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Voice Values How-To

A Plea to the Entrepreneurial Blogosphere: Stop Mimicking A-Listers & Other Brand Idols. Please.

by Abby Kerr

in Voice Values How-To

I saw one again over the weekend. A good friend, an entrepreneurial peer, sent the link to me with some wry commentary. Good Lord, I thought. How bad could it be?

And oh, it was bad. Horribly mortifying to watch, I’d describe it as.

A twenty-something, fresh-faced woman with a coaching business, contorting herself sexily in a video on the home page of her website to the thick, seductive beat of an R+B song. She gestured suggestively, she pulled faces, she stopped to deadpan lines at the camera about contacting her for a free one-on-one consultation session. With total sexual overtones. Swap out the copy scrolling across the screen and you’d almost think it was an online ad for, well — something else.

It was obvious that she wasn’t behaving “naturally.” She was putting on a marketing show that she’d seen play out before, but exaggerating it to the -nth degree, really trying to ‘commit.’ Good Lord was right.

The problem is, if I’ve seen one of these videos this year, I’ve seen fifty.

And for every fifty I’ve seen, there are probably 150 I haven’t seen. And there are probably 500 more women out there wondering how they can get their energy up enough to create something like this for their own site. Something hype-y, sexy, glam-my, and attention-grabbing. Something that says to the world, I’m here. I want you to watch me. I’m committing to my message. I’m a model for what’s possible for you when you embrace all of your gifts and your potential.

Ugh. Because my potential naturally means hair-swinging, lip-pursing, and goofy imitations of women in rap videos.

It’s time somebody says something. Here I am.

What I’m critiquing here in this post is the commonality of self-made marketing videos featuring entrepreneurial-minded women, earnest about building and promoting their work in the world, in which these women are:

  • dancing on video,
  • getting down to sexy club music, hand jiving and “booty popping” {yes, I just typed that phrase on my blog},
  • including a gag reel full of fart jokes,
  • making funny faces at someone ‘off-camera,’ as in, whoops! forgot this thing was on!

You know exactly what I’m talking about. If you read regularly in the entrepreneurial blogosphere or follow links on Twitter to so-and-so’s latest video, you’ve seen plenty of it, too.

First, let me lay out my biases:

  • There is nothing inherently wrong with the marketing style I’m describing. {Though I understand that’s up for debate.}
  • I take no exception to women using overt sex appeal to market their work {although it’s not a tactic I’d use and it’s not one that makes me want to buy}.
  • I take no exception to women or men dancing in marketing videos.
  • I take no exception to gag reels. {Fart jokes . . . eh.}
  • I take no exception to Jester brands workin’ their stuff like they got it. {Because they do.}

But I want you to really understand what you’re looking at here.

What we’re looking at with the proliferation of cutesy, hotsy-totsy marketing videos {most of them made by the under-35 and female set} is a stylistic trend.

It’s naked emulation of a very popular online business personality’s natural, effusive, Jester style as enacted through her marketing videos. Complete with occasionally R-rated humor and lots of sexy, girly energy. {Much of it done tongue-in-cheek.}

This style is so compelling for Very Popular Online Business Personality because it is her personality {or, never having met her, I’d bet it’s one very well-edited element of her personality}. In other words, it’s not a stretch for her; it’s within the range of her everyday behavior.

She doesn’t have to try very hard to make her videos so addictively watchable. {Even if you don’t dig her work, you’re watching her videos every week.} A good camera, a clever director and editor, and she can just bring it. It’s her and it makes her content go viral in the online entrepreneurial community almost every week.

BUT . . . if you are NOT a natural Jester, if you don’t naturally ooze sex appeal and have the ability to rally people around a call to action in a humorous, over the top way {while solidly driving your valid and well-modeled point home at the same time} — then this style is NOT FOR YOU.

Why am I calling out this one style, this one online voice {an expertly well-curated, stylized, and professionally executed voice}, and criticizing its imitators?

Because I see mimickry {unintentional and/or not} running rampant in the online entrepreneurial space. At best, we can chalk it up to naïveté and inexperience, and at worst — it’s an online business marketing travesty, a voice snuffer, and a brand killer.

When you stretch and contort yourself to fit into a marketing style that’s popular and widely applauded, but not at all naturally aligned with YOU when you’re market-ing from your sweet spot, you sell yourself out. And you sell your right people short.

You have a naturally strong style that is totally marketing-worthy. It’s the style that your right people will love and connect with. It’s the style that doesn’t pull the rug out from under your people when they meet with you over Skype for the first time and you’re actually who you portrayed yourself to be.

And it’s very unlikely that your purest, most powerful, and most sustainable marketing style involves bleeped-out swear words. How do I know that without even knowing you? Because only a reasonably small fraction of the online entrepreneurial community would actually swear on video, even if they swear offline in their private lives, or in the comments of other people’s blogs, or in their own blog posts. {Ahem.}

This is not about swearing. It’s not even about the validity of swearing as a conversational technique.

{I happen to think it’s a wildly good one. Just ask my circle of close friends.}

This is about learning to express yourself online, in business channels, in a way that’s clear, compelling, and authentically you. {And that’s one A-word I will use online.}

In the interest of not making this post all preaching and no teaching, here are 3 ideas for how you can swipe the strategy you admire from your online brand idols and keep your own natural vibe intact {and your booty . . . unpopped}.

1. When something or someone online draws your attention, first say I can’t stop watching! I feel a little jealous, or pressured to do something equally interest-grabbing. Then ask yourself, Why?

Your answer might surprise you.

Perhaps it’s not because you actually want to lip sync on camera, maybe it’s because you have your own hidden talents that you haven’t expressed through your brand yet, or because you wish your latest content could get that many RTs, or because you haven’t yet seen a style of video-editing/sales page-writing/navigation menu-naming that impresses you more than this.

The value in knowing why you’re drawn to a certain style? It points you toward what you know is currently lacking in your own brand. {Even if yours will be delivered in a different style.}

2. Ask yourself why the brand creator would deliver such content, in such a place, to such people. Look at the actual format or delivery method this time, the platform {YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.}, and the intended audience, but not the style.

Is the video targeting blog post subscribers? Since a blog is a free information-sharing tool, the intent is to generate shareable content that will help build an audience and spread one’s point of view through the social media space.

Is the content creator asking you to share his content with your networks? Now he’s leveraging your audience for attention.

The takeaway here? All flash serves a purpose. Or at least it should. That’s strategy. And profitable businesses don’t do much that doesn’t serve strategy.

To apply this to your own business, think about your channels: Twitter and Facebook, your site, InstaGram, anywhere else your brand shows up. Who hangs out there? People who know nothing about your brand yet? Your most loyal, rarin’-to-go followers? Develop content to meet their needs in that space and deliver in a style that’s respectful of the relationship you have with them.

3. Notice yourself using your own brand language and being you with your clients. The elements of how you deliver that your right people pick up on — those are clues that point you toward the strongest and most sustainable style and voice for you.

Notice when your people say things like, I love it when you . . ., When you told me X, I was like Yes! That’s it!, I can always count on you to be X, Y, and Z.

The hallmarks of your personality, as they get translated through your brand, are what we call ‘style’ online. You know, as in, She’s got an over-the-top style, or His style is so refreshing.

Developing your own online marketing style is a work in progress, no matter what stage of business growth you’re in.

There’s no judgment on being new {a baby brand} watching and imitating a bigger, larger brand {a more mature brand} that has more reach, platform, followers. Imitation is the first way we learn. But at some point, something’s gotta give. It’s the facade.

With all due respect, I hate to see so many stylistic rip-offs of Very Popular Online Business Personality and other A-List entrepreneurial brands. It’s not serving the imitators, it’s not serving the imitated, and it’s not serving any of our clients to have so many half-baked brand concepts in the space.

Postscript: June 10th, 2012

Since this post was originally published on June 25th, 2012, Marie Forleo, a popular, successful online business personality who is widely imitated, interviewed her friend and fellow “A-Lister” Kris Carr, another voice that many entrepreneurial ladies in the holistic wellness niche find enviable. One of the themes of their conversation? Brand voice mimicry. Check out that part of the conversation here between minutes 14:24 and 18:24. If you liked my post, you’ll dig what they’re saying.

In the comments, I’d love to know . . .

What’s this about? Why do you think there are so many stylistic rip-offs of A-Listers?

And how do we get acquainted with our own strongest and most natural marketing styles?

Let’s keep this convo clean and peaceable and refrain from naming names. This is about having integrity in our own ideas and contributing to a productive conversation about branding and business. Thanks in advance!

{ 76 comments }

On Business Voice & Unintentional Mimicry {& Why the First Iteration of My Web Copy Sounded Like Someone Else}

by Abby Kerr

in Voice Values How-To

Confession time.

{Better listen up. Public confessions are generally not my thing.}

The first iteration of my web copy for Abby Kerr Ink — which was over a year and three iterations ago, in case you were wondering — read nothing like it does now. It wasn’t written in my voice, although I myself wrote it.

It sounded {to my ear, at least} very much like the voice of Sarah J. Bray. Sarah had no clue. At the time, I followed her on Twitter {still do} and had commented a time or two on her blog, but she didn’t know me from Eve. She wasn’t watching for this. She probably didn’t even notice. And at the time, if someone had asked me outright, “Um, does this sound a little like Sarah Bray?” I might’ve said, “Oh, really? You think so? Wow, thanks. That’s a compliment. I love her voice.” But I wouldn’t, at that time, have realized that it was a problem if there were a resemblance. Because we were, after all, in different niches — still are — and our visual brand identities bear no resemblance to one another. My unintentional mimicry of her voice wasn’t a problem until it was. And then I fixed it. And I realized what the hell was going on. And what a really big frickin’ problem it actually is, not just for me, but for you.

What was going on with me when I sat down to write the first version of my site copy over a year ago?

I just copped to it, but in case you missed it, here it is again: unintentional mimicry.

I was unwittingly mimicking the voice, tone, and stylistic features of someone else’s unique writing style.

{I’ve never told Sarah this story before. She’ll be as surprised as I was!}

How did this happen? I’ll tell you in a moment. But first, some backstory and more on what I mean by ‘unintentional mimicry.’

I am a writer. I write across the genres and I write every day. It’s my craft, my mode for understanding the world and my experience of it, and it’s a big part of my identity.

One of the features of the way my writer brain is wired is a hypersensitivity to the nuances of voice.

Holy hell — I often think when reading someone’s latest — this post feels like a mash-up of the last five things this writer read. And how do I know that? The voice is the opposite of a revelation — it’s a re-percolation, like reheating day old coffee, doctoring it with sugar and cream,  and hoping to pass it off in a pinch.

I can hear this wavering, this not-quite-hitting-it-yet note, in my own voice, too, when it’s there. I know when my voice is off and when I’m in a period of synthesizing new information or finding my own language for my ideas. I don’t post during those periods. I’d rather be silent than imitative.

That last bit was not said to stymie you. Frickin’ A, you might be thinking. How am I supposed to go off and write now if I have to watch every word I use?

My answer: write as you. Free you. Sound like you.

What you do have, whether you consider yourself a natural born writer or not, is a voice.

You may not tap into your strongest voice easily through writing. But maybe your voice gets freed through photography or short film. Through cooking or through home styling. Through leading a yoga class or through making handmade goods. Through teaching children or through speaking from intuition. Through marketing a non-profit or through graphic design. Through curating an online boutique or through coaching business owners.

The voice of your creative business, whatever vehicle it comes through, creates the experience your right people have of you, with you, because of you.

The three {of you, with you, because of you} are conflated and that conflation is the most powerful aspect of voice. Your voice is inseparable from you and how you do what you do.

Which is why, when you step out of your voice for a moment or a blog post, or when you go through a period of feeling lost and ungrounded {we’ve all been there}, the whole thing feels wrong to you.

Your voice is as indelibly you in the world as is your fingerprint. It’s unmistakably yours. It passes the test. And anyone can tell from a mile away when you’re moving cleanly in it, or when you’re half-assing it, or when you’re downright faking it.

How mimicry in the digital entrepreneurial space starts.

Mimicry usually starts by imbibing so much of someone else’s voice, through consuming their content like crazy over a period of time, that it comes out your pores and onto the page.

Mimicry happens because you like or love someone else’s stuff, not necessarily because you want to emulate them, exactly.

Mimicry usually originates unintentionally, but the results can look and feel coy or plastic at best, and at worst, insidious.

Now back to me and Sarah and the first iteration of my Abby Kerr Ink web copy.

Here’s how the unintentional mimicry happened: for two months leading up to the launch of my site, I was eating Sarah Bray’s content for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A lot of her content at that time was focused on doing business as a digital entrepreneur and creating your own rules for a lifestyle that supports your work. This was the conversation I needed right then. So I was reading her, plus Danielle LaPorte, plus Copyblogger {interesting mix, I know} for hours a day for weeks on end. I read years’ worth of archives. {I learn well by immersion.} I absorbed nuance, verbal tics, sentence construction patterns, brand language, everything. My brain patterns in the languaging lobe were altered.

And when I sat down to write my own This Is Me and Is This You and Services pages, they came out sounding . . . like Sarah Bray. With a dash of Danielle here and there and plenty of Copyblogger’s best practices thrown in.

Yep, I was ‘doing it right.’ So I thought. My site sounded good. It read well.

Thing was, it just didn’t read like me. And the result of this: I attracted some clients in those early days who weren’t exactly my right people.

They weren’t bad people {nor are they necessarily Sarah’s people, so don’t think that’s what I’m suggesting}, they just were pulled in by something in my copy — and by extension, who they believed I was and how they believed I wanted to relate to them — that was other than the purest, most powerful expression of me, my best work, and how I wanted to be in the world.

All this from too much reading of other people’s stuff, you’re wondering?

It happened to me. And perhaps mine is an extreme case, because I have some serious linguistic absorption tendencies.

For you, unintentional mimicry might look like this:

  • Leaning on someone else’s signature brand language to say what you mean rather than culling your own phraseologie. This is what you’re looking at when you see the same term floating through five or fifteen or twenty-five sites whose content all feels like it attends the same family reunion. The phraseologie was original to one person but others have appropriated it because they like it and it expresses something meaningful to them.
  • Borrowing an entire concept or metaphor from someone else’s business and offering it to your people as if it were original to you. This happens when the content creator a} doesn’t understand intellectual property, or b} creates and ships too quickly after consuming.
  • Openly referencing someone else’s work without giving them attribution, and the result is that newcomers assume the material is original to you. This is usually an oversight, but I’d encourage all bloggers and online content creators to practice some academic-style attribution and link back to your original sources. This is how we build networks of people and ideas.
  • Mimicking speech patterns or ways of referring to an audience. This is usually born out of your great fondness for someone’s voice, or for the way someone else relates to her audience. The key to shaking this is to envision and cultivate the relationship you want with your own audience. And then work those particularities for all they’re worth. {Because they’re worth everything.}
  • Creating an offer for your people {product, service, etc.} and marketing it based on three or four unusual words in the same order you’ve seen them in someone else’s marketing. Usually you’d do this because the original marketer’s language worked on you, you haven’t seen this kind of offer expressed more aptly/powerfully/specifically than this, and it feels like what you want to say. Watch out, though — this is intellectual thievery.
  • Absorbing and parroting what you’ve learned from your teachers, mentors, and coaches before you’ve had the chance to put it into practice and get some real-in-your-own-life results. Especially worth watching out for if those you’re learning from are in the same niche as you. All the better to free your own voice and work your natural points of differentiation.

In my next post, I have an exercise to share with you that’ll help you see other people’s brand language and voice for what it is — theirs — and see yours for what it is — yours. Exciting stuff.

Have you caught yourself unintentionally mimicking someone else’s business voice, like what I did with Sarah? Or have you seen other people doing this and had thoughts about it? I want you to tell me about it in the comments.

P.S. to Sarah — Love you and your work! Thanks for being so inspiring. ♥

{ 40 comments }

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