The value of knowledge has never been so challenged by the very tools it created. If knowledge was once a privilege, the internet has thankfully made it increasingly accessible. Today, knowledge is theoretically one chat away. And yet, it has also never been clearer that merely collecting facts is not enough: if everyone has the same access, what difference does it make? True power lies in the capacity to distinguish, connect, and transform those fragments into something new — the tool can combine, but only the human spark can create meaning. That is where the value of words comes in. More than a simple vehicle for messages, the word builds the bridge between what things are and what they can be. Everything we have, in the end, is words — and how we use them determines the impact we can generate.
Just do it
When we opened BRBAUEN in 2012, after settling on our name, the constant was to do, do, do. After all, BR = Brazil, BAUEN = to build in German. When that name made sense, it became clear that the vision we believed in was more scientific than artistic.
After so much doing, someone soon asked: "What do you guys do?" With his iconic good humor, the one asking was Bruno Porto, over a coffee he insisted on paying for at IESB in Brasília. I remember feeling as though I didn't know what I was doing. The truth is, I didn't really know what I thought about what I was doing.
We talked and talked — and rightly so, there were people who only saw what we did and didn't understand what we thought about it. I said "we" because I gave that talk alongside my former partner Braz. Just imagine what the drive back to Goiânia was like after that bucket of cold water.
I only thanked Bruno a few years later, and made a point of bringing our new business card — which carried what became our first and most important way of describing "what we do." As broad as it may sound, understanding our idea of brand as "We Design Brand Perception" was decisive in shaping how we would do our work for ourselves before continuing to evolve how we do it with and for others.
The other half
Everything is a word before it truly becomes anything. You've probably been in a situation where someone said they didn't understand what you meant. For many, the problem lies with the listener. For Ralph Waldo Emerson — acclaimed American writer, philosopher, and poet — it might mean that not even you truly understood what you were talking about.
A man is only the half of himself; his other half is his expression. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson goes further and argues that genuine knowledge only exists when we are able to write in a way that everyone can understand. It's the art of speaking simply — without the illusion that you need to speak in complex ways to do so.
I notice this holds true from the smallest to the largest things, whether speaking, writing, or even drawing. If I want to stop my 2-year-old from jumping off the sofa and breaking his arm, there's a huge difference between saying "Don't jump off the sofa!" and saying "How about we go play ball outside?"
If I want to promote feminine optimism in beauty products for middle-aged women, there's an enormous difference between inviting them with "Be a new version of yourself" versus "A woman can emerge more beautiful in her second spring."
The first lesson I learned from Letícia, my wife, business partner, and mother of our son Álvaro. The second from a fellow named Machado de Assis.
In everyday life it makes all the difference whether we call something a cost or an investment. A price or a value. A bet or an investment. It might seem small, but I think you can see where I'm going.
For better or for worse, narratives are constantly being shaped through our intentional — or unintentional — choice of words. This became clear to me when Brazil's central bank reported that online betting sites had already cost Brazilian families 3 billion reais in August 2024 alone. It's true that a little gamble is nothing new for Brazilians. These platforms used a more agile mechanism under an even lighter narrative and put the lottery in everyone's pocket. It would be naive to think this happened by accident — but when countless brands and influencers started calling betting sites an "opportunity to make extra cash," a large part of the Brazilian population began burning money they don't have on that hope.
The care we take with our words matters just as much for the ideas we promote as for the ones we endorse.
Nobody knows what the silent man wants
During the French Revolution, the large number of regional dialects made it difficult to spread revolutionary ideas — until the revolution's leaders introduced expressions like "la patrie" (the homeland) and "le citoyen" (the citizen), which helped articulate new concepts of national identity.
A hundred and fifty years later, when France was on the verge of collapse in the Second World War and Great Britain was about to be invaded, Winston Churchill could have used, at the climax of his speech, just 8 words: We shall fight everywhere. We shall never surrender.
He said more. He made a point of illustrating every place where the troops' suffering would take place:
We shall fight on beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills.
31 words. Almost a battle plan, leading to the conclusion that truly mattered: "We shall never surrender."
The speech doesn't begin or end there, but that is the most remembered passage. You may or may not like him or his politics. But you cannot deny that he mastered rhetoric. He knew it wasn't enough to win minds by being direct and objective. He knew he had to win the frightened hearts of every listener to gain support for what was to come.
The absence of visual stimulation, the uncertainty of the moment, and the eventual victory all contributed to the speech's greatness. Many say it was broadcast on radio — in fact it was read in the House of Commons and later quoted many times in other people's voices. He painted a scene with words. A picture that allowed those not on the battlefield to somehow visualize what it would be like to be there.
The myth of genius
"I have an idea." If Martin Luther King Jr. had said that instead of "I have a dream," I am almost certain I would not be quoting him here.
What I recently discovered in a Guardian article is that the famous speech was not the first time he used that expression. He had already tried to land it in other speeches months earlier in Detroit and Chicago. It is also well known that one of his advisors asked him to stop using the phrase because he considered it a cliché. That's why the final version of the speech didn't include it.
Accounts tell that as he approached the end of his text, he felt something was missing. In a sign that he wasn't alone in sensing the gap, a trusted voice suggested: "Tell them about the dream!" Had it not been for that person, the rest might never have become history.
The point is: it wasn't improvisation. He had already spoken those words before. He had already put that intention into words. It's common to think great ideas happen through pure genius. As with any other skill, the not-so-secret secret lies not only in repetition, but often in persistence.
Don't speak just to speak
What I love about both examples above is that they are anything but lukewarm. Have you ever drunk lukewarm water? It only gets noticed because it unsettles the stomach. On your skin it might feel comfortable — in every other situation it won't be remembered because it causes no change of state. Lukewarm words have the same effect.
When a brand like Itaú reaches its centennial, what for many companies would be a reason to think only about what was, for them became a reason to also celebrate what can be. Or rather, to keep being. Only someone who has already proven it's true would turn 100 saying they are made of the future.
Itaú was a pioneer in the digitization of the banking system, in the introduction of ATMs and internet banking. For Itaú, that statement was a simple observation.
Regardless of the moment — whether at 5 or 100 years old — clarity about the next steps will not happen without thinking with pencil on paper. Writing helps us hold up to scrutiny what we truly think about what we believe. If you prefer to think in purely transactional terms, clarity can be the difference between selling to those who need what you offer and selling to those who believe in the same things you believe in.
I'm not comparing your next social media post to Churchill's speech. I'm not saying your next email to your team needs to inspire a generational revolution like Luther King Jr.'s. But just because your message is supposedly less noble or grand doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to your words.
In a time when so much is said about the future, I've come to believe it will belong to those who use words well.
