language, and the complexities of communication through her mixed-media practice. And, we've never seen anything like it. Over 90 works explore Kim's Deaf lived experiences, examining her life within shared social spaces where sound is taken as a given.
Want to go down an existential wormhole with a knowledgeable and friendly guide? Janna Levin, theoretical cosmologist, black hole expert, and professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, is always at the center of a crowd of thinkers, artists, and scientists. Start your journey by reading her Gossamer profile and listening to her Joy Of Why podcast.
For any Severance fans wondering what that song is from the opening scene of Season 2, it is the propulsive, Ocean’s 11-esque Burnin’ Coal by the legendary jazz pianist Les McCann. The album it’s off of, Much Les, is an underrated classic and worth a listen. McCann’s body of work provided samples for later artists A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, the Notorious B.I.G., and countless others.