As we step towards 2024’s exit door, some of the team at Made have been reflecting on what’s caught their eye this year and what the next 12 months might have in store.
This week it’s Andrew, one of our marketing team and copywriters, on the words that have made the headlines this year and how, just maybe, one of them might be a helpful steer to improving communication with customers.
Being told you’re delulu? Ignore the negative and channel the power of positive thinking
It’s that point in the calendar when those bastions of language preservation – the great dictionaries – start publishing their ‘words of the year’ and parts of the nation collectively lose their mind about how far linguistic standards have fallen.
Methodologies for picking the winner differ between publications. However, the shortlists for the final choices are insightful cultural markers to the year that was 2024.
Linguistic hotties
The OED’s winner was ‘Brain Rot’, used as a noun, and describing the ‘supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state…[through] overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging.’ An interesting signal, perhaps, of wider concerns about how our virtual lives impact our actual lives
The wider shortlist was no less eye-opening. Contender ‘Dynamic pricing’ was a painful reminder for many of the Oasis reunion ticket farce of earlier in the year (this writer included).
Also on the list was ‘demure’ – a reflection of what Gen Z are bringing to the party courtesy of TikToker Jules Lebron – and leading to a slew of great (hello, @Currys) and not so great parodies.
The influence of Gen Z’ers can be seen again in another one of the word winner lists. Collins announced their winner – ‘Brat’, used as an adjective, as in ‘Brat summer’. Spun out from the album Brat by Charlie XCX, it encapsulates a positive mood and aesthetic that goes beyond its original negative connotations (linguistic amelioration, if you’re interested).
No less eye-catching but a bit less savoury, perhaps, is fellow shortlist entrant ‘Rawdogging’, the act of undertaking a task without preparation, support or anything. It’s almost a hairshirt experience, showing how tough you are or impervious to things that might help or alleviate a symptom or problem. Like staying stubbornly in your copywriting lane and not engaging with trends that might help be more successful!
The power of positive thinking
For Cambridge’s dictionary, this year’s winner was ‘manifest’ used in its verb form. The word’s breakout from the self-help community into widespread use led to its online entry being viewed over 130,000 times.
Stars such as Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Spiderman Tom Holland and Oprah Winfrey credit their success to manifesting their success beforehand – mentally willing it to happen – and so ensuring the universe makes it happen.
And fair play. A bit of positivity is surely a good thing. The world can feel relentlessly dreary and bleak at the moment, if you aren’t careful, and it’s pretty common for us to feel a bit rubbish about ourselves.
Why not imagine what living the dream will look like? Embrace that power of positive thinking and affect that change.
Changing focus
Manifesting a better future. Envisioning life after the solution. Emphasising the ‘after’. That’s got to feel better, right?
So when it comes to copywriting and thinking about ‘trends for 2025’ – like ‘word of the year’, another staple of this point in the calendar – perhaps we should be taking a leaf out of Dua Lipa’s book (crediting her Glastonbury headlining slot to manifesting it as a kid) and focussing our copy more on what the future looks like for our customers.
Thou shalt write about pain points
As marketers we know that we need to identify customer pain points and map them to benefits of using the product or service.
Recently though, it’s seemed to me that so much of the copy I’ve seen has put a lot of emphasis on the pain and less on the benefit. Depending on the industry, some of it can feel a bit brutal too – Feel rubbish ‘cause you can’t do X? Don’t worry because with us…..
If your inferiority complex isn’t already kicking in, it will now.
Focus on the feels
Of course, understanding a customer’s pain points is vital in being able to help guide them to a solution. But do we really need to be so macho about stating it? Maybe if we shift the focus away from the pain to the benefit, it’s nicer for all. Like those holiday ads that show teachers stripping off their work gear as the bell rings for the start of the summer holidays and we see them going out the school gate and onto their lilos – we feel their holiday #vibes.
As copywriters perhaps the smart play is to move away from what they are doing wrong and put focus on what they’ll feel like with a few tweaks to their life. To reframe the problem state – presenting it in passing or more fleetingly – so that the focus is on the positive feels. Make people feel inspired rather than dismayed.
To be clear, this isn’t saying that we should jettison writing about features (always a risk of sounding patronising if everything just feels like emotional manipulation), it’s more a shift from focus away from overly negative pains, to more positive solutions.
Of course, one of the keys to presenting this future benefit state is to not present it in a way that’s clearly delulu (word of year contender, Collins, ‘utterly mistaken or unrealistic in one’s expectations or ideas’) or something that is purely a romantasy (Collins/Oxford ‘literary genre combining romance with fantasy’).
As we head into 2025, perhaps by spending more time manifesting the positive – in our copy, our messaging, and in our own lives – we’ll all benefit.
So let’s get past the pain, start manifesting the positive and make it happen!
