Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” 
The “it” is, well, whatever. Fill in the blank with anything: love, time, President Donald Trump.
Now I want you to substitute your brand for “it” and tell me if you can clearly and simply explain “it” to a six-year-old child. If you don’t have or know a six-year-old child, be careful how you answer. You will be using adult-speak in a heartbeat.
You’re being dismissive right now. I can tell. Do you truly know your brand? Can you explain it to a child?
Don’t laugh. Try it.
Uh-huh. As I suspected. It’s not so easy, is it?
This conundrum lies at the heart of why so many people who work with brands have difficulty being good brand communicators. How do I know this?
I’ve listened to experienced professionals at advertising agencies and Fortune 500 companies grapple with vocabulary to explain their brands.
Ask anyone responsible for devising a sentence called the “brand value proposition.” Ask anyone responsible for writing a brand “positioning statement.” Ask those responsible for writing clear, inspiring creative briefs.
Einstein was on to something with his insanely simple idea. Understanding how to do it would save boatloads of time, boatloads of money, boatloads of stress.
Consider this exercise, something I use in my college freshman composition class. Read the paragraph below, and tell me in two words, no more, what it is saying:
It is the opinion of the group assembled for the purpose of determining a probability of the likelihood of the meteorological-related results and outcome for the period encompassing the next working day that the odds of precipitation in the near-term are positive and reasonably expected.*
This causes my students migraines. First because they are not good close readers and second because their vocabularies are limited. Rather than looking up something they don’t know, they ignore it.
Herein lies another truth: If you ignore what you don’t understand, you are bound to perpetuate the misunderstanding.
This “exercise” paragraph is a tautology on steroids. A more technical term is verbal diarreha. It is an example of not knowing how to say what can be said in two words.
Can you explain your brand in two words? Two simple words that a child can understand?
If you can’t, you won’t pass Einstein’s simple test.
It’s probably costing you dearly.
*The answer: Rain tomorrow.
