Business For Superheroes Podcast Transcription: Episode Eleven- Let's Talk About Anti-language and Secret Language *In an industry stuffed with marketing bullshit, empty promises and shiny-suited liars, one woman’s had enough. She knows what it’s like to have the wrong clients, no money and no time for fun, but she also knows how to fix it, and, on the Business For Superheroes show, she promises to tell the down and dirty truth about business, sales and running away with the circus! Here’s your host: Vicky Fraser…* Vicky : Hello and welcome to the Business For Superheroes Show. I’m Vicky Fraser, your host, and this is Joe Fraser, also a host. Joe : Kind of. Hello! Vicky : Hello! Joe : Smooth. Vicky : I thought so. So this week we’re drinking damson gin - homemade, Cedar Tree Farm, damson gin. Joe : We didn’t distill the gin though. We bought the cheapest gin we could find. Vicky : No that’s not true, it wasn’t the stripy Sainsers own gin. Joe : It wasn’t far off. Vicky : It was Sainsbury’s very high quality, London gin. But the damsons have made really nice damson gin. Joe : It does, it’s nice. [Glasses clink] Vicky : Cheers. Joe : Cheers. Vicky: Right, we need gin frankly, I have to say, because we are still in the process of buying a house and sorting mortgages out and today was like, “Oh my god” because I spoke to the mortgage company and they said, “Oh yes, you just need to find another £11,000”. Joe : Now. Vicky : Now. And we were like, “Oh shit”. Anyway, it’s doable but we’ve got an amazing mortgage broker on the case and it might all be fine. I mean it will all be fine anyway. Joe : It will all be fine, we can find the money if we really have to but we might just be eating beans for the next few months. Vicky : We will be living in the town of beans upon toast. So this week we’re talking about anti-language because I read this really cool article last week, wasn’t it? Well I made you read it. Joe : You did. Vicky : About Polari, which is-- Do you remember Will o’ the Wisp? Joe : Yes, Kenneth Williams and all that. Vicky : “Ooh Matron!” Was that Kenneth Williams? Joe : That wasn’t Will o’ the Wisp that was-Vicky : No, obviously that wasn’t Will o’ the Wisp. Joe : Will o’ the Wisp was a children’s programme. Vicky : Yes it was, with Evil Edna. Will o’ the Wisp was ace. Joe : But the “Ooh Matron” stuff was the Carry On films. Vicky : But that was Kenneth Williams right? Joe : He was in both Will o’ the Wisp and many Carry On films, yes. Vicky : And he did the “Ooh Matron” thing? Joe : Was that not Frankie Howard? Vicky : Oh possibly, but Frankie Howard talked using the Polari-- Way back in the day, in the 1950s, Kenneth Williams and his colleagues brought into respectable, middle class living rooms gay slang. Joe : Gay slang. Vicky : Which is awesome. And he did it through the medium of Polari which is an anti-language. This article was about anti-language and it was really, really interesting and really-Joe : Is there are link on the website? Vicky : Ooh I could put a link, yeah I will put a link on the podcast website, that’s a good idea. Thank you Joe. I’ll put a link to the article on the website. Polari had been a language that flourished just after Oscar Wilde’s trial. History fans, I’m a massive fan of Oscar Wilde, I love, love, love his stuff and in case you don’t know much about Oscar Wilde, he got arrested and imprisoned for being gay. Joe : Was he not messing around with the Marquess of Queensbury’s son? Vicky : Well possibly, he had a very close friendship with somebody important. Joe : A boxing fella, he wasn’t such a gentle character. Took him to court. Vicky : Oscar Wilde went to prison. If you ever read - not transcripts because they didn’t do transcripts back then, but the accounts of his trial, Oscar Wilde is hilarious and I’m actually surprised that he didn’t get punched repeatedly because he was so rude to people. He was rude to stupid people which I think is okay. After his trial Polari became quite popular because gay men wanted to be able to talk to each other without being put in prison. Joe : Understandable. Vicky : Understandable and reasonable really. So between his trial up to about 1967, when the Sexual Offences Act came in, it was very popular. Then Kenneth Williams popularised it again, particularly during his radio show which was hilariously called, Round The Horne, which just makes me giggle like a schoolgirl really because it’s funny. The characters would come on and say stuff like, “Why it’s Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek again”. Which pretty much sounds like gibberish and most people wouldn’t have understood it except-Joe : Except for those in the know. Vicky : Except for those in the know, and everyone else would have just thought it was saucy gibberish. Actually what that means is, “How good it is to see your pretty old face again”. Joe : It sounds like what it says. Vicky : It kind of does yes, but I think back in the day people were quite naive about stuff that was on telly. They never would have thought that the good old Beeb would have put this horrific gay slang on the tellybox, or on the radiobox. Joe : So is this the point where it was all - I mean not the BBC obviously-Clearly the whole Oscar Wilde, illegality thing (which is ridiculous in itself but hey, thankfully we’re past that now). But with Frankie Howard and all of that lot, were they breaking the law? Vicky : Well in the 50s they were, yeah. Joe : Was it in the 50s? When did they repeal it? Vicky : I think that’s the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, I think. But even if they weren’t breaking the law it was-Joe : It was still pretty risque stuff. Vicky : It was pretty risque stuff to do. But there are secret languages all over the place and you, dear listener, you probably hear them all over the place now. In fact you do, if ever you hear teenagers talking and you think they’re talking nonsense then they’re probably not talking nonsense, it’s probably just that you’re listening to a secret anti-language. There’s loads of them. Cockney rhyming slang is one. Going up the apples and pears. Joe : Does anybody really talk like that? Vicky : I think so. Joe : Really?! Vicky : Yeah. But we do talk like that, having a word in your shell like. That’s not, strictly speaking, Cockney rhyming slang. And other people say, without a trace of irony, do you Adam and Eve it? I think they may be Mockneys though. Joe : Sounds like it. Vicky : But Cockney rhyming slang was actually a thing and I love it, it makes me laugh, it’s great. Then there’s other languages, thieves and outlaws spoke a secret language called Cant, which was designed so they could tell each other about the hot prospects, I guess, without the authorities knowing what was going on. Joe : Communicating in pubs without getting arrested. Vicky : Put your chocolate cake in your Penelope. [Laughs]. They’re words that I’ve just strung together that I think if I’d put them together in a proper order might have meant something to a thief. There’s marks on pavements isn’t there, outside people’s-- Joe : So they say, like tramps marks. There was a similar thing back in the day when WiFi was new and it was called something really silly like “War driving”, which was when you stuck your laptop in your car and you covered lots of ground looking for WiFi networks. There were a specific set of chalk marks that would be on walls and pavements and things that meant, “There’s unsecured WiFi here, you can get on the internet for free!”. Vicky : Seriously? I’ve never heard of that before. Joe : Yeah, it’s true. Vicky : But that would be based on the vagrant marks though, wouldn’t it, because there’d be little marks on gates and things that say, “This person is friendly and they’ll give you a cup of tea”, and “Don’t go to this door because there’s an angry dog”, and “The people here are mean”, and “These people go away a lot, you can steal from them”. Not that I’m saying that all vagrants are thieves because they’re not at all. Joe : It’s just communicating something to a specific set of people, isn’t it? That’s not common knowledge. Vicky : Yeah and it’s really cool. Kids do it as well. Did you have a secret language when you were a kid? Joe’s the youngest of six, in case you didn’t know , and I can’t imagine they went through their childhood without. Joe : There were secret languages but being the youngest I was very put upon and the secret languages were done by other people, I was just outside, crying on my own. Vicky : [Laughs] This is a perfect illustration of what the point of this podcast is, that we’ll get to in a bit. These secret languages are all about in-groups, they’re all about communicating with specific groups of people. Slaves had specific languages that they would use to communicate with other slaves, in a similar way to how gay men would communicate because they didn’t wanted to be punched or put in prison. Poor Joe doesn’t remember his secret language, he was just on the outside. Joe : I was just a victim of the secret languages. Vicky : But me and my brother and our friends used backslang - which is just saying words backwards -and some of Polari was backslang. Actually it was drawn from all kinds of interesting languages. It was drawn from Yiddish and Cockney rhyming slang and Pig Latin and Lingua Franca - which I’m going to have to do a bit more research into because that’s just a made up language that people could communicate in around the Mediterranean. So we used backslang and also obby dobby, do you remember obby dobby? Joe : No! Vicky: So obby dobby would be like, “Wobelcome tobo dobbybobusiness fobor subooperhoberoes” [Laughs]. Joe : Shobo. Vicky : Shobo. I was basically sticking the word “ob” in front of words that start with a vowel, and after the consonant when they started with a consonant. So if you got fluent in it you could have conversations that, to grown-ups, would just sound like gobbledegook but kids would be able to understand. There’s loads of little secret languages out there. There’s a whole language based on putting “izzle” at the end of-- foshizzle ma nizzle. Joe : Not just you? Vicky : Not just me, no. We have languages now as well. I remember one of the text messages you sent to me not long after we started going out, I asked if you could go to Sainsers on the way home and you replied to that text with, “What the fuck is a Sainser?!” Sainsers is short for Sainsbury’s and you know that now. Joe : Well it is now. Vicky : But before-- Yeah, I loved that, that was one of my favourite texts ever from you, “What the fuck is a Sainser?!” We call the cats weasels and when Noodle is feeling particularly lovey dovey he has the turbocuddles. and what else do we say? We put “tron” on the end of quite a lot of stuff. Joe : You put “tron” on the end of quite a lot of stuff. Vicky : Well, you know. The point about this is, we sound like lunatics to quite a lot of people but it’s our own, secret language. You’ll probably have words that you’ll use in your household that other people won’t understand, so a lot of people have words for the remote control. We used the call it the button. Joe : The doofer. Vicky : The doofer? I was trying to think of a load of examples because we do use lots of funny words that other people wouldn’t understand but when I was actually trying to think of them I couldn’t think of any except for “tron”. Joe : Everything’s a “tron”. Vicky : Everything’s a “tron”, Noodletron. So I would like you, dear listener, to consider this: how many people do you know would genuinely, honestly, truthfully, with no trace of irony, say things like, “We’re solutions driven and we always aim to take things to the next level”. And how many of your clients want to be “incentivised” . Here’s a hint: none of them do. How many of your clients want you to “action” something for them? Here’s a hint: none of them do! Joe : None of them. Vicky : None of them. Well if they’re a dickhead they might I suppose. Joe : They might. It’s like projecting some kind of self-image thing isn’t it? Bad, bad language. Vicky : People do it to make themselves-- Like utilise, I can’t stand it when people say utilise, just fucking say use! Joe : Or in the house world, the language that estate agents use when they’re describing houses, oh my god. The accommodation comprises… Vicky : Oh and sometimes they say comprises of, which is one of those things that really winds me up. Joe : So the cat is looking very interested in Vicky’s gin and now she’s coming to have a look at my gin. No, no gin for the cat. Vicky : Have a think, seriously have a think about how people in your target market use language. If you’re a copywriter you need to pay particular attention to how your clients, customers, talk. well if you’re any type of a business owner you need to pay attention to how -- If I was going to try and attract estate agents as a copywriter then I might say “comprise of” and-Joe : My product offering comprises of. [Laughter] Vicky : But even then I wouldn’t because when you talk to an estate agent in real life they actually sound like people. They don’t talk like that. Joe : Why do they do it? Vicky : I don’t know, I think it’s insecurity. I think because they know people hate them which, by the way, is really unfair because all of the estate agents that we’ve dealt with buying our house, have been nothing less than superb haven’t they? They’ve been really, really good. Be nicer to estate agents, people! I think they get all insecure and then they use words like accommodation comprises of. And they misuse other words, and they don’t need to. Joe : In need of renovation. In need of updating generally means it hasn't got a roof. Vicky : It’s a complete shithole. Oh my god, go and find a really good book called Brothel in Pimlico, which was written by a guy who wrote really honest estate agents reviews and it’s really funny because if the place was actually falling down - and he was more polite than me because this was in an age when people swore less - but he would say things like, “This place is a shiithole and it’s falling down”. In fact I’ll go and get it and read one out. Joe : Amuse yourselves for just a moment while Vicky rummages on the bookshelf. Vicky : Okay, it’s Brothel in Pimlico by Roy Brooks - I’m going off on a slight tangent here but I think it’s worth it. Well decorated poet and soldier and alleged female spy offer their desirable family residence off Putney Hill as they are going to live in a kiln. Drawing room, doors to rather lovely garden, well-stocked with fruits and lilies of the valley, big study, somewhat gloomy dining room, big warm bathroom, kitchen, five bedrooms. Gift at £5,990 freehold. That price will give you a clue as to when this book was written by the way. Joe : Five bedrooms, Pimlico, sounds great. Vicky : Yeah, can you imagine? It would be more like five million now. But that’s the kind of thing he wrote. I’m going to get sidetracked so I’m going to put that down. He was speaking in the language of the people he was trying to sell his houses to and he was truthful about it. It wasn’t like, “In need of some renovation” it was like, “This place is a craphole and it needs sorting out”. Or “The roof’s falling off”, or “This place used to be a brothel”, which is where the title of the book came from. Go and listen to your clients, listen to how they talk to each other, and how they think. This is really important because English people think in English, Japanese people think in Japanese, and car mechanics think in terms of car parts, and vision engineers think like robots. [Laughs] Joe : Easy! Harsh. Vicky : It’s true though. Joe : I did a robot vision thing just this week. Vicky : Did you? And you were thinking in terms of… Joe : Robots. Vicky : Robots and targeting. Joe : Robots and targeting. It was great. It was really nice, most of the work I do I’m stood in a factory with my laptop balanced on, if I’m lucky, a wheelie bin. Vicky : Health and safety! Joe : With 100 decibels of Pot Noodles or whatever it is crashing around me. Vicky : Other potted snacks are available. Joe : But this was great because it was in an office and I had a table and a chair! A chair, can you imagine! An engineer with a chair, it was brilliant. So I sat down and did some stuff, it was the nicest day I’ve had in ages. Sorry, carry on! Vicky : That’s a little bit tragic. [Laughter] Vicky : so think about how your target audience is going to talk, think about how they think, because new grandmas think in baby speak, you know they’re like, “Who’s a cute little boy?!”. Also people who own cats, that’s how they think as well. I don’t do that… I’m a circus performer sometimes and I’m often, when I see something, I think, “How could my body do that?”, “What would work?”, and “How could I do that trick?”, and “How does that trick work?”, and “That person’s walking really strangely”. You’ve got to get into your-Joe : Why has that person got rope burns all over them?! Vicky : Yeah, if you ever see somebody - this is really funny because when you learn a new move in pole or circus, you end up covered in bruises because you fall off things and the equipment is hard. I remember walking around in summer once in shorts and a vest top and somebody actually stopped me and said, “Are you okay? Do you need help to get away from somebody?”. I was absolutely covered in bruises and I did look like I’d been battered. That’s not at all funny but it kind of amused me. Joe : You had a massage as well, and the same kind of thing. Vicky : Oh yeah, the first time I had a sports massage my sports massage guy, who’s awesome, was like, “Are you okay?”. And I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m a circus performer” and he was like, “Oh, okay, fine”. Because he works with ballerinas and people like that. My point with all this is, think about how people think and they language they use, and how it comes into everyday speech as well. If, for example, your ideal customer was a surfer dude or a skateboarder then there’s a very specific language that these people use, even outside of the surfing and the skating, Like “gnarly” is a surfing term, isn’t it? Joe : Dude. Vicky : Dude, yeah. Everybody says “dude” now but it started off as a surfing term. And “gnarly” was a snowboarding term wasn’t it? Joe : Don’t ask me! Vicky : You snowboarded a bit. Joe : I bought a cheap snowboard on eBa y and fell off it a lot, that doesn’t make me a snowboarder. Vicky : Okay, but you are aware of the fact that people in these groups have their languages. Joe : Absolutely. Vicky : And their vocabularies and their dialects and it spills over. If you listen to it, you can use it. Don’t sound like a dick because you have to be careful about how you do it, you don’t want to just dive in and go, “Oh this is really gnarly, what what”. [Laughs] Joe : I say, old chap! [Laughter] Vicky : Shall we go over here and hang ten?! I’ve surfed a few times and that’s it, I don’t have the language down. Joe : You do not.You don’t really have the surfing down either. Vicky : How very dare you! I was very good. Joe : Were you? Yeah, you were. Vicky : I didn’t siphon half of the Pacific ocean through my head like you. Joe : I am pretty much sure I did sluice the Pacific ocean through my sinuses. Vicky : Go and listen to people and really listen, don’t join in the conversation but go and listen to how your target audience are talking. Hang out in the chatrooms they hang out in, forums, wherever. Join the social media groups, listen to them and then you can start using the language. Not in a douchey way but pick up the phrases that they use to describe their problems and their pain and couch your marketing in those terms. Use the words that they use because that’s what’s going to resonate with them. You will become, instead of being an outsider trying to push your wares on them, you’ll become somebody who’s part of the group, who understands them, and who understands their pain and their problem. It’s a really powerful thing, and if you’re in any doubt at all as to how powerful it is I’m going to give you two examples. Starbucks is the first one, I remember when I first went into Starbucks I didn’t have a fucking clue what they were talking about. Joe : Yeah you go, “Can I have a coffee please?”. My parents still do that, walk into Starbucks and ask for a coffee. Vicky : I deliberately do it because I’m an arse. You go in and they’re talking about Grandes and Talls and Venti Half-Caf Vanilla Latte. Joe : Skinny, Skinny Half-Caf Latte. Vicky : You go in and it does sound like they’re talking a different language if you’ve never been there before. It’s a risky thing to do if you’re a small business that’s growing because to create a language like that is a risky thing to do. But it works for Starbucks because their die-hard fans love them, and you know, I like Starbucks as well. Well I don’t think Starbucks is evil. They’ve built this language that their customers use and love, and it’s like a tribal thing. They didn’t just get big because they created their own language but they’ve become this global force, from one coffee shop they’ve become this global force partly because they’ve built this tribe of people. it’s really important and language is incredibly important for building a tribe. Joe : Yes rather than learn the tribe’s language to fit in, they’ve created a tribe. Vicky : I’m not suggesting you do that because that’s a crazy thing to do and it just takes too long for people to learn it. Once you’ve got to the size of Starbucks then you can start feeding that in. But another really powerful example of building your tribe and listening to people, and what they care about, is Donald Trump. He is an odious oompa loompa but by god he’s an amazing marketer. I mean who is he? He’s a bloody reality TV star and golf club owner and resort owner who is in serious running for President of the United States. Which is a little bit horrifying but it’s also - I’m not going to get into a debate about Donald Trump - really impressive if you think about what he’s done and accomplished. He’s got no background in politics, all he has done is listened to people. He’s listened to the people on the far right, who aren’t very bright - actually that’s not true, it’s not that they’re stupid, a lot of them are stupid but it’s not even that they’re stupid, it’s because he’s listened to the things that they’re worried about and they’re frightened about, and he’s played on those fears. This, by the way, is what people like David Avocado fucking Wolfe do as well. They listen to what people are worried about and then they prey on those fears and they extract money from people. Donald Trump has done the same thing. They’re both very savvy marketers these people. Joe : They know who they’re after. Vicky : They know who they’re after and that’s how they make their money but they do it through lying. They are lying but they include just enough truth in their lies to make them sound credible to the people that are frightened, that they are trying to persuade, in Trump’s case to vote for him. In David Wolfe’s case to buy his overpriced, supplementary shit - some of it is probably literally shit. Joe : I wouldn’t be surprised. Vicky : If you want to get better at marketing, watch what Donald trump is doing. In all seriousness, watch what he’s doing, watch what he’s done with his campaigns, how he interacts with his tribe because they are his tribe. It’s not only horrifyingly fascinating, it’s also a really good marketing lesson. You could do very well as well by watching how televangelists extract billions of dollars out of vulnerable, frightened, credulous people. Joe : Here at Business For Superheroes we’re not advocating bending the jelly-brains for your own nefarious purposes, we’re not hollowing out volcanoes over here. Vicky : No, not at all. My point is there are people using these powers for evil and I’m suggesting look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Joe : Fight them. Vicky : Also I’m assuming that everybody that’s listening to this podcast is not an evil villain and has got a good product that is going to help people solve a problem. Joe : If you are an evil villain, stop listening now. Vicky : Yeah, stop it and stop being evil. But if you are a good person and you’ve got a good product, and I would hope you do, then look at the techniques that people like Donald Trump and these other shady marketers are using because they’re very, very good at what they do, and there’s a lot to be learned there. I don’t subscribe to this belief that because somebody is bad you can’t learn anything from them. That’s bollocks. You can learn plenty from bad people, if nothing else how not to live your life. Look at the successful people who have done bad things and see what they’ve accomplished. Televangelists, by the way, are a great, great, great topic to study, not just because it will make you go, “Oh my god, what’s wrong with you people?!” And, “Oh my god, why are they so orange?” Because they all are! But also because they are extremely talented at extracting a shitload of money from people. It’s epic business. It is horrible. There’s a really good late show about televangelism. Joe : Yeah, I’ve seen that. Vicky : It’s really, really good. What’s his name, John...? Joe : I don’t know! Vicky : Just look at the late, late show televangelism episode because it’s a real eye-opener. The guy started his own religion, because you can. Joe : And then started using the same techniques just to extract money from people and it worked. Horrible. Vicky : So there you go. Really this entire podcast is probably going to land me in jail after what I’ve said about David Avocado Wolfe. I’m not for a second suggesting that Wolfe is doing anything illegal but he’s definitely doing some immoral stuff, I’ve got no problem saying that. If you want to sell stuff learn the language of the people you’re selling to. Get in there, listen to them. Listen to the words they’re using, listen to the phrases they’re using, listen to how they’re describing their pain and their problem, listen to the dialect they use. And then couch your marketing in those terms. Have you got this problem. Here’s your problem, I understand your problem, this is how I’m going to solve it for you. I’m not saying be fake, at all, this is all about building relationships. You should be wanting to insinuate yourself into this tribe of people that you want to sell to because you will serve them better if you do. You will understand them better. So there you go, this has been a bit of a longer podcast. I was going to talk about aspirin and everything but I couldn't find a story in the end so I’m not going to bother now. I might talk about it another time. Ask me about aspirin another time. Joe : I will ask you about aspirin at some random point in a future podcast and watch you flap your gums. [Laughter] Vicky : Excellent,t hanks for that. So next podcast is going to be same time next week, I’m going to be talking about the enduring stupidity of marketing budgets and why you shouldn’t have a marketing budget, or anything resembling a marketing budget. Joe : Awesome. Vicky: Yeah, it’s going to be a good one. What’s my call to action going to be for this one? Buy my book! Yeah. www.businessforsuperheroes.com It’s a good book, and I’m on bloody good reads. Somebody has rated and reviewed my book on Goodreads and has given it five stars, and it’s really exciting because unlike Amazon where everybody gets five stars if they’re just okay. On Goodreads it’s a reader based thing, so if people think you’re really good they’ll give you three stars, and that’s a really good rating on Goodreads. If you get five stars it means you’re fricking amazing. I’ve only got one so far so I’m not going to let my head get too big about it but it made me smile. Joe : It’s nice. Vicky: So if you’ve read my book if you could go and review it on Goodreads that would be great, and if you can not give it one star that would be awesome, but if you really think it was shit give it one star and tell me why. Buy my book and then review it, please. I would really like that. www.businessforsuperheroes.com Really appreciate you guys listening. Joe : Yeah, we had like 800 people or something the other day! Vicky : I know, so exciting. Joe : Mental, I didn’t actually think anyone was listening to this stuff. Vicky : No, we just do it because it’s fun. Joe : Get slightly drunk, chat. Vicky : Thanks for listening guys, really do appreciate it, and we will be back next week. Tatah! Joe : See ya! *Like what you’ve just heard? Tell your colleagues, tell your friends. Send them to http://www.businessforsuperheroes.com/podcast/
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