Naming Things Gives Them Wings

Crash? Crisis? Crunch? Who Wants Us Scared Anyway?

Have you ever noticed that as soon as something has a name it has a life of its own? DotCom Bubble, 9/11, Property Crash, Credit Crunch, Hidden Agenda etc.

The deliberate use of names has been something I’ve been interested in for a long time.

As a business owner I know that naming (or branding) something makes it easier for people to buy it. And, while this naming is important for products it becomes essential when you’re dealing with something less tangible – something that would otherwise be invisible – like a service, event, an idea or process.

By naming (or branding) a process or complex series of events we create a shortcut so we can all talk about the same thing without having to explain the exact details each time. This is something all good persuaders and marketers know and use to help us decide to buy what they’re selling.

There is also a downside to naming things, namely (sorry!) that we might “think” we’re talking about the same thing, when really we’re talking about completely different things.

The “Credit Crunch” for example. What does that really mean?

For some people it means they can’t get a mortgage, for others it just means that rates have gone up, for others it means an end to careless lending and yet others it just points to evidence that banks never lose. One thing what the term “credit crunch” doesn’t allow for though is an improvement. It’s not describing actions as a fluid state, it’s turned a series of verbs (doing words) – lending, borrowing, spending etc into a static, unchanging noun (naming word).

I recently spoke to a trusted friend and financial advisor who has been watching mortgage rates improve in the UK for weeks now with no sign of things going the other way. So why don’t we see that in the news headlines and on the front pages? Simple – it doesn’t fit with their plan to sell papers!

You see, when you give a name to something like a verb, process or series of events that require more explanation to be fully understood, you’ll find the meaning is ambiguous at best, and if used in the wrong hands, deliberately misleading at worst.

Which wrong hands?
Well professional persuaders like politicians, journalists, sales people and the like often know exactly what they’re doing by giving things names. They’ll often have ulterior motives for scaring the masses and/or using emotive language to get them to think and feel a certain way. So when they add a negative term to one of their names such as “crash” it’s going to create negative feelings (not to mention feelings of fear) to the casual reader/viewer hearing it. They’ll then use this fear to try to control your behaviour.

Conspiracy theory?
Maybe – you could argue that some things happen first and get the name afterwards and that’s true – but not always. You see, journalists, editors, marketers and politicians understand the power of naming a concept or an idea and repeating it over and over again until it’s a short-cut for something nobody really understands anymore.

Were house prices going down when we first heard the term “Property Crash” in the media? No! This term has been thrown around since at least 2004 and possibly earlier. Many people actually sold their homes and started renting due to the “Looming Property Crash” and yet we saw healthy increases for almost 4 years afterwards. In fact, you could argue that the “naming” of the event the “experts” predicted went a good way to making that very thing happen.

But why am I going on about marketing and sharing my conspiracy theories on a Spanish Property blog you may ask.

Well, because some of the “names” the media, banks, government and “experts” have given to what’s going on in the global property market didn’t happen by accident. In fact, the names they’ve chosen use such emotive words, and have oversimplified things so much, that they are almost guaranteed to get an emotionally fuelled, and ill-considered, reaction from the people who hear them.

What am I talking about? Well let’s just examine a couple of phrases you’ll have heard over and over again…

Property CRASH
What it makes you think/feel? People die in crashes and stuff gets destroyed! We’re all doomed! Our house will be worth less than a loaf of bread! The ground will open up beneath our feet and swallow us and our home asunder!

What it makes you do: Sell, sell, sell as things can only get worse! We’d better lower our prices – as they’ll crash anyway! We’d better keep a close eye on “Property Crash” headlines and buy more newspapers. If they mention “Property Crash” on TV or the news we’d better tune in or we could miss an important development.

Who benefits from a lot of people watching TV, buying newspapers, and selling their homes for less than they’re worth? I’ll let you decide.

What Property CRASH is a shortcut for… fewer buyers means fewer sales, some people are having difficulty selling, much new building has stopped – mainly due to tighter credit than the state of the housing market. Some businesses that were overextended or whose cashflow relied on sales continuing at previous rates are in trouble. Some types of property have suffered more than others. Other types of investment have continued to increase in value. House prices have historically always increased over time and there are no new factors to suggest they won’t do so again.

Credit CRUNCH
What it makes you think/feel? If credit is “crunched” that means it’s smashed to pieces or at least shrinking every day so I won’t be able to use it. Things are terrible – it’s an end to cheap and easy credit or even expensive credit for that matter.

What it makes you do: We’ll have to accept the awful rates and terms the lenders are offering and be glad there are any left at all. Our plans to buy a home now will have to go on hold because we won’t be able to borrow. Our expectations of what we can borrow and how much we’ll have to pay back will need to be adjusted. We’d better keep a close eye on “Credit Crunch” headlines and buy more newspapers. If they mention “Credit Crunch” on TV or the news we’d better tune in or we could miss an important development.

Who benefits from a lot of people watching TV, buying newspapers, and accepting rubbish terms on their finance? I’ll let you decide.

What Credit CRUNCH is a shortcut for… big US banks were selling loans like sofas to even the worst credit risks and often giving 10-20 times their income in finance. They sure looked to be performing well short term and made lots of money! Many of the people who got into debt with these banks spent the money and then, surprise, surprise, bailed when it came time to pay up. All the banks decided, “right let’s make our good customers pay up because we can never lose!” So bank-to-bank lending got silly which meant bank-to-public lending got even sillier. Although rates did rise significantly they are already settling back down because the banks’ greed didn’t lead to loads of people accepting crap terms as they’d hoped but instead meant people just didn’t/couldn’t borrow at all. And when you’re in the business of lending money that will never do!

Although I’ve attempted to make sense of these two terms above they really mean nothing. They were invented phrases used by other people to control our thoughts and actions for their own gain.

So what can you do about it? Here are 5 steps for media-proofing your mind. I’ll call it my…

“5 Step Media Self Defence System”
When somebody (neighbour, postman, friend, MP or even, heaven forbid, Trevor Macdonald) starts using the words “Property Crash”, “Credit Crunch”, “Economic Crisis” or anything else that sounds suspiciously like an over-dramatised noun which should otherwise be replaced by a series of verbs then try these on…

1. Ask “who?” Crisis for whom?”, “Who’s Property Crashed?”, “Who’s Crunched your credit?”. Basically – who is it affecting? If it doesn’t affect you, right at this moment, then the words have less power to make you do something when you would be better off doing nothing.
2. Ask “What do you mean by that?” “Did a house just crash into another house and who put wheels on that house in the first place?” “Oh, you mean house prices have gone down in some areas?” “Oh, and they’ve gone up in others?” “And, actually house prices aren’t accurate to measure right now because fewer people are buying and selling?”
   Get the full picture – most people (including newsreaders) just repeat these media-fed phrases without actually having any idea they mean.
3. Ask “So what?” Seriously – this isn’t just a flippant disregard for the newsreader’s obvious concern for your well being. It challenges you to find one good reason why that news has any impact on what you are doing and what you were planning on doing. Sure, there might be an impact but what exactly is it? “So what if property prices are going down in some places? Does that affect me and if so how?”
4. Don’t forget what they didn’t show you. Is what you’re reading/hearing unbiased and fair? If it’s on TV or in the newspaper, or being said by a politician then chances are it isn’t. They are attempting to make a point and prove that point right by showing you only the evidence that supports their position. For example, if there is an interview with another “victim” of the “Property Crash” on TV then remember that for every loser they show there will also be winners.
5. Don’t trust their interpretation of the statistics! Be especially suspicious when they quote statistics! Trusted sources will rarely make the numbers up but they will use deliberately misleading language to make facts sound worse (or better when it suits them) than they really are. I’ve seen news stories where reporters are getting excited about things increasing less than they did last year and saying things like “the rate of growth is down 3% on this time last year”. With a headline of “Property Crash” most people, if they’re listening carelessly, will think that means 3% shrinkage – when if you looked at the actual figures it might show that the increase at the same time the previous year was 5% – that’s 2% growth not 3% shrinkage!

Finally, terms like “Property Crash” and “Credit Crunch” are with us now whether we like them or not. It would be impractical to remove them from our language completely, even though (as they are contrivances anyway) that is what we should attempt to do. All we can do is encourage people to elaborate if they use these words innocently, be careful to back up our own use of the words with a balanced point of view, and keep a wary eye on those people we know have their own hidden agendas.

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