Language can be tricky.

I remember when I was trying to encourage my three-year-old son to be more polite I encouraged him to say ‘pardon’ rather than ‘what’ when he hadn’t heard someone.

This resulted in a very silly exchange. I asked him to pass me the pencil he had been using so that I could put it away. He was distracted by his task and hadn’t heard me.

“What?” he asked.

“Pardon!” I said, with an emphasis intended to convey the fact that I was correcting his choice of word.

He missed the subtle inflection, looked at me with a trace of annoyance and said: “I said ‘what'”.

When we use particular words we (hopefully) know what we’re trying to convey. But that doesn’t mean someone hears those words in the same way.

It’s all a question of the associations a person’s mind makes with those words. Which in turn is a by-product of how the word is said and the context it’s encountered in.

Researchers in Canada have just published the results of some work they conducted looking at language used on cigarette packs. They mocked up a number of packs and then varied just one element; they then asked people to say which would taste smoother, which would have less tar and which they would choose if they were trying to reduce the risk to their health.

They discovered that 80% of people thought “smooth” would be healthier than “regular”. 73% thought “silver” would be less damaging to them than one labelled “full-flavour”.

84% believed the pack with a number 6 in the brand name would be less damaging to them than the one with a 10 in it.

Other research has found that referencing filters and using lighter colours on packs has a similar effect.

To some extent the comparisons forced by this research approach are too abstract. One could argue that they create an artificial reference point by forcing a two-way relative comparison.

However, it’s still an interesting insight into how the choice of words and numbers that you use in your brand name, tag line and marketing communication can have an impact beyond the ones you might expect.

And it’s worth putting your words in the context your customers will encounter them so you can see if there are relative associations and, if so, make sure they work for you rather than against you.

Source: David Hammond and Carla Parkinson. The impact of cigarette package design on perceptions of risk. Journal of Public Health, July 28, 2009

Image courtesy: Jason Morrison