Grawlix & Leet Your Pitch

Down the years I've blogged on many ways to make your mark with a slide.

I reminded myself of another idea to implant a message with a recent post deriding the video call option gorilla that is Teams. Or as I wrote Microsoft's product name, T@#!s.

I used the classic effect from comic strip creators. The speech bubbles containing expressions using punctuation marks - as substitute for profanity - are called grawlixes.

Today, they're usually compiled from an array of the shift characters above the numbers on a keyboard.

One notable exception being hand-drawn glyphs, such as a 'spiral'.

It builds, in its own cartoon way, on methods of obscuring expletives in text.

These include swapping out letters for asterisks or dashes as censor.

In my earlier case, I could have maybe plumped for something like, T—s and T***s.

If only a single vowel features, then a solitary '-' or '*' can be switched in.

Such treatments lend themselves neatly to words you want to banish from your lexicon. Such as a process block, unwanted destination or issue of concern for your prospect. Something we eliminate. Or competitors, when we are forced to mention or cite them. (In echoes of enemy building.)

There exists another way though; Leet.

A whole new alphabet growing out of mainframe chat users back in the 80s.

One useful should you prefer to not evoke an obscenity with your audience.

For instance, when discussing with prospects my specialism - unlocking distinctive sales video calls - I might seek stickiness by pulling up something like this, as I paint a picture of the winning video calling solution seller to whom they can aspire;

\/1)3x0r

Loosely resembling the word 'video-er'. Specifically denoting an Enterprise salesperson embracing distinctive video calling and gaining a march on competitors by doing so.

This also lends itself beautifully to being a meeting banner that tees up what you want your video meeting to aim for.

Where you've prospect personalities appreciative of this kind of subversive nature, especially if coupled with a tech vanguard mindset, then you'll have a label for your project that'll completely set you apart.

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