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Excerpt from Chapter 7
Harness the Power of Names, Signature Words
and Sound Bites
Own a Key Word
Brands try to own a word or short phrase in the minds of consumers. When people hear the word, they think of the brand. For example, Fed Ex owns “overnight,” Coke owns “cola” and Volvo owns “safety.”
Owning a word is important because it means that your brand is positioned in the mind of prospects with an important attribute. Your brand has meaning to people in a world where there are so many brands and messages that most do not stand for anything. It’s like being the dominant response that comes up when a key word is entered on a search engine.
Owning a word can help self brands, too. Your word can be a positive attribute that defines you. It could be a niche in the market that you dominate. It could even be an idea or point of view that you are known for.
Many people end up owning a word through writing a book like Larry Bossidy did with “execution,” Tom Peters did with “excellence,” Al Ries and Jack Trout did with “positioning,” and Conrad-Levinson did with “guerrilla.
Jack Welch didn’t need to increase his well-knowness as a celebrity CEO by writing a book (though he may have wanted to do some brand polishing after a messy divorce). But with his successful book, he has laid claim to the word “winning.”
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Self Brand Keyword: |
A “signature word” is a word that is closely identified with you that defines you in an important way to help catapult your self brand.
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You can own a word that is an important attribute you believe in as Ferdinand did with “accountability.” Ferdinand used “accountability” in talking about his vision for the company in internal meetings, memos and on the company website.
But Ferdinand also did tangible actions to embed “accountability” into the culture and associate the word with his leadership. He introduced new sales reporting metrics, performance reviews and instituted client feedback mechanisms and the like that tangibly demonstrated accountability in action.
Name Your Ideas
Business doesn’t have to be just about facts and statistics. And it’s not smart branding if that is the way you approach it. You have to create interest, not bore people. That’s why smart business people, like smart brand managers, brand their ideas by packaging them with a name.
Naming is a good way to create assets for your self brand – intangible assets. Naming an important idea or project has enormous advantages. When you give something a name, you make a tangible thing out of an intangible. A name will help people visualize your idea or the point you are making so that they understand it better.
Names make your ideas and points more memorable. When you name something, you are branding it and giving it the potential to be a “big idea.” Names can help you sell your project to your clients, whether they are external or in your organization.
Coining your own word or expression can be a marvelous branding device for your idea, point of view or recommendation (and, of course, yourself). Saying your key message in an interesting way in memos, letters and meetings can persuade people to your point of view (and cause people to remember its author).
Make It Sticky
Give your idea or point an unusual or quirky name. Quirky words are sticky – they stick in the mind so people remember them.
In the 2004 presidential campaign, President George W. Bush used the sticky expression “flip-flopper” to brand John Kerry. If Bush had simply said that Kerry changes his position a lot, it wouldn’t have had the same impact with the media or with voters. Flip-flopper was sticky.
Give your idea a particularly memorable name or one with emotional content, and you can create a company rallying cry. Jack Welch used the strange word “boundarylessness” at GE for the idea of employees getting good ideas from anywhere and sharing them everywhere in the company. Welch could have simply said “idea sharing” but it wouldn’t have the same impact. Though awkward and a bit of a tongue twister, boundarylessness is a name that was unusual and unexpected. It was sticky.
You can also persuade people to your point of view by the names you give things, particularly options in a series that are under consideration. Kissinger talked about “coloring the options” when he would present various alternatives to President Nixon to consider.
Plant a Better Name
You don’t have to invent the “big idea” either when you’re creating intellectual capital. (Though you should put your own spin on all ideas.) If you give an existing idea a great name and spread the word, you’ll end up “owning” it in the mind of others.
For example, the concept of ideas and trends spreading like an epidemic originally came out of the worlds of science and social science. One scientist, Richard Dawkins, called the discovery “memes,” probably not the best name if you want your discovery to spread.
Malcolm Gladwell elegantly wrote about the concept coining “the tipping point” to describe ideas and trends at first building slowly, then dramatically “tipping” like epidemics and becoming a mass phenomenon. When his book The Tipping Point made the best seller list, the concept entered the national consciousness.
Seth Godin put his own spin on the concept. He came up with the name “idea virus” and wrote a book about it too called Unleashing the Idea Virus. (Creating an idea virus is what you are trying to do with the names you give your ideas.) Godin took the idea one step further and came up with the concept of packaging your ideas to make them spread faster.
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