What is concrete language?
This week I heard Alistair Campbell repeat the fact that the UK’s army (74,400 people) could fit inside a football stadium. I think the stadium in question is Old Trafford (capacity 74,879), the home of Manchester United. Even if you’ve never been there, you may be able to visualise it – or at least visualise a large football stadium. Yes, it’s impressively big – but big enough to hold a whole nation’s army?
The purpose of using such language, known as ‘concrete’ language, is to help an audience to grasp what would otherwise be fairly abstract concepts. For example, opponents of a planned new building may describe it as being “as tall as 10 double-decker buses”, or the scale of a new factory might be conveyed using its equivalent size in football pitches. The point is that ‘very large’, or even ‘massive’, is too abstract, but even common measurement scales (such as acres or hectares) are often very hard to visualise.
Humans generally think visually. Information therefore needs to be conveyed in ways that make it tangible. Begg (1972) showed many years ago that people are better at remembering concrete rather than abstract phrases. If you are conveying the services or products that your business provides, don’t describe vague ‘solutions’: be specific about how customers benefit. More recently, research by Packard and Berger (2021) found that customers actually prefer concrete language. When employees talk to customers using concrete language, customers feel more satisfied because they feel listened to. This, in turn, leads to a higher likelihood of purchase.
So, when you consider how to describe the benefits of your brand, consider visual language (perhaps even tangible metaphors and similes), using words that customers can quickly and easily grasp.
Packard, G., & Berger, J. (2021). How concrete language shapes customer satisfaction. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(5), 787-806.
Begg, I. (1972). Recall of meaningful phrases. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 11(4), 431-439.
Photo by Harry Walsh on Unsplash
