Brands Built on 'Blah' – and why we need a True-Word Audit™

"...to speak a true word is to transform the world" — Brazilian Educator, Paolo Freire

At The Firebrand Company, we say we're "building conscious brands.” We’re not talking about what you might call "social impact brands" — e.g., nonprofits. We’re also not talking about a brand's CSR campaign or ESG vertical. We do build those things, but by saying "conscious brand," we mean one that's critically aware of its social impact regardless of whether or not it’s a social impact brand.

A CSR vertical can be a beautiful expression of a brand's story; but it's not the whole story. Just by existing in the world, every brand participates in the push and pull of forms, steering the course of cultures in some way, toward some end, consciously or unconsciously. We think a brand should be conscious of how and to where it's steering. It's an ethical position, but it's also good business.

The place to begin understanding a brand’s social impact is with its story — the verbal and visual language it uses to say what it does, why it exists, and what it stands for. ESG goals might appear in that story, but they only tell a fraction of it.

What we're looking for in this brand story are "true words." These are the highest value words in a brand lexicon. Catalytic, authentic and transformative, but hard to come by because they're buried under jargon, idle language and convention. I want to share with you a tool we've designed to help you uncover true words.

“To speak a true word is to transform the world.”

By “true” in this context, we aren't referring to a word's factual correctness; rather, its integrity — its alignment between the idea it expresses and the impact it makes. The Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire writes about true words in the context of their power for liberation and transformation. He says, a true word represents an intersection between two dimensions, reflection and action...

…in such radical interaction that if one is sacrificed—even in part—the other immediately suffers. There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world.

A false word is the breakdown of this integrity. For example, a word might not be very thoughtful or reflective, but it's active— it’s making things happen without expressing much thought about it. Or perhaps it’s thoughtful and reflective— it expresses good ideas, but unfortunately, it’s abstracted and rather lifeless.

But true words… they hold transformative power. They speak to our conscious ideals and manifest those ideals in the world. They’re generative. They create. They confront and reshape reality. True words rise above chatter and shine light on the world. That’s why they're the building blocks of a conscious and transformative brand story — they're really powerful.

Quick note about Paolo Freire: a teacher and philosopher, whose body of work had a revolutionary impact on many fields, especially education... and on my life. He understood education as a means to freedom. At the core of his belief is a term he coined, called conscientzacao, or “critical consciousness,” which is a type of sharpened awareness to the world and one’s ability to act upon it, especially as it relates to confronting dominance and power. My first job was a teacher, and like many teachers, Paolo was my mentor. There is no greater influence on my practice as an educator, than Paolo Freire.

When I started The Firebrand Company, I began helping artists, cultural leaders and brands design their signature social impact initiatives. It was early in this work that I discovered a slightly unusual and extremely valuable application of Freire's pedagogy: I wondered, could a brand become more transformational, inside and out, if it built its story upon true words?

The permeation of false words

When a word is out of alignment with either the dimension of reflection or action, it's false. Some words are false because they’re idle. Their significance, if any, is confined to the dimension of reflection. At best they sound great and signal virtue or some such quality; at worst they're mindless chatter, or, as Freire writes:

an alienated and alienating ‘blah.’

They don't really do anything. He calls the use of these idle words, "verbalism." They might sound compelling, beautiful, even inspirational, but there’s something hollow about the message they carry. "Activist" words, on the other hand, are false because they’re not reflective. Unlike idle words, these words are active, they do spark movement in the world, but they come from a place of unconsciousness: not that the speaker is unaware of the words themselves, but unaware of their deeper social, psychological or historical implications.

False words can resonate because they sound appealing, or perhaps because we connect with them unconsciously. They might compel our sense of morality, or lull us with familiarity and nostalgia. They echo meaningful themes, like virtue, sympathy, resilience, fondness for the past, and sneak past our critical filters. And in some really ugly cases, they trigger unmitigated reactivity, like phobias and hatred, even violence. They can and often do activate a particularly destructive chaos in the world. While true words transform, these false words agitate.

Why this matters for your brand

Most brand stories are permeated by false words because the brand maker's goal is too often a clever or compelling word, not a true one. Emotional hooks, inspiration, nods to virtue, idealism, nostalgia... this is the stuff of the industrial complex, which (as Don Draper teaches), is "based on one thing... happiness."

It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams to reassure us that whatever you're doing, is okay. You are okay.

The industry's best (and worst) example of the lulling effect of false words is the Lucky Strike cigarette, which isn't "poisonous" like the other brands — "it's toasted" (Mad Men's pilot episode).

Ethical arguments aside for a moment, true words become a brand's differential because the public is sharper, faster and more suspicious than generations before. Largely because of social media, we can detect misalignment really quickly. The prominence of brand "trust" is higher with Gen Z than we any prior generation.

A case for the True-Word Audit™

We designed a diagnostic for leaders to unpack their brand lexicon relative to true words, which are often buried under jargon, cliche and idle language. So a lot of honest sorting needs to happen. The process of uncovering true words is a deeply meaningful and therapeutic exercise in self-knowing: though, as one of our client's recently noted, "it's a terrifying process." It's a dialectical journey that ripples throughout the company, but the outcome is a brand story that holds the power to transform both the organization and the world.

This diagnostic is a pivotal tool in our Core Practice, The Differential Method™, a brand transformation protocol with widespread implications on brand message, language, visual grammar, market position, company culture... pretty much everthing accross the entire brand ecosystem. After leader's apply this method, their story begins to land differently: it lingers, strikes certain chords, and awakens something in both audience and organization because true words hold a different type of energy.

Here’s how the True-Word Audit™ works. On a schematic, we draw two axes indicating the dimensions of reflection and action (the two dimensions of a true word):

• The vertical axis is reflection: charting the extent to which the words show signs of insight, criticality or awareness

• The horizontal axis is action: charting the extent to which the words translate to real-world behaviors, choices or consequences

  
  

True-Word Audit™ Four Quadrant Diagnostic

The result is a diagnostic with four distinct quadrants. When a brand’s language is out of alignment— lacking in the dimension of reflection or action — it typically falls into one of three quadrants. The fourth quadrant is reserved for true words.

Each quadrant is defined like this:

1. Lower left quadrant is Low Reflection, Low Action, aka "Blah" — words characterized by cliche, jargon and overuse, and they're inert: no force. They signal generic intent and safe positioning. They feel like mimicry and noise. Test question: do these words actually mean anything real to us?

2. Upper left is High Reflection, Low Action, aka "Verbalism"— words characterized by a thoughtful or provocative voice, but lacking embodiment. They signal intention, intelligence, maybe virture and even a feigned awareness. They can feel well-crafted, but floating above... abstracted. Test question: do these words point to something we can see in the world?

3. Lower right is Low Reflection, High Action, aka “Unconscious Activism” — words characterized by movement, but without awareness of implications. They signal urgency, morality and impending change but without nuance or context. They feel like they're unexamined, holding a reactive energy. Test question: what are we unleashing when we use these words/or what's under cover of these words?

4. Upper right is High Reflection, High Action, aka "True words" — words characterized by awareness and alignment to consequence. They signal honesty, authenticity and conviction. They feel like something both grounding and energetic. Test question: How are we living the truth of these words?

For a bit more clarity, here's some quick mapping to real world examples:

1. “Blah” (Low Reflection, Low Action) — PepsiCo. The infamous Kendall Jenner ad, as she disarms police during a potential clash with protestors by handing an officer a bottle of soda. Tone deaf and grossly superficial.

2. “Verbalism” (High Reflection, Low Action) — Goop. "Wellness that transforms." Brand story signals wellness, personal growth even spirituality, but products are mired in pseudoscience.

3. “Unconscious Activism” (Low Reflection, High Action) — Facebook (Meta). Brand story promises to "give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together," and they gave us what they promised, along with psychological and social harms at unparalleled scale.

4. “True Words/Praxis” (High Reflection, High Action) — Patagonia. Their message, "we're in business to save our home planet," resonates across the entirety of their brand with highly visible and verifiable alignment.

   
   

Getting started

We recommend you start by gathering a comprehensive sampling of the language that defines your brand—your mission statement, taglines, social posts, website copy, internal decks, product descriptions, press releases, ethos statements or manifestos, even the offhand phrases your team uses in conversation. Keep in mind that some of the most insightful words and phrases come from narratives outside your brand canon, like dormant origin stories, stories of struggle, maybe stories you'd rather forget. Often, the true words of your story haven't yet been fully articulated.

If you bring all of this material into a shared space and look at it closely through the lens of true words, you can begin testing key words against the four quadrant diagnostic. Questions like these can help:

• Do these words mean something real to us? How do we feel when they're spoken?

• Can you see the word's meaning? What does the word point to in the world?

• What deeper cultural narratives—conscious or unconscious—do they carry or reinforce?

• What are we unleashing when we speak these words? What's under their cover?

• What truths are we living that we haven't articulated? How do we feel about them?

The process of a True-Word Audit™ is iterative and dialectical, so It's helpful to include a diverse team and welcome contradictory narratives. True words often emerge from the friction and conflict between narratives.

This is the work of building conscious brands™. It takes rigor, intention and a type of vulnerability, but the outcome is a brand that has the power to move the world forward.

Thank you for your time. If this article interests you and you'd like to get started on transforming your brand with a True-Word Audit™, I'd love to help. Say hello@thefirebrand.co.