Think of a car called Mercedes. Now describe it in one word. Just about everyone says 'luxury' in one form or another. Then think of Volvo. Now think of a word to describe it. Does the word 'safe' come to mind?

What is it about car companies that make them hypnotise the world with a single minded focus? How do they cut through the information garbage to tantalisingly burn one word in our brains? And why does everyone else struggle to achieve the same result?

Kindly ol' Mrs. Brown at school was right. You can't go very far without your grammar. Get the grammar right, the language falls in place and you get understood by everyone. Get it wrong, and you're speaking da Greek!

There is no monopoly of common sense, yet the basics of marketing grammar seem to elude most businesses. Not surprisingly, their customers stay befuddled and confused as ever.

So what is marketing grammar anyway?

Marketing grammar simply focuses on the noun, the verb and the adjective. When you sit down and analyse your brand in great detail, you can assign the grammar to it. That way, not only is your company very clear about what it sells, but your buying public actually defines it down to one word.

One noun. One verb. One adjective.

Let's boogie with the noun!

Let's start with a 'noun.' The noun is the core of the brand definition. For instance, the noun for Mercedes would be 'car' and for Coca-Cola would be 'drink.' Every brand name will throw up a different noun.

How the 'marketing noun' forms the basis of the strategy

The question must then arise: Is 'car' the noun for BMW, Volvo and Mercedes?. Yes and no. The noun is the spice that helps to set the flavour of the curry.

For instance, if you were to choose New Zealand, the noun could be either 'island' or 'country. 'It's still a noun but one conjures up a totally different image from the other thus leading to a completely different thought strategy.

Similarly, BMW has redefined its noun from 'car' to 'machine' and Coke could define their 'drink' as a 'refresher.' This is the building block on which your marketing grammar sits and you've got to make sure you've got it built with high grade concrete.

Painting 'bold', 'expressive' and 'punchy' adjectives

Quick. Name the adjective for Marlboro, Apple Computers, Pepsi, Heineken and Rolls Royce. If you came up with these: Macho, offbeat, young, premium and classy then you're like most of the world.

Each of these brands have tied an adjective to their brand and they own the 'adjective' in their category. So Rolls Royce may own classy in the 'automobile category' but Rolex owns in it the 'watch category' and Armani owns it in 'suits'.

However once they own it, it's theirs to keep. All of their branding gets tied around the 'adjective.' So if you were to use the 'noun' and the 'adjective' in conjunction with each other like say 'ultimate' and 'driving machine' you'd be hard pressed to think of anything but BMW. If I said, 'overnight' and 'delivery' you're basically stuck at Federal Express(where 'overnight' is the adjective and 'delivery' is the noun)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean D'Souza uses age-old psychology, marrying it to modern technology, on his Web site, psychotactics.com. Can "psychological tactics" make a difference? Go there and find out.