You know what I’m talking about. All of a sudden, a significant portion of DeFi brands tried to connect with their intended audience through a nonsensical metamorphosis of the English language that ended up creating new vocabulary elements such as the “anon” term, “-ooor” suffixes (like “farmooors”), and the “gm” abbreviation.

The trend climbed to the point where communications within an incipient technology industry aimed for adoption fell into the hole dug by their critics: meaningless arrogance causing the perception of a weird-cult shape.

In this article, allow me to help by explaining why this trend is hurting inexperienced DeFi brands.

When the World Zigs, Then Zag

The first principle is straightforward and well-known by experienced marketers. Distinctiveness causes memorability while doing what everyone else is doing just because you feel you should be riding the same road, which causes the opposite effect: you blend into the crowd.

As advice for small teams with inexperienced marketers but packed with huge potential, we recommend following the principles (which is different from following the outcomes) based on what current memorable brands did in the past or do today instead of following what the members of the cult seem to be telling you to do.

It's no coincidence that Apple's "Think Different" campaign was incredibly successful amongst many big corporations selling beige computers.

A good learning from this principle is that following principles is always more effective than following people.

What on Earth Does “Anon” Communicate?

All plans should be built on top of foundational goals. Communication serves as a means to deliver a message. You need to communicate something. Then, have you ever wondered what you are communicating with “anon” and “borrowooor”? I don’t know, but all the answers that come to my mind set bad precedents.

When the intended message isn't clear, even to everyday DeFi users, it can lead to widespread misinterpretation. Misinterpretation from a hardly codified message is usually perceived as a joke, literally.

You don’t want to delegate the complete control of interpretation to hungry yielders, do you? It’s not only that you’re delivering nothing. It’s a fact that providing nothing is extremely dangerous because free interpretation by a broad audience tends to create an offensive shape of your brand.

Communications should be based on intended messages. They should be delivered to make the interpretation clear enough to evoke the previously desired emotions in a sizable audience.

User Onboarding Should Be Low-Cognitive

Imagine tomorrow you wake up, and your memory from the past ten years is erased, making you a complete newbie in the crypto world. Then, all of a sudden, after navigating a bit through the internet, you read about crypto, and because that seed was in your brain from somewhere, boom, it catches your attention. Then, you jump into the town square of crypto: X, and you read a bunch of farmooors saying anon, gm, etc. What will you understand from that? Zero.

First impressions matter, and most marketers know it, while others acknowledge that there are studies that confirm people judge by the cover. Your first impression is often your unique opportunity to make a positive anchor in people’s brains around what your product is and what it wants to communicate. Let me guess: you are wasting your first impressions by saying nonsensical stuff that no one outside of your bubble understands.

But it’s even worse than that. Cognitive load theory suggests that people have a limited ability to process information. When the input surpasses our capacity to manage it, our performance declines. Numerous studies have documented this phenomenon.

So it’s not only about the wrong first impression. It’s about making it difficult to decipher the first impression, decreasing retention odds. That’s why introductory communication principles suggest building messages based on existing mental models and offloading new tasks (e.g., asking Google what "hey anon" means).

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, as one wise man once said.

Problem-Benefit Framework

You launched your brand, and you see a bunch of cult-like figures saying "gm" every day. What can you tell if you want to stand out and deliver a meaningful message? The first element to consider is answering this question: What does my brand do? Your product is the most powerful tool for positioning your brand.

Assuming your product has a unique value proposition that users find valuable, it will stand out from the crowd. Describe the problem your product solves, define how it solves it, and lower the cognitive barrier as much as possible.

A stellar example of this framework is in the history of one of the most memorable brands, Apple. When the iPod launched, the problem was that portable music players needed to be more attractive, bulky, and inconvenient, often requiring users to carry heavy devices with multiple CDs.

What did the iPod solve? 1,000 songs in your pocket. That's it.