Yesterday I was sitting at a restaurant on the side of the Barcelona cathedral, trying to learn to enjoy a vermouth, a popular drink here.
In front of me, a steady procession of tourists walked alongside the cathedral, some 40 yards away.
I was staring at them idly between the bittersweet sips of vermouth, when I saw him:
A pasty white man, somewhere between ages 30 and 50, with red hair, wearing Teva sandals, cargo shorts, and… a Wu-Tang t-shirt.
The fact is, the Wu-Tang symbol was what drew my eye first, even though I was sitting far away, and though the man was walking in a crowd.
​​The symbol made me instantly predisposed to like the guy and feel an affinity towards him. All the other unpromising details I noticed only later.
Just in case you don’t know the Wu-Tang Clan:
They are a hip hop group from the 90s that borrowed ideas and imagery from old kung fu movies. Their symbol is a large irregular W, split in two, with the words Wu-Tang in the middle of it.
Even if you’ve never seen the Wu-Tang symbol until now, now that I’ve told you about it, you’re likely to see it, on t-shirts and sweatshirts, as graffiti, or even as a tattoo.
Last week, I sent out an email about How To Speak by Patrick Winston. Winston was an MIT who for 40 years gave a talk on the essence of good communication, taken from his own methodical study of what works.
At one point, Winston presents the Winston star, a rather satanic symbol that encapsulates five characteristics of the most successful communication. All the five characteristics start with an “s”. And one of them, as you can probably guess, you clever sausage, is “symbol.”
And if Winston and his MIT credentials aren’t enough to convince you of the value and influential ability of symbols, then just think of every world religion, every influential brand, or hell, think of my Wu-Tang guy at the Barcelona cathedral.
And then, start thinking about how you could integrate a symbol into what you do.
I can’t give you much more advice than that. I’m not sure what makes for an effective symbol vs. an ineffective one, except the obvious things which apply to all good communication:
Your symbol should be simple. It should be distinct. ​​It should be recognizable, even from a distance of 40 yards away.
As an example, I picked a nazar, a design for an amulet to ward off the evil eye, for the symbol in my subject line today.
Oh and one more thing:
Your symbol should be repeated, over and over, everywhere, until it gets conditioned into people’s heads as the image that somehow represents your thing.
So for example, if I decided to use the nazar symbol above to represent my email audit offer (“ward off the evil lurking around your lukewarm daily emails and underperforming autoresponders…”), then I should also put the nazar on the consulting form I use to get new people to sign up.
Which is just what I’ve done.
​​In case you want to see it, or in case you have an email list and want my help warding off evil from it, you can do so here: