Amazon’s Audible has released a campaign called 'Make Words Great Again', featuring comedian Rebel Wilson. With short-form media types accused of shortening people's attention spans, Audible extolls the benefits of listening to 'good words' as a long-form means of entertainment. We explore the insights behind this and how brands are responding to the digital world's impact on language.
Audiobook brand Audible, has released a campaign featuring Australian comedian Rebel Wilson. Created by Emotive, the campaign features Wilson as a self-appointed 'Minister of Words', who is on a mission to "Make words great again".Wilson's Trump-like character simultaneously pokes fun at the perceived decline of the English language across the nation, while also hitting out at the digital forms of communication that are responsible for changing it. Wilson even stabs at politicians breaking character with sloppy use of language, making up words like "mis-underestimate", and answering a journalist's question with "Yeah Nah, Yeah Nah". The TV campaign's goal is to remind viewers the power good words can have, and how a good story can be listened to virtually anywhere, at any time.
Audible's campaign may lampoon the rise of fake news and the evolution of politicalese in one breath, but it also signals how language is rapidly evolving – thanks in no small part to short-form comms formats, such as social media, or text messaging. But linguistics experts have also called for calmer heads, saying the language we use hasn't totally changed beyond recognition. In fact, linguist David Crystal believes 90% of the language we use on social platforms or by text is still considered proper English, just more often than not condensed, clipped or abbreviated. Audible argues that words have "lost their power and value" and value as a result, but they're really trying to remind people that storytelling is at risk. It's a timely campaign, too, as audiobook sales globally have risen 20% year-on-year since 2016.
Mira Kopolovic is a behavioural analyst at Canvas8. She has a Master’s degree that focused on visual culture and artist-brand collaborations, and spends her spare time poring over dystopian literature.
