With special guest Landon Bryant
Perhaps you, yourself, were born and raised in the South. Maybe, like me, a significant part of your extended family is from or lives in the South. And maybe, by some stretch of circumstances, you have never been to the South at all—but I’d bet good money that you could put your finger on a Southern accent if you heard one.
Whatever your relationship to the South, it is undeniable that it has a powerfully distinctive cultural identity. From the accents to the etiquette to the pastimes and the food, there is some secret ingredient that leaves its mark in pretty much everything.
My personal favorite: The language. The sweet and slightly shady “bless your heart.” The oh-so-politely non-committal “might could.” The very specific word choice (“swanny” was completely new to me) that keeps you from gettin’ in hot water around your grandma. It’s a language that has a lot of softness and feels light and informal, but with so much specificity and implied avoidance of roughness so as to suggest a most tantalizing backstory.
So luckiest me, last week, I got to talking with fellow word nerd Landon Bryant* (yes!!! THE @landontalks!): Cultural evangelist, educator, and influencer from Mississippi who breaks down all things wonderfully Southern. He knows a thing or three about the deep relationship between language and culture, and because I bang on about it all the time as a writer and as part of my work helping clients craft brand voice, messaging, and employer brand strategies, it seemed only natural to see what brands might could learn from his perspective when it comes to using language to build distinctive cultures of their own.
I highly recommend checking out the video of the full discussion for a whole bunch of really good stuff. He shared a peep into his process for creating his engaging and profoundly observational content, what the colloquialisms and behavior he touches on reveal about the history of the people of the South, and how to meet your audience where they are and bring them along in your communications.
But for y’all, I’ve distilled the conversation down into a few lovely nuggets that give insight into how to bring depth to the practice of brand culture building.
Let’s discuss:
Learning from language and culture in the South.
TL;DR: The 6 key takeaways for brands
1. Know. Your. Culture! As it is, before you begin building something new.
2. Identify small ways for people to start practicing change.
3. Observe like an outsider. Zoom out to zero in on the consistent outliers.
4. Celebrate your origin story. Get specific. Pique interest.
5. Meet people where they are, then invite them on to the next step.
6. If you’re building brand culture, invest in language tools to make it great.
My sister introduced me to Landon’s videos in the spring. The first video she sent me was about hair bows. The size. The style. The hierarchy of matchy-matchyness: “If it is matching AND animal print… that’s pretty much the highest peak of bow society. If you’ve got a leopard print bow bigger than your head with leopard print tights that flare out at the bottom, maybe a few layers of ruffles, you are peak Southern culture, and you’re gonna be just fine.”
I loved it, because it was true. I loved it because of the specificity of the use of “hair bow”—which is a very Southern way to say that; where I’m from, it’s just a bow.
It was also the fluent attention to detail and the lack of sneering that I loved. This guy really knows his bows! I thought. And with all of the escalating silliness described as the video went on, all it did was make me nod and smile and think of my aunt, who very definitely put these giant bows on my niece when she was only months old. He wasn’t making fun. These are just facts of being Southern.
On how he chooses what to discuss in each video, Landon says, “Number one, my process is to be as genuine as possible. It has to be genuine; I can’t talk about stuff I don’t know about. It would read as not genuine immediately.” This is almost definitely the primary secret to his success—the coverage of each topic is so vivid and easy that you don’t feel like you’re watching one of a series; each video feels like a one-off from a man who woke up one day and just HAD to tell the world about bows. Excuse me, hair bows.
And that’s pretty much true—his videos are not scripted; the topics are chosen from a long list stored on his phone that he curates throughout the day as they catch his attention; his set is his wife’s makeup chair up against a blank wall, and it’s all shot on an iPhone 13 mini. “I try to let the topic be something I’m interested in the moment… if I’m not interested in it, I’m not going to have anything to say about it, and it’s going to be forced—it’s going to be not natural.” It’s edited, but more for length and consistency than for aspirations of high gloss. It’s more paramount that it’s real:
“People are tired of fake. People are tired of not knowing what they’re getting. The more natural it is, even if it’s not perfect, the better it is.”
Takeaway #1 for brands:
Know. Your. Culture! As it is, before you begin building something new.
Before you can build anything new, you have to know what you’re building on. You have to investigate. You have to rub shoulders and hit a happy hour or five. You have to have at least a few wildly off topic chat threads open with a few different teams. We all know how important it is to be authentic, but authenticity requires fluency and that requires putting in the work. Especially because employees are your most challenging audience—they know what they experience at work. Engaging on a basis of anything less than the absolute truth will trip the finely calibrated employee BS meter and you’ve lost them.
True story: When I was at Interbrand leading the naming for what is now Feeding America, then-CMO Wendy McGregor, on top of doing an incredibly thorough audience segmentation and subsequent driver study, personally went to visit… I want to say all? of the leaders of the 206 or so member foodbanks around the US. That was key to understanding the foundation the rebrand would build on—a rebrand that more than doubled their revenue in one year.
Landon is very candid about it being a process, an evolution, sharpening his approach as he goes. “I make mistakes. I say ‘um’ too much, and I say ‘right’ all the time, which is so annoying to me, and I say ‘you know.’ I’m getting better at it though.” We can all relate! I talk with my hands a lot. I search for the right framing of a question. It’s the practice of it, the DOING of it, that allows us to perfect our craft. “Art is a systematic process, you have to be consistent with it,” he says. “It doesn’t just happen.”
Takeaway #2 for brands:
Identify small ways for people to start practicing change.
One of the absolute biggest hurdles to culture change is actually getting people to START changing. We’ve all heard “progress not perfection” and “perfect is the enemy of good”; those are great mantras, but they don’t explain what it looks and feels like to get started, to get comfortable practicing and experiencing trial, error, and improvement. Something small and powerful that is surprisingly missing in the process of many brand-side creative teams is a regular collaborative crit—getting in a room to share WIP to see what’s working and what’s not. It can be awkward at first! Constructive criticism can be tough. But a great leader will ease their team into it and show how dramatically it accelerates improvement and familiarity with new tools, like a brand voice.
But what’s the right “cultural filter”? How do you recognize what is truly unique to your specific culture? As you are getting to know your culture, what do you look out for, how do you separate business as usual from true cultural ownability? What would be considered a “hallmark” phrase, behavior, approach, activity—something that either exists everywhere you go, or demonstrates real power in one corner of the employee community that would elevate the whole company?
Landon taps into the side of him that initially didn’t feel quite “Southern” to recognize elements of Southern-ness. “It’s coming at it from the perspective of an outsider to the culture. I’ve grown up in a wonderful place and always felt very supported, but [in a very masculine “football” culture] I’ve always felt different, I’ve always felt in an “other” category [from traditionally ‘Southern male.’] And I think that’s the key to identifying what makes things Southern.”
Tapping into the “other” is a great excuse to turn off your everyday, checking-things-off, routine go-go-go mode and relax into observer mode. There’s nothing more fun than just sittin’ on a bench somewhere and people watching; pretending you just arrived on the scene as a tourist, actively noticing what’s going on around you.
“You have to pull away from it to see it,” Landon says.
He’s a natural observationalist in that way; he takes note of the things that stand out, but stand out consistently, about Southern mannerisms, and once there is an established “core behavior,” he adds color that makes it very real and human. In his video on Grandpa names: “Granddad is a less formal version of Grandfather. They both work at the bank. Pops, Pop? You gotta watch out for those. They’re gonna get you involved. You will go home with a few chickens if you aren’t careful.” Where did these chickens come from?? POPS!!! At it again.
Takeaway #3 for brands:
Observe like an outsider. Zoom out to zero in on the consistent outliers.
One of the best things about people who work in branding, strategists and analysts and creatives alike, is that we all love to observe the world around us. We are always asking what makes people tick, what do they love / hate, what sparks an emotional reaction. Often, we are looking for commonalities—among three very different potential customers, what common needs do they share? What kind of experience would resonate with them? Because of course building brands requires building around a clear core identity.
But observing culture is an opportunity to look for common outliers. Unusual rituals that exist to shore up each other’s confidence; secret slang born out of that thing that time; marks of achievement; the way we greet each other. Extreme (but kind and fun) birthday shenanigans were my personal favorite from one of my past teams.
It’s defining nostalgia: What would you miss, if you left your company? Indulge in playing the outsider; invite trusted outside observers to help spot the treasure hidden in plain sight. Be sure to note the color around the things that consistently stand out.
By far the most beautiful thing about the language of the South is what it reveals about the of the people who speak it. “It just goes back to history,” Landon explains. “The people in the community where I’m from were originally sharecroppers. They were self-reliant. The communities were self-reliant. And that led to people having to look out for each other—but also the community wants the individual to be proud for themselves, and to feel whole, and to feel part of something. So, there’s this consideration of how people feel—in their emotions, and also how they physically feel. It goes back to, for example, if there was a flood, all the people would go to help the person who was flooded. Or it comes down to, there were times when people didn’t have food all the time—so when you went to someone’s house a long time ago, they’re going to ‘force feed’ you because they know that you might not have eaten that day.”
The manners of the day required that you decline an offer of a meal at first, so as not to be a burden, so neighbors would insist—because you might just be declining the meal to protect your pride. “Which is fine. We want you to do that."
"It’s a culture of considering someone’s feelings, and where they’re coming from, and just making sure that they’re ok.”
It’s the most beautiful origin story for why Southern people just love to share food, and why big cookouts and potlucks are such a huge part of Southern culture—it came from wanting to share with their neighbors, in a way that protected their pride. If you’ve been to a family dinner in the South, you know that you get sent home with some leftovers and a piece of pie, too. It’s empathy in its most subtle yet most tangible form.
This is a defining feature of Southern language and culture: What Landon calls the “dance” that Southerners are always doing, softening up a human experience that might have some hidden hard edges to it by “wrapping it with a bow”—bringing a bit of loveliness and a soft landing to something that behind the scenes might not be so lovely. Being affectionate without being too outright, so as not to make someone uncomfortable—“I love this little house!” where “little” is a term of endearment, not a description of size. Being sophisticated enough to communicate intelligence, but confident enough to be natural, not alienate by being academic (or corporate).
Takeaway #4 for brands:
Celebrate your origin story. Get specific. Pique interest.
Investigating the culture as it is now, identifying gaps as opportunities for change, and observing common outliers is all about getting to know the history of a community, as part of inspiring change. Change is good, change is inevitable, and usually a need for a new brand culture is brought about by something (the famously bad culture of Uber comes to mind) that needs to change.
But history is critical to culture. It offers structure and reason as to why things are the way they are now. Even if change is the goal, there is almost always a kernel of beauty and purpose in that history. Unearthing those kernels, identifying how people can relate, and translating them into noticeably specific languages and behaviors invites insiders and outsiders alike to get curious. This is why generic corporate speak does no one any favors. A voice that embraces who you are as a culture drives interest to learn more.
Ultimately, culture is an ongoing exercise in empathy. Or as Landon says, “meeting people where they are… and then figuring out how to bring them to where you are.” That’s connection. Engaging with anyone successfully begins with knowing who you’re talking to, what they need from you to feel respectfully engaged, and taking them along to the next stage of the journey.
“You want to feel part of the moment. You want to feel like you’ve been considered or that someone knows you a little.”
Even though humans often change their language based on context—e.g. using more professional language in a professional setting—you can also create the context by using language that people more easily connect to. “People connect to more casual language.” It comes back to the dance. What is the artful way of dancing through language, based on who your dance partner is, and where they are emotionally in the moment you start the dance?
Takeaway #5 for brands:
Meet people where they are, then invite them on to the next step.
Building culture is another flavor of “know your audience.” We spend a lot of time and money (hopefully) learning about potential buyers. We tend to spend less time and money learning about the workforce that makes serving those buyers possible. Budgets for internal work are rarely as robust for internal work as they are for reaching external audiences—but the case for nurturing culture is fairly stark in today’s environment.
We map the customer / buyer journey fairly meticulously to make sure we use the right voice tactics and messages based on where they are within their relationship with us. Employees (and vendors, and partners, and ambassadors, etc.) deserve to be valued in detail too. What are their journeys? Where are they in their relationship with the company? At the end of the day, we want strong relationships with the people engendering our culture… Are we inviting them to dance?
Building a strong culture comes down to fostering trust and belonging within a community. And when it’s built through the lens of your brand, it’s entirely unique: Designed to celebrate positive idiosyncrasies, shared values and goals, the big and small hallmark interactions that make an individual feel like an important part of a whole that is special and desirable.
Using the right language invites everyone to be a part of the conversation, and sets the expectations for how to communicate in a way that helps everyone represent the brand in its truest form.
So takeaway #6 for brands:
If joining the ranks of Best Companies to Work For is on your list of goals, brand culture should be one of your highest priorities.
To do it right, language tools like brand voice should be one of the assets you develop to make it all come together.
For more great insight on the language and culture of the south, be sure to follow Landon, and let us at Super Premium know if you need support building anything strategy- or language-centric.