[One Thousand Characters a Day] Kim Il-ri's 'Writing for Branding' <3>

Editor's NoteIn the complex branding process, the final puzzle in completing the most important element?the persona?is the 'brand language.' However, just because brand language is necessary, you cannot indiscriminately collect and use fancy-sounding words or apply only trendy wording that is popular at the moment. The core of creating brand language lies in discovering the key points that represent the brand's important values, proposing wording that best expresses those points, and then refining the wording so that it is easiest and most widely used. The text length is 1,011 characters.

So why is securing wording important? This can be found in the basic nature of language, which is constantly created, disappearing, or modified over time. Even if you present a specific wording that best represents your brand, consumers or users are highly likely to continuously create and modify this wording either positively or negatively.

However, once a perception is wrongly established around a wording, it is almost impossible to restore it to its original state. People often judge based on the image they feel from the wording itself without seeing the actual substance.

Therefore, you must always collect customer reactions and make efforts behind the scenes to elevate positive wording so it can go viral. At the same time, it is important to proactively suggest suitable alternatives for any wording that could damage the brand image to reverse the mood or at least create a protective shield to prevent further spread of negative public opinion.

In fact, many brands have seen results beyond expectations by effectively securing wording. Nowadays, when purchasing books online, most customers in the Seoul metropolitan area can receive their orders on the same day. Thanks to this unusually fast delivery compared to other product categories, a phrase spread on social media among book buyers: "If you order on your way to work, it will be at your door by the time you get off work," which sounds like a joke but is actually true.

One internet bookstore did not take this wording lightly. While most other sites expressed delivery times as "same-day delivery" or "delivery available before ○○ o'clock," this site boldly started using the phrase "delivery before you fall asleep." As a result, it conveyed the feeling of "If you order now, you can read this book a bit in bed before you sleep tonight," while also encouraging people who thought "I'll add it to my cart and order tomorrow" to place their orders earlier.

This was a perfect example showing that even when providing the same function and utility, deciding which words to secure and what experience to deliver is the core of creating brand language.

－Kim Il-ri, <Writing for Branding>, Wisdom House, 18,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.