A Look at Personification and Brandable Chunks

Gold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Safe. Secure. Indestructible.

If all the gold in the world were melted into a single cube, that cube would be only 22 yards per side. Gold is astoundingly rare.

As an investment, gold is liquid.

Its value and desirability are international.

Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.

Gold is beautiful.

Gold, in all its forms, is the thing to own.

Come and meet your gold at Austin Rare Coins & Bullion.

Do you remember the October 11th MondayMorningMemo about new words? One “new word” definition I gave you was: 

Brandable chunks: vivid, recurring phrases used by an advertiser to help position and define the brand. Slogans and taglines are out. Brandable chunks are in.

In return for their donation of $500 to help build the tower at Wizard Academy, Austin Rare Coins and Bullion received the 106 words that opened today’s memo. Arranged as they are, those 106 words could be used as an email, a 60-second radio ad, or the text of a magazine ad. Those 106 words contain exactly 8 brandable chunks linked together like the cars of a freight train carrying radioactive moonbeams.

Each of the eight brandable chunks can be used independently of the other seven. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. In how many situations and combinations do you suppose these eight brandable chunks might be used?

1.   1. Gold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment.

2.   2. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Safe. Secure. Indestructible.

3.   3. If all the gold in the world were melted into a single cube, that cube would be only 22 yards per side. Gold is astoundingly rare.

4.   4. As an investment, gold is liquid. Its value and desirability are international.

5.   5. Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.

6.   6. Gold is beautiful.

7.   7. Gold, in all its forms, is the thing to own.

8.   8. Come and meet your gold.

The eternal and omnipotent Webster, that thundering god of the English language, declares personification to be “attribution of personal qualities; especially: representation of a thing or abstraction as a person.”

When you give human characteristics to inanimate objects, you fling open the doors of imagination as surely as if you had said, “Once upon a time.”

Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.

But don’t get carried away. Overuse of personification just makes you sound like a nut.

Roy H. Williams