Language

Building a business or brand means mastering the language

In every organisation, people talk constantly — in meetings, emails, ‘decks’, and WhatsApp groups or Teams threads.

Beneath the endless words lies a simple truth: that the language a business uses determines how it thinks, acts, and decides. It builds and reaffirms culture.  Consistency in language and naming isn’t about semantics or brand pedantry – it’s a cultural amplifier and a strategic tool in your armoury. When fuzziness, odd abbreviations and jargon kick in, clarity reduces and misalignment creeps in. When clarity is there, everything feels sharper, faster, and more unified.

Fragmented language, fragmented focus

It’s likely that you’ve sat in a meeting where on the surface everyone seems to agree, but everything quickly falls apart when the same word means different things to different people. Is the ‘customer’ the end consumer, the buyer, or the internal customer? Is a ‘launch’ a full market release, a pilot or a test-and-learn? Is a ‘proposition’ a strategic platform or a tactical offer? Misalignment on terminology creates more than just confusion; it removes precious pace. Agility becomes wading through mud. Teams hedge their bets, double-check interpretations, layers of ‘check-ins’, pre-alignment meetings, or waiting for clarification before making progress. Momentum evaporates.

Inconsistent language also breeds indecisiveness. If leaders can’t agree on the meaning of core concepts then discussions become circular. People talk about the work instead of doing it. The energy that should go into execution gets swallowed by the effort to decode what others really mean. It’s inefficiency on steroids.

At its worst, this misalignment creates a cultural drag. When words lose coherence, so does confidence. People start to feel bogged down, unsure which version of the truth is “real.” The organisation becomes a place of interpretation rather than action. Meetings are confused with getting stuff done. Ploughing through e mails is seen as productive.

Language aligns, momentum multiplies

Conversely, when language is consistent, agreed and bought in to, something powerful happens: clarity compounds. Teams move faster because they share the same mental model. A common vocabulary builds shared understanding. Shared understanding builds trust.

When a business has consistent naming conventions for its initiatives, products, and internal frameworks, it projects coherence both internally and externally. Employees can talk about their work with pride and precision. Customers and partners feel that same consistency as confidence. The organisation’s story hangs together. Sacrificing the unimportant becomes easier. Priorities can be focused on, rather than argued over.

Language alignment also reinforces culture. Words signal values. When everyone refers to things the same way it shapes how the organisation thinks about itself and its purpose and over time, that shared lexicon becomes a kind of cultural shorthand. It’s not just what people say; it’s how they belong.

Sharper language, sharper thinking

Consistent language sharpens corporate thinking. A disciplined vocabulary encourages disciplined thought. When terms are defined clearly, strategy becomes clearer too. You can’t discuss “growth” for a business or a brand if no one has agreed whether that means revenue, margin, reach, depth of impact or market share.

Language also drives tactical alignment. Consistent naming of processes, roles, and deliverables allows teams to collaborate seamlessly. It reduces cognitive burden, people don’t have to waste time translating corporate jargon that varies from site to site, location to location. The result: faster, more confident decisions.

Building a shared vocabulary takes intention

Of course, consistent language doesn’t happen by accident, it requires leadership attention. Someone has to own the glossary whether that’s through brand governance, internal communications, or a centre of excellence. Key terms should be documented, explained, and reinforced in a conscious, loose-tight way.

And, it’s about listening…. the best corporate language grows from how people actually talk and work, not from what’s imposed top-down. If that natural rhythm is tuned into and formalised, the organisation can find a voice that is authentic and real.

In a world where businesses and brands often unwittingly chase complexity, the winners will be those that master simplicity, and that starts with the words they choose to use.

 

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy, innovation and brand planning company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670;  www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2026

Why Corporate Claptrap is really bad for brands

Whilst doom-scrolling on Linked In early one morning, an article from The Economist caught my eye. It’s a theme we’ve been coming back to over many years – how company employees begin to talk utter claptrap very quickly after starting in the business world, and how, viewing this through a marketing lens, this is really bad for brands (it’s bad, full stop, but that’s for another post).  We wrote about in 2018, and the post is presented again below.

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We’ve been ‘peeling back the onion’, we’ve had a bit of an ‘idea shower’ and we’ve got something we want to ‘run up the flagpole’ – something that we’re ‘110% frustrated’ by. This post is about the terrible curse of Corporate Claptrap.

The truth is that using corporate language is almost inescapable and virtually unavoidable given how much time we spend at work. It’s engrained in organisations’ cultures. The first time we hear it we’re confused – it makes no sense – but before we know it we find ourselves ‘road mapping’, ‘shifting paradigms’ and ‘burning the boats’.

However, finally, thankfully, a few organisations are beginning to call it out for what it is: an issue that negatively impacts business and the engagement of those working within it… but we’d go further. We’ve ‘touched base offline’ with brand owners taken a ‘helicopter view’ of the research and concluded that it’s also damaging for brands and brand building. Why? Well as management Professor Jennifer Chatman of Haas School of Business recently wrote, “jargon masks real meaning”. And when it comes to brand building, establishing real meaning is what it’s all about…

The heart of the issue lies in the complexity of the human language. Unlike other animals, our language is more than systematic noise grunted to one another (teenagers excepted). It contains cultural meaning and, critically, spoken words also communicate unspoken meaning. Our language therefore becomes a filter that processes our understanding and influences how we behave beyond our conscious awareness. That sounds high-fallutin’, but consider these three brand-damaging implications.

Claptrap is a barrier to understanding
Claptrap stops us from being close enough to our consumers. As corporate language becomes engrained in a business, the culture of that business shifts with it. With every reference to ‘building a strawman’, every generous delivery of a ‘heads up’ or ‘reach out’, with every meeting that starts with ‘getting people aligned’ and finishes with a ‘hard close’ at ‘the end of play’; for every ‘mission critical’ task, for every concept that gets ‘dropped in the pan to see if it floats’; for every ‘deck of slides’, ‘turd polisher’, ‘clocksucker’ or ‘boiling of the ocean’ and every ‘re-stage’, ‘re-purpose’ or resodding anything… we move further and further away from the people that really matter: consumers.

The key to brand building lies in truly understanding your consumer, their needs, their frustrations, their problems, their hopes and their motivations. When you’re engrained in a business this is tough at the best of times. Why, then, would we accept the use of a language that further divorces us from the world our consumers live in and cements an ivory-tower world- view?

Claptrap prevents action
Claptrap delays action and excuses procrastination. We would never undervalue the need for stakeholder alignment. However, the business language often becomes the hiding place for inaction as the need to ‘onboard decision makers’ is used to excuse the adding of weeks or months of unnecessary delay into business. And as inaction becomes the norm, the business language explains it away: we need to ‘put our foot on the ball’ in order to deliver a plan that will ‘move the needle’ or, we need to ‘deep dive’ further to ensure that the sales team’s concerns are ‘on the radar’. Yes, debate is needed; of course we shouldn’t rush into action without consideration; but great brands never forget that impacting their end consumer is the only thing that counts. Anything that stops that is a waste.

Claptrap creates groupthink
Claptrap creates unwritten rules about behaviour that hinder progress. Next time you hear a presentation from the company owner or CEO, listen out for how many of the phrases that they use quickly enter common parlance. People adopt the same language to show support, to tow the line and to fit in. People naturally shy away from standing out (unwittingly or not). This can be a great and powerful thing. However, if the language used is convoluted and idiosyncratic (Corporate Claptrap) then nobody asks the simple, basic brand building questions for fear of looking stupid.

This is so dangerous for brands because the questions that make the biggest difference in marketing are the childish ones, the ones that are brutally simple and disarming. The language that drives the greatest change is often the Bluntest, yet in Corporate Claptrap Land, people are inadvertently dissuaded from using it.

So try binning the business language, pick up your brand plan and embrace your inner-child. Ask the simplest questions:

Will this make a difference?
Do we really have to do that?
What would happen if we didn’t do it?
Why can’t we do it now?
Why can’t we do it bigger?

You’ll be amazed how quickly you release the ‘sleeping giant’ in your brand…

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If you want help cutting through the B.S. and getting to the heart of it, get in touch.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2023