Words consumers and firms use can be deal-breakers: INSEAD's Abhishek Borah

The professor and author on why firms have to be strategic in how they communicate to their customers and their counterparts

By Anitha Moosath

Published: Jul 31, 2024 02:04:59 PM IST

Updated: Jul 31, 2024 02:33:25 PM IST

Abhishek Borah, author and associate professor at INSEAD, France

Abhishek Borah is an associate professor at INSEAD, France, and author of Mine Your Language: Influence, Engage, Predict. In an interview with Forbes India, he talks about the immense possibilities language holds for businesses to build competitive disadvantage. Edited excerpts:

Q. How crucial is the role of ‘language’ in business decision-making?

Over and above how it matters in our personal lives, language impacts consumer and business decisions. When we hear a friend talk about their last trip to Zanzibar, we get whisked away and daydream about a vacation. We impetuously reserve seats at a restaurant that has been lauded as the best place to savour Burmese tea leaf salad by one of our office mates.

Firms are attentive to how consumers react to their choice of language. Travel adventure firms in Zanzibar would be eager to know what type of content would push someone to pay $5,000 for a seven-day, all-inclusive trip. Restaurants would yearn to discover what titillates someone’s taste buds so that it gets impossible to find a spot in their restaurant if one doesn’t book two months in advance.

Words that consumers and firms use can be deal-breakers. How firms communicate with their rivals, how consumers speak to each other, how firms listen to consumers, how investors pay attention to firms, and how artists write music for their fans—all these decisions have ramifications and ultimately influence a firm’s performance. They have an impact on consumer attitudes, beliefs, satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately on a firm’s sales, market share, earnings and profits.

Q. How far has technology redefined its impact?

The rise of large language models (LLMs) has the potential to shake up industries, from music to pharmaceuticals to market research. Firms that overlook the exciting possibilities of language will find themselves facing a huge competitive disadvantage, either today or down the road. To gain a lasting advantage, businesses must understand how language is used by consumers, competitors, the media and other stakeholders

Q. What drives virality for a brand?

Our research suggests that IMIs (Improvised Marketing Interventions) using humour and timeliness or humour and unanticipation can substantially drive virality and increase market capitalisation almost immediately at a fraction of traditional advertising expenses. When Luis Suárez, Uruguayan footballer bit Giorgio Chiellini, Italian defender, during the 2014 football world cup, Snickers -- the chocolate bar brand -- posted an image of a half-eaten Snickers bar with the slogan: ‘More satisfying than Italian’. The post generated about 17,700 likes and 1500 comments. Snickers was rewarded with 43,000 retweets in the next twenty-four hours and 38.7 million earned media impressions in two days with no paid media behind it.

Marketing on social media is akin jazz music. Its beauty is not in the expected notes but in improvising using the latest technological tools for swift, agile, and exciting content.

Tips on avoiding social media firestorm…

Do not write messages that are sloppy, mismatched (mismatch between what the firm says it’s positioning is and what the firm does), and out of touch (out of touch with current norms and values)
Do not have a product failure and someone take a video of the failure
Do not displease opinion leaders who have a lot of following on social media

Q. In business communication, can focusing on nuances such as the use of ‘you’ instead of ‘we’ make a difference?

In songs, which is a cultural product and has business outcomes such as song popularity, researchers find that using “you” words in a song’s lyrics whereby the word “you” appears in the object part of a sentence leads a song to become popular. The researchers argue that songs such as “I will always love you”, “Shape of you”, etc. lead people to think of someone in their lives and that leads to a song being listened more thereby increasing the song’s popularity.

Also read: Once a company is customer-centric, it must be frontline-centric: Zeynep Ton

Q. Does vagueness have an upside?

Vagueness alludes to the use of words and expressions in communication, making interpreting it complicated and inexact. Some examples of vague words are ‘about’, ‘around’, and ‘nearly’ before a number to make it less precise; terms like ‘a couple’ and ‘a little’ to refer to undetermined amounts; terms like ‘may’, ‘could be’, ‘perhaps’ and use of phrases like ‘as a matter of fact’, ‘in any event’, ‘as far as’ that transfer the onus on the receiver of the information to make sense of it.

Vagueness has a clear benefit in business. When an incumbent company intentionally uses vague language in its corporate communication, it reduces the probability of a potential entrant entering the market.

Q. How does consumer speak impact business outcomes?

Consumers participate online as they want to build connections, do good to others, and enhance their status or social capital, among various other reasons. People trust other users as they see them as peers and trust the authenticity of their opinions. So, what consumers say about a brand can have significant ramifications. One example is using swear words in online reviews. You might think swear words have no place in business but using swear words seems to increase the helpfulness of online reviews.

Q. How can we spot a fake review online?

There are many markers of a fake review. Based on research, here are some pointers to spot fake reviews for a hotel, for example. Fake reviews contain more future-oriented language, contain too many quotes and quotations, contain emotionally exaggerated language, have exclamation marks, and don’t have exact details about the location of an experience.

Q. How effectively can leaders use language to engage audiences, persuade, and drive action?

Researchers have found that leaders who are charismatic tend to use a certain type of language. Potential leaders can see the patterns of such language usage and use it to engage audiences and drive action. For example, in his speeches, Barack Obama tried to speak to all, and carefully and eloquently expressed his vision using the words from each of the eight dimensions of what a charismatic leader epitomises. He engaged with his followers, and followers engaged with him. As one of his followers said, Obama used words like ‘everybody’, ‘each’, and ‘ourselves’ to make his audience feel he was on the same level playing field as them, was familiar with their lives and backgrounds, and showed a keen human interest in their lives. Indeed, his listeners felt that Obama was like them.

Q. Consumer privacy is at stake even as companies cull data from the digital traces we leave behind. What can firms do to reduce privacy concerns?

Firms that are transparent about how the company uses customer data and that give customers a high degree of control over their data can reduce privacy concerns. Firms that provide both high transparency and high control to their consumers can best mitigate the damage to their market value when they undergo a breach. Let’s consider the American multinational investment bank, Citigroup. When Citigroup had a data breach, we found it offered both low transparency and low control. Based on our data and analysis, because of this, it exacerbated damages when the breach occurred, resulting in a loss of $836 million in market value. If Citigroup had high transparency and control, it would have endured a loss of only about $16 million.