What’s your reality between the lines?
Words are a funny thing. We use them to communicate to others what we want people to know, but are those words connected with who we really are?
As businesses and brands, we are all busy telling the world with our words, the type of business we are, the values we treasure and all the good things we want people to know. We are using words to build a picture for those who are getting to know us about what we are like, what we stand for and setting an expectation about what they are likely to encounter when they ‘experience’ our business or brand.
As people, we are built to use words to make sense of the world. To create labels and linguistic concepts for things that help us categorise our experiences. We come to rely on the labels we create, to help us navigate through life and our decision making. However, labels are just a representation. An approximation. They aren’t necessarily reality. They are the sum total of what we’ve been told, by the person, business or brand.
Words create an outer facade, not an inner reality. Words aren’t what define us. Our actions are, in how we choose to react with the ever-changing world around us. It’s the things we do, not say, which reveal the truth about who we are.
The gap between what you say and what you do, is the space that sits between the lines of our words. What we aren’t saying. As individuals, we seek the truth between the lines to evaluate the labels we’ve created and the assumptions we’ve made.
What sits between your lines? What sits between what you are telling people and what you are actually doing? What can those around you read into the space between your lines?
As brands and businesses what can we do to own the spaces between the lines? To help the people who are interacting with us to evaluate the label they have created for us?
Finally, as marketeers, what can we do to write meaningful words, which are so tight against reality there is little gap between them to get lost in. That’s the challenge. How do your words shape up?
