At least not according to Apple. And now a study, run by the Future Laboratory and Nokia, is inclined to agree. As the devices in our hands become more powerful, it’s the impact they have on our life experience that sells them, not how many Giga hertz or Mega pixels they boast.
G is not for Geek
The new approach to marketing is called ‘G-tech’ - short for ‘girl tech’. Though not 100% politically correct at first glance, G-tech is really just about designing and writing about products in a way that appeals to the right side of the brain. That means moving away from literal and logical messages about the way gadgets work and emphasising their empathic and intuitive qualities - how you experience a product, and how it can enrich your life.
What boys and girls want
It’s worked wonders for Apple - the iPod is the archetypical G-tech product. And now other manufacturers are following suit. At Eye For Image we’re finding more and more of our clients are responding very positively to our ‘demystify the tech’ approach. At first they were worried about talking down to (geeky) customers. But now they realise that the boys like the right brain approach just as much.
After all, boys, as well as girls, just want to have fun.
Here’s a short video in which the boys talk about G-tech (in quite a geeky way!). Most of the meat is in the last minute and a half.
Translating can be a tricky business - but this is an error that you’d never think could happen. When officials sent a road sign to be translated into Welsh, they thought the reply they received was the translation. Unfortunately, it was the translator’s out of office reply. The result was a road sign with the Welsh text: I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.
(It should have read: No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.)
According to the BBC story, much blame is being heaped on officials, but surely some fault has to lie with a translator who only includes one language version of their out of office reply.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Check out the other road sign cock-ups:
A tool: (noun) a person who is impressionable, easily used by others; LOSER; WANNA-BE. “That guy is such a tool. He would do anything to be accepted.” (www.onlineslangdictionary.com)
The word tool has long been used in both the UK and US to describe someone in negative terms. It can even be heard in classic films, such as the 1987 comedy Withnail & I (When Withnail is pulled over by the police speeding on the motorway, ‘I’ comments, “You’re full of sctoch you silly tool”.)
As you can see, the packaging even includes a photo and the names of the two tools who designed the product. But don’t be put off, it really is a good product.
The branding consultant Martin Roll says that Danish companies can use their “Danishness” to their advantage. In an interview with the Danish business newspaper Børsen, he advises Danish companies to stand up for their Danish values.
Denmark has many great values that can be relevant to people outside of Denmark. The challenge as I see it is communicating them in a way that the rest of the world can understand.
It’s not about imposing these values on others, but more about putting them in the context of what is important. Companies are experiencing that, yes, they can use Danish values - but they just shouldn’t call them “Danish values”. Instead, these Danish values need to be described specifically and in context using clear, concise language. This is the big challenge facing many Danish companies.
At Eye for Image, we see spelling mistakes every day. Some make us cringe, others make us laugh. We cringed and laughed when we saw the job title “Pubic Sector Analyst.” Ooops. Even spellcheck wouldn’t help with that one.
But can you just imagine you are a Public Sector Analyst? You’re at a meeting. You’ve just given out your business cards to each of the 10 people at the table. Then you notice the missing letter ‘l’ in your job title. How on earth do you recover from that one???
Spelling. For some, it’s a cinch. For others, it’s a minefield. It’s one of the very first things we begin to learn at school, and we keep on learning as long as we are reading and writing. Oh, how spellcheck programs have simplified our lives! But those pesky misspellings show up anyway.
Our recent WordSpin article on misspellings in English lists 16 common ones. Check it out and see if you learn something new.
Got a memorable spelling mistake yourself? Post a comment on this blog entry and let us know what it was. We promise to laugh with you, not at you!
Looking for a competent sales director? Wouldn’t you rather have an experienced one? Or successful? Or even well-qualified? Or is just about good enough good enough for you?
Looking for a competent page turner
Danish companies love the word competent. Problem is, it isn’t quite the heavy-weight champion of job ads that it might appear to be – and though it can mean ‘qualified for the job’ in certain contexts, it certainly doesn’t carry the weight of Danish ‘kompetent’.
Look up ‘competent’ in an English dictionary. The issues jump out at you straight away. It has two related, but conflicting, meanings. Dictionary.com shows:
Having suitable or sufficient skill, knowledge or experience for some purpose
2. Adequate, but not exceptional.
So, competent means ‘suitable’ – a skills-set that’s a good fit. Nice. That sounds like just what I’m looking for in my sales director. But ‘sufficient’? Just about good enough to get by? Mmm, not so good…
The second definition, though, really starts to get to the heart of the problem. Adequate. Not very inspiring, is it? I wouldn’t recommend anyone build their job interview strategy on how adequate they are. Kicking off with, “I can guarantee adequate results” in a job interview for any managerial position would be as effective as breaking wind.
Saying “I’m competent,” isn’t quite as bad as saying “I’m adequate”, but it’s not much better. It sounds like you haven’t finished your sentence. And the interviewer would finish it for you: “…but nothing special/not very good/a bit slow on the uptake”. There’s no escaping it, to most people on the street, competent means ‘just about good enough’.
But there’s more.
The negative form of competent – incompetent – is used much more often than ‘competent’ in everyday speech. It’s commonly used to make complaints, especially about people’s work. Calling someone ‘competent’ conjures the shadow of its more popular, darker sibling. And never quite shakes it off.
How do you use ‘competent’? Do you think it’s appealing enough to use in a job ad, or a job interview? Let us know what you think: write a comment.
In Denmark, “You are welcome to send an unsolicited application” is used quite a bit – but few feel comfortable with it. Quite often, our clients ask us: Is unsolicited application the right term to use? Will people understand it? What can we say instead?
Blue Angel. Fuchsia. Ireland. Apple. Pilot Inspektor. Poppy Honey. Moxie CrimeFighter. Princess.
What’s your guess? PlayStation game characters? FBI operation code names?
Nice try, but no. They’re a selection of bizarre celebrity baby names. In their quest for originality and headline space, celebrities seem to be putting their kids’ future sanity on the line. But it’s not just A-listers who are picking words off cerial boxes and Kabbalah literature and putting them on birth certificates. Ordinary folks are doing it too. There’s Ish. And Jeehee. And Nattapong.
In Denmark, a country that embraces rules with the same gusto that Italy defies them, choosing a first and last name for a child is a serious, multitiered affair, governed by law and subject to the approval of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and the Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs…
About 1,100 names are reviewed every year, and 15 percent to 20 percent are rejected, mostly for odd spellings.
At first, I thought this rule was completely crazy. But then I realized it prevents people like George from Seinfeld from naming their kid Seven, and I thought - OK. With 7540 approved boy names and 9869 approved girl names, the good and not-too-weird names should be covered.
Right?
Wrong. My name, Anastasya, is not on the list. Anastasia is. Anastasiya is. But not my spelling. So I end up right up there with Camera and Pilot Inspektor, and I honestly don’t know how to feel about that.
To check if you name is on the list, visit the Approved Names Search page - and then let me know what you think about this naming business.
Der er i øjeblikket en heftig debat i gang blandt kommunikatører om, hvorvidt det danske sprog er ved at blive oversvømmet og udvandet af engelske ord. Uden at gå for meget i detaljer omkring, hvor jeg selv står i den diskussion, vil jeg gerne dele en lille anekdote med jer.
Jeg deltog for nylig i en konference, hvor en masse dygtige danske forretningsfolk gav vi andre dødelige et indblik i, hvordan de arbejder med markedsføring og kommunikation. Eventen “in itself” vil nok ikke gå over i historien for mig, men flere af talerne gjorde dybt indtryk med deres brug af flotte engelske ord!
Jeg har derfor opdigtet en lille tekst, der ikke har direkte relation til det, en af talerne i virkeligheden delte med sit publikum. Men samtlige engelske ord i min tekst indgik rent faktisk i vedkommendes ”danske” indlæg. Enjoy!
En lille exercice
“I denne lille exercice vil jeg tage jer med på en tur gennem det danske sprogs mange nye opportunities – et indspark til debatten om de mange engelske ord, der hver dag sniger sig ind i det danske business-language.
For at se, om vi er on track, kan vi foretage forskellige actions for at måle det danske sprogs performance ude i den virkelige business-verden. Man kunne for eksempel starte med at opstille en execution liste og outline en workstream, så vi er sikre på at få det hele med. Det giver os mulighed for at predicte på, hvor mange engelske ord, der sniger sig ind i f.eks. danske business blogs, websites eller one-pagere.
Når vi så har handled analyserne og løbende har tjekket op på vores KPI’er, så vil de fremkomne charts formentlig give os et view på, om vi har nået vores targets. Resultatet vil uden tvivl vise, at det danske sprog ikke længere er aligned med det sprog, man talte for bare et par år siden, da den engelske influence var noget mindre. Vi er nået way past common-sense stadiet, og jeg tror, at der skal sættes nogle drivers i gang, så vi ikke ender med totalt at out-spende vores kvote af tilladte engelske ord per tekst i det danske sprog.
Hvad er vores learning?
Vores learning må være, at vi hver dag når nye milestones med vores sprog – og at vi dermed løber nogle risks for ikke at kunne benchmarke sproget og skabe ækvivalenter til de mange engelske business terms…”
At Eye for Image, the English language is our bread and butter. So the recent debate on the use of Danish versus English in the Danish business community and educational institutions hasn’t gone unnoticed.
To those of you who haven’t been following the debate, here’s a quick recap. In spring 2007, the Minister of Culture, Brian Mikkelsen, appointed a language committee or “Sprogudvalg” to study the Danish language and evaluate if there was a need for a Danish language law.
Last month the committee published their findings in a report, “Sprog til tiden”. The committee found that the Danish language is thriving better in some areas than others, but that there’s no need for a Danish language law.
One of the committee’s conclusions was that the Danish business community needs to strengthen their use of the Danish language. And what’s more, the business community has a responsibility to ensure that English doesn’t automatically become the language of corporate Denmark.
But the Danish Chamber of Commerce (Dansk Erhverv), who represents 20,000 member companies, doesn’t agree. According to Christian Tanggaard Ingemann, Market Director at Dansk Erhverv, the Danish language isn’t under attack, and that increased use of English as the working language in education, research and business won’t marginalise the Danish language.
Dansk Erhverv believes that the way forward is to secure the use of English in educational institutions, while maintaining the use of Danish in trades and educations where the job market requires it.
Whatever way you look at it, English is here to stay. With so many Danish companies operating in niche areas, they have to take their products and services abroad. And as Ingemann points out, English isn’t only “nice to know”, but “needed to know”.
So, yes, English is necessary if Denmark is to remain competitive and communicate with the world around us. And personally, I don’t believe that the increased use of English in the Danish business community and at universities will spell the death of the Danish language. It will continue to evolve of course, like all languages do, but that’s “nice” isn’t it?
