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Start With The Words.

Enter One Word - a digital epistolary romance that examines, deconstructs, and reinvents the received language of business and marketing.

One Word a month. Archives.

laraeastburn

Jan 20

Jan 5

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laraeastburn

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Dec 31

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The latest edition of 'One Word' has just landed in your inbox if you're part of our little digital epistolary romance, friends!
9.75 times out of 10, dropping the word 'resonate' in casual convo tends to raise my little linguistic hairs. In this missive, I explore why.
One Word is a series to examine, deconstruct & reinvent the received vocabulary of business and marketing. Link in bio.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
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#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Oct 29

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Should.
This one is tough because I HATE THIS WORD. It's fair to say that my biases toward the word 'should' are ... multiple, many-layered, and maybe unsurpassable.
Should is the word at the tip TOP of my shit list.
I can recognize that my aversion to the word is likely a product of my upbringing and ongoing journey outside of it.
It's possible that for other people, 'should' implies something like 'best practices.' But I just hear "These are the rules. This is the answer."
"You know what you should do, Lara?"
"How many times should I post, Lara?"
"Lara, you should try this app."
"10 Things You Should Do To Optimize Your Ads."
"Lara, should I change ... ?"
Clients know my answer for any question that involves this red-flag word:
"The only thing you SHOULD be doing is what works for your business."
When I'm pushed, I'll say "This is what's working for me right now." Or "It looks to me like ..." Or "Here's what I've observed lately."
But ... standards? No. I'm in the business of bucking those. And I'm a classic case of tending to want to do the opposite of what I should do.
Still, 'should' is the ghost in my machine. It haunts me even though I don't believe in it. It gums up the works even when I push it away.
SHOULD (Old English sceal, Northumbrian scule) means "to owe / to be under obligation."
Should - and its every cognate (linguistic cousin) to the word means 'to owe,' "duty' - even 'to be guilty.' The word's meaning hasn't changed since ... well, ever.
There is no moment that should - and all of its ancestors - didn't mean 'to owe.'
When we tell folks what they should do, we're telling them what they "owe us." We're telling them what they're guilty of not doing. We're telling them that there is a condition (obligation) for success - or worse, approval.
And should has equally twisted cousins.
OUGHT is the past tense of OWE. NEED TO means what IS REQUIRED.
No, no, no. The hairs raise on the back of my neck when I hear these words.
Take your SH*?&D and shove it!
That's the word, nerd.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

Oct 27

Aug 5

Open

SOLUTIONS.
Got a problem? Somebody on the internet wants to (dis)solve it.
There are solutions, y'all. It took me all of 10 minutes to compile this little collage of 40 logos (image 2). It could have been thousands. And that's just business names - never mind slogans and taglines.
Like, the digital landscape is so intense you need, y'know, solutions.
USUALLY, this is the part where I'd talk about the word's lazy vaguery. About how its overuse has emptied it of any meaning at all. You've got answers? We've got solutions! Yawn.
Except this is a truly fascinating word. Its verb form, solve, has the same etymological root as that which would seem to be its opposite, dissolve (resolve and absolve, too). Their Latin great-grandma, solvere, meant to loosen, untie, release.
Which threw me for a linguistic loop for a good minute - my features stuck in the super attractive, scrunched-up configuration my laptop surely knows as my stumped face.
How could solution mean BOTH 'to find an answer' and 'to undo?'
But here's the thing: these are not words that function alone. They always require a direct object. We can't just 'solve' the way we can just 'walk,' for instance. We solve something. We seek a solution to something.
And it's in the something that we understand how finding a solution is simultaneously an undoing.
If we are to solve a Rubix cube, a riddle, a knot - we will loosen it. If we desire a solution to the wage gap, it will involve an undoing of patriarchy. Solutions to global warming demand undoing what we've done, releasing our current ways of existing.
⭐ Solving a problem, in other words, is equivalent to dissolving it.
And that's a reading that shines a whole new light on the word solution for me. It changes how I understand the word entirely. Now, instead of causing me to roll my eyes, it raises my brows, and perks my ears. You?
That's the word, nerd.
👉 ⭐One Word is a series to examine, deconstruct & reinvent the received vocabulary of business. laraeastburn.com/oneword
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Jul 8

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*This is an excerpt from the latest One Word email - link in, well you know 🙂
“But WHY?!?!” demands our red-faced 9-year-old.
Her father has now denied her 4th request to take a small boat out on our small lake.
“Because I said so,” he finally answers without knowing exactly why. (Hey, it worked for HIS dad, right?)
Last week I stumbled upon several articles claiming the word “because” was the most important word in sales.
Hmmmm…. said my brain. Plausible assertion, right? But .. WHY?
Turns out it’s all about a 1978 psychological paper colloquially called by marketers “The Copy Machine Experiment.”
Yes, 1978. It went like this. At the CUNY library, Ellen Langer et al sent in researchers one at a time (half women, half men) to cut the line at a busy copy machine with 3 different ‘reasons.’
Image 2 shows the results that numerous marketers quote as proof that you just need to say the word ‘because’ to get people to do what you want.
EXCEPT … NO.
Because anyone with a child – or who has ever been in a relationship with another human ever – knows for a FACT that’s some bullshit.
That's why the numbers change considerably when the stakes are higher. Not HIGH, though – it’s still 20 copies in the second test (not 200). This part of the study is what all the marketers IGNORE.
The argument here is that we don’t hear what comes after “because” that’s all we need to hear. But this study is about cached language and automatic responses in low-stakes situations of inconvenience, NOT high-stakes sales situations.
I'm still going to use "because." Because it’s the right thing to do when it’s real.
I say to ads clients, “Take your time with this decision because it’s a big deal and it’s important you choose the person that’s right for your business.”
I’m NOT ever going to say, “Hire me because I’m the best.” “Because I can guarantee results.” “Because you’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
BECAUSE the word carries power.
Check your copy. Are you using it in ways that feel good? Because it matters.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

Jun 9

May 23

Open

By the time we start Kindergarten, we've downloaded and assimilated HALF the major framework we will ever have for understanding and communicating in the world.
What?!
The average English-speaker has an active vocabulary of 20,000 words. (English words in active use number over 171,000). Another 20,000 words make up our passive vocabulary - words we know exist and recognize, but never use.
As tiny humans, we absorb the history of these words (without understanding it), their baggage (without recognizing it), and their context (without questioning it) before we can even write a word.
Language acquisition means learning HOW words are used.
But rarely WHAT they mean - or WHY.
Eager to change yourself or the world around you?
Start With the Words.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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May 18

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Every day, we attempt an action that is both utterly commonplace - and technically, ostensibly impossible.
We endeavor to move a thought from our minds into a space where someone else can hear - and hopefully participate in it.
We set out to move the ideas "in here" ... "out there."
TODAY, like all the days before, we will attempt to communicate.
We will open our mouths to speak - or put fingers to a keyboard - in an attempt to answer the call to "put ourselves out there."
But the cursor blinks. The tongue stalls. The heart SINKS.
Will I say it right? Will they get what I mean? Will they understand?
Communicating is H A R D.
It's not you. It's the words.
Before us lies the ACHING space between what we want to say and what we will say. The awe-ful gap between what we mean and what is heard.
So we reach for the flawed-most-powerful-and-only tool at our disposal. The words we have practiced and trained in since birth.
The lumbering, speeding train onto which we are born.
Words both inherited and acquired.
Language familiar and still strange.
At once beautiful and terrible.
Infinite and yet always inadequate.
At the heart of One Word - this effort you and I are taking to re-examine the words we use - is this question:
Can we TRUST these words?
IS this navigating the aching gap?
ARE we communicating?
That's the word, nerd.
*Join me for more word adventures - link in bio.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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May 3

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I am 45 today! For my IG Birthday wish, I'd like to know ... YOUR favorite word. Throw 'em in the comments - and tell me why you it's your fave <3!
Photo @callynthphotography
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Apr 26

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Healthy lifestyle, diet, finances, parenting style, portfolio, routine, balance, mental state, marriage ...
There's no shortage of folks telling (and selling) us what's healthy in every category of our lives. Defining and marketing this particular word is big business because health is presented to us both as a) a social requirement, and b) something elusive, changing, and always just outside our reach.
Use of the word 'healthy' in marketing relies upon its nebulous nature. In other words, it shifts the responsibility of definition from the writer to the reader. From the marketer to the consumer. Because, in the absence of meaning, we will summon an array of socio-cultural norms to fill the vacuum.
Words like 'healthy' (and fit and wellness and well-being) are not DEFINING health. They are naming whatever is the current, dominant construct of health.
It's why products from radium to cocaine could at one time be marketed as "healthy." It's why veganism and meat-only diets can make identical claims to "health."
The message is: 'You know that ideal of health that is most dominant in our culture right now? This product/method will get you that.'
The Health At Every Size (HAES) and body-positive movements as a whole make this linguistic distinction crystal clear.
Their use of the word 'health' explicitly understands how the word functions in the minds of consumers - and turns it on its head. It's message: 'You know that ideal of health that is most dominant in our culture right now? It's making a LOT of assumptions. It's leaving out a lot of people. And damn it, it may just be wrong.'
Think there's not a moral imperative in this word? 150 years ago, the adjective-in-use wasn't healthy.
It was GODLY.
That's the word, nerd.
*This is a much-abbreviated version of the full entry of the latest edition of 'One Word' - a series to re-examine and re-invent the received language of business & marketing. Join the list to get it first - or explore the archives at laraeastburn.com.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword
#linguistics #haes

laraeastburn

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Apr 6

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Here's a word that has always irked me in a marginally grating way, like a dripping faucet.
I don't hate it, exactly. I get the gist. But there's something about it that doesn't sit quite right in my ears - or in my mouth.
The way we use "monetize" in the marketing/business sense today entered our language just under 20 years ago. Like so many words quickly adopted for a digital world that exploded nearly overnight - it is BORROWED from elsewhere.
In this edition of One Word, you'll find out when, where, and how "monetize" reared its odd head online. WHY I predict it won't be around for much longer ... and what it all has to do with the tale of Rumpelstistkin (what?).
If you're subscribed, it's already in your inbox. If you're not, I'd L-O-V-E for you to join me for adventures in re-examining the received language of business and marketing!
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Mar 16

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The latest WORD is r e l e a s e d.
Do you find yourself cringing at the thought of a 'launch?" Use it even though it doesn't feel quite right somehow?
In this edition of One Word, I propose an alternative.
It took me more than 2200 characters to lay this one out. So if you're subscribed, it's already in your inbox. If you're not, I'd L-O-V-E for you to join me for adventures in re-examining the received language of business and marketing.
The link is in the bio. You'll receive a couple words a month - or thereabouts.
Because no amount of marketing matters if we don't know what we're saying (and why we're saying it)!
Thank you to @circlewithheather for suggesting 'Launch!"
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

Mar 15

Mar 2

Open

I've been reading the publications of E. St. Elmos Lewis since running across him when researching the 'Funnel' post. I'm more than a little fascinated by these first documented musings on modern advertising.⁣
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As I cracked open 1908's "Financial Advertising," I was bemused to see that the first page, even before the preface, is blank except for 3 lines. ⁣
⁣
They are a sentence from later on in the book, but here printed as though they were poetry.⁣
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And indeed they are.⁣
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#speakhumanwintheinternet⁣⁣
#adsthatmatter⁣⁣
#marketwithmeaning ⁣⁣
#responsiblemarketing ⁣⁣
#sustainablemarketing⁣⁣
#startwiththewords⁣⁣
#businesslinguistics⁣⁣
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Feb 25

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"There's really no such thing as a funnel," I say again on a sales call. "There MIGHT be a COLANDER." ⁣
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"Funnel" is shorthand at best. It's the word businesses use to mean the 'path' (or 'journey') a potential client takes from learning about a product/service to the of purchase.⁣
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At worst, "funnel" is jargon. A phrase so overused it's been emptied of any meaning at all. A word we use when we don't actually know what we're talking about. ⁣
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Today "funnel" is employed as a one-word placeholder for a series of automated systems prescribed to lead a client along the aforementioned 'journey' with the least possible effort.⁣
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In our digital world, it signifies an iterative FORMULA - a series of processes, a series of mouse clicks - that ends with the typing of a credit card number & clicking the 'submit' button.⁣
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Hence, the funnel has now also often come to mean whatever is necessary to guide the consumer to arrive at that final click. In this way, the funnel is still forced to consider - to the degree required to arouse & amplify - the motivations of the human behind the clicking. Enter the age of deep-dive psychology into creating and amplifying human desire. ⁣
⁣
I plunged willingly down a veritable rabbit hole researching ol' St. Elmo Lewis. I'm more than a little obsessed, maybe even be a bit smitten. This dude was EPIC.⁣
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He was the first (documented) person to think about the customer's experience in consuming - attempting to define the emotional states one goes through when contemplating a purchase.⁣
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For the first theoretician of advertising, the customer was so important that he amended what followers later called the AIDA formula (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) to include (by 1911) SATISFACTION.⁣
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In other words, for the first modern post-Snake-Oil-Era advertisers, & for decades after them, the end of the funnel was not the purchase, but the customer's HAPPINESS with the purchase.⁣
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Now that's a whole different funnel, ain't it? I'd wager it doesn't look like a funnel AT ALL.⁣
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#speakhumanwintheinternet⁣
#adsthatmatter⁣
#marketwithmeaning ⁣
#responsiblemarketing ⁣
#sustainablemarketing⁣
#startwiththewords⁣
#businesslinguistics⁣
#oneword

laraeastburn

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Feb 4

Open

Y'all ... I am an insatiable fan of speculative fiction. My Kindle and I have been chewing through tomes for years. In 2013, in an effort to weed out the shoot-em-up space operas that didn't do it for me, I started reading (mostly) woman and non-binary scifi authors. Ah, much better.
While diving into the worlds and words of these, I, like many white folk, stumbled unawares into the mind of Octavia Butler. She was the first black scifi author I'd ever read ... and I was BLOWN AWAY. These were themes that I desperately wanted - nay, needed - in my reading. I completed her oeuvre over a year or so.
And then took it on as a mission to read and immerse myself in every single speculative fiction ever written by a black woman. That led me of course to the incomparable NK Jemisin. Then to the mind-blowing work of Nnedi Okorafor (@nnediokorafor). And next to the magic of Nalo Hopkinson (@nalohop).
I have spent the last 4 years with these 4 authors (and the YA from Tomi Adayemi @tomiadeyemi). Black American, Carribean, and African Speculative fiction actively shape and inform my worldview. In ways that introduce me to worlds new-to-me both here on this planet, in this time - and in those they imagine.
As I wrap up Okorafor's latest, I'm making my list for 2021 (and likely much beyond). And what a list it is! Check it:
Tananarive Due @tananarivedue
Andrea Hairston
Karen Lord @drkarenlord
Nisi Shawl
Rivers Solomon @rivers.solomon
Nicky Drayden @nickydrayden
Jennifer Marie Brissett @jennifermariebrissett
Bethany C. Morrow @bcmorrow
Put some #afrofuturism into your #blackhistorymonth, OK? Pick up any one of these authors and prepare to have your world rocked. And, in the words of NK Jemisin, "How Long Til Black FUTURE Month?"
#startwiththewords
#oneword
#blackfuturemonth

laraeastburn

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Jan 30

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Well here's a word that's been on my shit list for quite some time. Mainly because it's SOOOO masculine, keeping close company with the testosterone-filled verbs that always make my eyes roll - y'know, dominate/destroy/eradicate ...
I was in my first feminist theory course when I first began learning about how patriarchal structures were designed to pit women against one another. My reaction went something like, "Well, fuck that!" 'Cause, y'know, I'm super classy.
Bam. I resolved to NEVER again compete with another human outside of Scrabble (where I clearly rule, so board games don't count).
When, in my 14-years of running an adult-sized hula hoop business, there was an explosion of other hoop makers, that resistance to competition came in handy. Each of us was working to spread the joy of hooping to more people. Why would I want to compete with them? Instead I focused on improving my product, expanding the way you could use it, and excelling at customer service.
Along the way, I got really, really good at Facebook Ads. So I hosted 2 conferences for all hoop makers where we shared what we learned throughout the years about running and marketing a hooping business.
And that's how my current business was born. The way from there to here (truly finding my calling as an ads expert who helps wonderfully weird businesses do their thang) for me was by REFUSING TO COMPETE.
In English (early 1600s), it's pretty much always meant rivalry. But its Latin root didn't mean that at all. Rather, competere meant to "strive together" - (com- with, and petere, strive/aim). Its likely earliest meanings were in sports and even in war - as in the coming together to fight a common adversary.
So, once upon a time, "competition" meant to work together towards a common goal.
We are right now, right here COMPETING - 'striving together' - in the Latin sense of the term on several fronts.
Americans are competing for the soul of our country. Conservationists are competing for the future of our planet. Advocates for equity are competing for how the most vulnerable of our populations will be treated going forward.
But competition in our businesses? Not for me.
#startwiththewords

laraeastburn

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Jan 7

Open

In the wake of yesterday's white supremacist insurrection in the U.S., 'supremacy' is the word I want to re-examine today. And yes, it has everything to do with the language of business.
In English 'supremacy' has meant 'white supremacy' in one way or another from the moment England claimed its first overseas territories.
Supremacy technically means - the condition of being highest in rank, authority or power. It literally signifies DOMINION. CONTROL.
But it has almost never been used in exactly that way.
In English, 'supremacy' refers exclusively to God and/or the Pope. Until 1534. When it is officially used to transfer power to - and in defense of - the English monarch as head of church and state.
And then promptly after in the late 1500s in defense of its first claims overseas, where overt economic plundering begins to be translated as 'bringing civilization' to 'lesser peoples.'
By 1684, that defense is actively and exuberantly extended to "scientific" justifications (now called scientific racism) for institutional, colonial racism in the forms of physical anthropology - and a host of pseudo-disciplines that culminate in eugenics.
In other words ... "supremacy" NEVER appears in our language to declare power. It is the word men use after power is secure in order to justify power gained through economic, religious, or military force.
So in my estimation, the claim of supremacy can never have meant 'inherent superiority.' If it did, it could not be threatened.
Rather, supremacy means "We're in control and we want to stay that way."
Fuck White Supremacy.
That's the word, bird.
#speakhumanwintheinternet
#adsthatmatter
#marketwithmeaning
#responsiblemarketing
#sustainablemarketing
#startwiththewords
#businesslinguistics
#oneword

Speak Human, Win The Internet.

We exercise responsibility in marketing through linguistic precision, social awareness, and radical inclusivity. Lara Eastburn is a Facebook & Instagram Ads specialist for smaller business & non-profits.