KC: local words for local people

‘Proud to be part of local life’ - that’s KC’s slogan. They’re a phone and broadband company in East Yorkshire. We’ve been helping them make these seven words into more than a line, so they can show how proud they really are to be a local company (without having to say it all the time).

Big brands go to great lengths to convince you they’re part of your local community or high street. You see it on the community noticeboard of every Starbucks and supermarket chain, and CSR organisations like ‘Business In The Community’. But these sort of things rarely ring true: everyone knows that really there’s a head office and shareholders running things from afar.

KC, on the other hand, have been part of the area for over 100 years. So how could we show that KC were the real local deal, not another big company putting on a voice, just pretending to be from down the road?

Plusnet (a Sheffield company bought by BT) gave us a good case study of what we didn’t want to do.

Click to supersize me

We asked people from East Yorkshire what they thought of Plusnet’s tone and they said patronising. We don’t know anyone who talks like that, they said. People from Yorkshire don’t use ee-bah-gum and by heck speak anymore than Londoners use cockney rhyming slang. It’s a caricature. (And this tone jars all the more because it’s mixed in with direct mail sales patter, but that’s another story.)

So when it came to KC’s tone, we wanted to use words that people from Hull and East Yorkshire really say. And use language to show that KC is as local as chip spice. (If you’re from Hull you’ll be nodding at that bit. Sorry to everyone else.)

Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ve been doing for them and where KC’s words are heading next.

East Yorkshire has cream phone boxes not red ones. White Pages not Yellow Pages.

If you're not from Hull, it's Victoria Dock to you.

Old Faithful - Hull FC's traditional terrace song.

If you're not from Hull it's Princess Quay to you.

Mafting - a local word meaning hot or clammy.
'It's mafting in here!'

This project has been bit of a linguistic eye opener for us. There’s a fine line between taking the mickey out of people or how they speak and celebrating it. We tested all these to make sure they were all the right side of that line. Mimicking an accent for example was a step too far.

But what also interested us about this project is that we think this is the sort of tone only a proper local company can get away with. It’ll help them stand out against ‘vulgar outsiders’ like BT or Vodafone. We’d love to see more local brands being proud to celebrate their voice and put themselves into their words.