I’m listening to the overture of La gazza ladra at a volume any ENT doctor would call harmful.
Rossini.
Doesn’t ring a bell?
Kubrick used it in A Clockwork Orange. Maybe now it does.
It opens with a drumroll. A march somewhere between war and play, like a pillow fight: perks of hearing it as a kid.
Then comes the crescendo, and I lose it a little more with every bar.
Go figure.
The opera is about a magpie and Ninetta. And a silver spoon that goes missing.
I think of accent as that spoon.
We’re all magpies.
When you spot an accent that stands out —a campaign that breaks the predictable, a rebrand that’s actually a new position to plant your flag in— your beady little eyes go straight to it.
Oh, Claude, that line you gave me back sounds better than mine: more elevated, more finished, more round.
Oh, look at So-and-so: he’s gone neon, now he says scrumly, glibber, snazzle, and his videos have rhythm. I want that.
In Spain we have an expression for this: culo veo, culo quiero. Basically, monkey see, monkey want.
This week I saw a brand in another market that was a clone of the first one: different name, same codes, same product, same packaging. And that’s with something as tangible as a bottle.
The spoon shines. The magpie takes it.
But there’s a difference between borrowing something and making it your identity.
Kubrick didn’t steal the spoon. He gave it another layer. And a bowler hat.
And there it is. Nobody hears their own voice notes and recognizes themselves.
Your brand, same thing. You’ve been inside so long you don’t hear your accent anymore. And then you go and buy someone else’s.
Claude’s. That competitor’s, the one you always look at out of the corner of your eye. Or the accent of the last manual you paid for, the one that’s been gathering dust since 2021.
The curious thing is what happens to language when you put your vision —the real one, not the one on page 7— into words that aren’t yours. With an accent that isn’t yours.
It pinches. The story gets too small, and the last solution they sold you tastes exactly like your competitor’s.
If that’s how we’re going to fix positioning and the balance sheet, we’re just trading cards.
The expensive kind.
Branding that doesn’t fit in a prompt is exactly that: finding that fucking accent only you have. The way you do what you do, said in your own words. And your weirdness, which, worked on properly, turns out to look a lot like a serious value proposition.
Then come the master prompt, the system, all the toys. But first: the accent. Yours.
AI can give you every accent: the neighbor’s, your own all edited and polished, the disruptor’s, the indie’s, the corporate one.
What it can’t give you is the nerve to hit play and listen to your own voice notes without feeling distance.
PS: In the opera, Ninetta is accused of taking the spoon. And now you see original brands that look like just another copy, because the magpie squawks louder. Don’t feed them.
Lines Aja
Brand Strategist & Verbal Identity Consultant — Las Musas®
weareprimos.com