1,000 Songs In Your Pocket

Nobody bought the first iPod for its 5GB hard drive.

They bought it because of one sentence: 1,000 songs in your pocket.

Back in 2001, every MP3 player on the shelf was sold on specs. Storage! Battery life! File format! Yawn… Apple took the same number and turned it into a picture you could see: your whole record collection, walking around with you. Genius.

That line did more work than any spec sheet ever could. It explained the product, sold the benefit and told you who it was for, in five words.

I started my career as a journalist, so I’m biased towards ‘the wurd’. But I’ve always used a simple test for brands. Can you describe it down the phone? If the idea only works when someone can see the logo, then it isn’t an idea yet mate—sorry.

“1,000 songs in your pocket” passes. So does “Think different”, the line Apple ran four years earlier.

Grammatically, it’s wrong. It should be “think differently”. Imagine that line going through a room of twelve nervous stakeholders. Someone would have fixed it, and it would have died the second they did. But, of course, the fact the line isn’t conventionally written is the whole point.

Because the right sentence takes conviction. Mostly because it will invariably piss at least a few people off.

But most agencies stop at the logo. They hand over a beautiful visual identity, then leave the client to write the words themselves.

So the brand looks brilliant but sounds exactly like everyone else. Same “innovative solutions” and “we’re on a mission”. Then everyone wonders why it all feels so painfully average.

Words are where a brand stops being decoration and starts doing a job.

Because your logo gets you noticed, but your sentence is what gets you remembered.

So if you had to sell your brand in five words, with no pictures, what would you say?

And, crucially, would anyone in your organisation have the nerve to let you say it? 😉

—
Cat How is Founder & ECD at HOW+HOW