Hello, everyone! Welcome to our show Tease Your Brain. Today we will talk about brand (品牌) language. When you walk into Starbucks, the world’s biggest coffee chain (连锁店), you may hear a customer speaking a rapid-fire series of descriptions when asking for a drink-half-caf, black, and for the sizes-tall, grande, venti and trenta.
It is a special language, so this morning we have invited Scott, the Starbucks Regional Manager to talk about it. Welcome Scott!
First of all, can you say something about Starbucks language?
Scott: Thanks for inviting me. OK, sure. Our company invented these rules in the booklet, “Make It Your Drink”. It only belongs to Starbucks. We have also trained our baristas (咖啡师) to reply to customers using Starbucks vocabulary.
That is so interesting, Scott! Is Starbucks the only company that uses brand language?
Scott: No. Many companies use this technique. When hungry Californians order a meal at In-N-Out, a burger chain, they need to specify the proportion of cheese slices to patties: a “triple double” means two patties sandwiched between three slices of cheese.
Thank you very much, Scott!
This past week, Tease Your Brain left the studio to ask people’s opinion about brand language. Let’s find out what they said:
A marketing professor: In my book The Language of Branding, I mention that brand language is a brilliant way of enhancing customer loyalty (忠诚). Companies that persuade people to use their own terms create “a sense of belonging and improved loyalty to the brand”. It also enables employees to work more efficiently.
A sociologist: People become part of a “speech community” when they use specialized vocabulary, which creates a feeling of shared values. Every time a company gets a consumer (消费者) to refer to its products using a branded term rather than a general description-whoppers, say, rather than burgers-it is drawing them into its own community. In so doing, it makes them more likely to buy its products in the future.
OK. Now let’s listen to what a customer in Starbucks said.
I heard you order your coffee with the brand language, “no-whip”. So, what do you think of this kind of language?
A customer: I think it helps to create a “tribe ( 群，族)” that members identify with (认同). Take CrossFit. a fitness firm as an example. It has come up with a set of extensive vocabulary— “wod” means “workout of the day”. Using this kind of description, I feel like I am in the CrossFit group.
【小题1】Which of the following belongs to Starbucks language?| A．Wod. | B．No-whip. | C．Whopper. | D．Triple double. |
| A．show a new brand of coffee |
| B．give its baristas a sense of belonging |
| C．get customers to identify with the brand |
| D．provide a place for people to share their values |
| A．To advertise Starbucks’ popular products. |
| B．To talk about the effect of brand language. |
| C．To mark the importance of brand influence. |
| D．To advise more companies to create special terms. |
