What's the Difference between a VERB and an ADJECTIVE?

Jennifer at Brains On Fire ( what a great blog name) offers some Worthy Tidbits from a Ad conference in Miami (Why Miami in July?).  Why not Asheville?

Anyway, she quotes Mark Beeching, Global Executive Creative Director for Digitas - “More verbs. Fewer adjectives.”

Let's ponder this a moment.  Why verbs rather than adjectives?

Verb are action words. They are dynamic.

Adjectives modify a noun.  Nouns are stable, stationary, not action words.

Not to make too much of this, but my immediate reaction is that what Beeching is trying to convey is the experience of a product. Or in different terms a vision for the impact of the product.

If you were to describe what someone looks like when they are using your product, then I think you begin to get the idea.

Yogi Berra once said about a popular restaurant, "Oh, no one goes there any more; its too crowded."  Now that conveys a picture that an adjective laced noun driven statement couldn't.

Verbs convey something alive.  Nouns convey something that you pull off the shelf.  Think about this the next time you try to write a vision statement.  Is it alive or dead?  The verb may tell the tale.

Comments

[Jennifer]

The other thing about adjectives - they have neither the stability of nouns nor the dynamism of verbs. Adjectives are easy because they're soft... and sort of non-committal. There's no risk in a string of descriptors. It's only when you start doing something that you take a risk and have the opportunity for something to really happen.