All posts by punchline

Lipstick on a pig, versus naming your pet pig

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Do the first few words you use to describe your company accurately reflect who you are?

Are you able to hold your hand on your heart and honestly say “this is us?”

Or do you have a degree of embarrassment that your first message is closer to fiction than reality?

Because the simple fact of the matter is we’ll always get caught out trying to tell a made-up story about ourselves, rather than telling someone who we really are.

The irony is, all businesses have a great true story to tell. For a start, we all solve people’s problems in different ways.

All of which is why we should avoid telling a story that is the equivalent to putting lipstick on a pig.

A pig in its own right is a lovely animal.

But just as attempting to pretty up a pig with lipstick achieves the opposite, so does trying to embellish your own company with a story that doesn’t ring true.

True words, well told, will always trump false words…no matter how much spin you put on it.

Could you write 100 blogs in 100 days?

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The Good Registry – putting the heart back into giving

Do you think you could put together 100 consecutive blogs over 20 working weeks?

That is, publish a piece reflective of both your own thoughts and those of importance to your business?

I’m not sure I could (hell, who am I kidding…I couldn’t).

Which is why I’m tipping my hat to Christine Langdon, Co-founder and ‘Chief of Good’ at The Good Registry.

The Good Registry exchanges gifts we might give to a person as a donation to a good cause instead…a form of waste elimination and helping others while still being an even better gift.

Christine’s finished her self-imposed challenge, which she published under her ‘My Kinder Life’ blog. And there’s two things that impressed me about her feat.

Firstly, there was a day she didn’t post. Did she use this breaking of her vow to give up?

No, she got back on the horse, didn’t beat herself up about it, and carried on.

The second lovely wee story is a couple of times she hadn’t blogged – and it was already early evening, and she’s not that keen on opening the laptop for work-oriented stuff at that time of day.

Now, there’s no rules about what a blog must be, and necessity being the mother of invention and all that, what did she do.

She wrote a haiku (or two in this case).

I finish with one of them, and you can find the other one here.

my kinder life haiku (#1)

Nothing. Then a birth.
learn, grow, grind? or learn, grow soar?
then an end. Nothing.

 

 

Idea equations = another way to sell a story

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Photo by Jess Watters, on Unsplash

Sometimes it it difficult to express your what and why in one sentence.

The concepts you’re trying to express may be too different, or you can’t link them smoothly.

Alternatively, you may have quite technical or complex products or services to sell.

Don’t be afraid to play with an idea equation. Give yourself permission to use the addition ‘+’ sign, or even a multiplication symbol ‘x’.

Equally there might be an advantage in using an equals sign ‘=’, but there doesn’t have to be. The two components you’re joining together can stand alone.

Such a mixing of words and mathematical symbols can be powerful, adding synergies beyond the words themselves.

one concept + another component = more that the two added together

There can be a neatness and symmetry to these idea equations, and we’re all capable of effortlessly combining ‘languages’ that live in different spheres.

Don’t be frightened to use them.

And sometimes those sales messages fail to land

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Picture by Peter Kent, from UnsplashIf

A couple of 13 year olds were in the same room as me, where the television happened to be on.

(Of course, normally they’d be head down over an internet device of some kind and wouldn’t be seen dead watching some ‘old’ technology).

An ad came on, though I wasn’t looking at the time so don’t know what it was.

They both watched, it being obviously visually-enough stimulating.

At its end one of them commented, “it looked good, but I don’t have a clue what they were selling.”

Too often television advertising (in particular, though other mediums are often as bad), elicits a ‘what?’

What was that about?

What were they flogging?

Because the ‘what’ of the sale or advertisement isn’t clear, the ‘why’ you should care doesn’t get a look in.

A simple and compelling take home ‘sell’ is obviously much better than a confused and confusing ‘what’?.

If the oft-quoted idea that we’re exposed to 10,000 sales messages a day is true, any confusion whatsoever, and you can be damn sure your particular message will obtain no traction, period.

Use these words at your peril (or…how quickly terms become overused)

Marketing, messages that matter, million dollar message, punchline, slogan, Tagline, value proposition
Picture by rawpixel at Unsplash

Once, the following terms were new and fresh. But, as everyone starts using them, abusing them, they become overused, they become ignored.

These words actually make it harder for people to understand you – which is ironic because they originally were meant to do the opposite.

Audit, tax and advisory services firm Grant Thornton recently compiled an index of 120 trending business buzzwords based on Fortune 500 company websites, the language they used on social media and common phrases in business journalism in the first quarter of 2018.

Such is the pace of language development, the terms almost spark the idea of the opposite meaning when we see them. “Best in class” was the number one buzzword in the first quarter, with other 71,000 uses.

Use them at your peril.

Top 20 Biz Buzzwords 2018

1  Best in class 71,729 Q1 uses
2  Value add 56,659
3  Game changer 48,862
4  Action plan 28,863
5  One the same page 26,333
6  Game plan 25,291
7  Thought leadership 22,956
8  Brainstorm 21,155
9  Price point 20,988
10  Organic growth 20,983
11  Deep dive 19,103
12  Customer centric 17,360
13  In the pipeline 13,791
14  Hit the ground running 11,456
15  Moving parts 11,200
16  Bring to the table 10,189
17  Bang for your buck 9,950
18  Laser focused 8,394
19  Move the needle 8,325
20  In the driver’s seat 8,055

Messages that matter dissolve resistance

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Photo by Sandrachile, Unsplash

We all have different concerns, issues and requirements we’d like solved in some way.

Many of us are selling products or services to answer such concerns.

And the simple fact is, we may have only one chance to alert a person you’re the one who can be of use.

How do you ensure you’re exactly on point at that moment in time?

How do you be ‘the one’, be it through an internet search, driving past a display advertisement, or a friend recommendation – among many ways?

The only way to spark a thought in that potential customer’s mind is through your first story. These are the words to describe your business purpose and reason (that a particular customer should care). The words need to be perfect.

This articulation of your ‘what and why’ needs to appeal as much to the heart as to the head.

By getting this heart/head mix right, we dissolve the natural scepticism we all carry (which is understandable if we are indeed exposed to 10,000 selling messages a day).

Such perfect words bypass our natural ‘no’, invite us to linger, and perhaps explore, more.

They’re messages that matter…because they are directly relevant and appeal to both the emotions and rationale of a concern to soothe at a moment in time.

When you know the back stories, very few words are needed to tell a new story

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You’ve got to love it when heavyweights go head to head – or bun to bun in this case.

Comparative advertising’s a risky play at times – you’re also providing free publicity for the opposition.

But when you can humourously make a dig at your rival, and illustrate it well, it’s probably worth the risk.

Burger King hasn’t explicitly named their ‘enemy’, but most people will understand who they’re talking about. The billboard’s picture and words tell an immediately understandable story in 11 words. Even better, viewers are forced to be part of the story because they have to do a bit of thinking for themselves.

Being succinct and funny and truthful, the visual snapshot will be stored away in the ‘food’ part of passing motorists’ brains. The comparison will no doubt come to mind the next time they think about which takeaway they’ll purchase.

Simple storytelling works.

No doubt Burger King’s rival is testing different ways to refute the pictorial illustration of size.

We await their riposte with relish (or their special sauce)!

If you’ve only got one chance to tell your story…

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Restricting yourself to 10 words, tell me about your business.

Have you described why someone should be interested in your product or service?

Have you given me a what and a why?

Is part of the heart and soul of who you are evident along with your value proposition?

Does what you say sound fresh, because you’ve used familiar (though not overused) terms in a novel way?

If you’ve pulled this off by yourself, you’re magic.

However most of us, myself included, struggle mightily to unearth our own business story.

By ourself, we can’t sort the wood from the trees, spot the gem in the dross, narrow down to the one central truth of what I call your MIllion Dollar Message.

An outsider is (essentially) the only way to bring objectivity to revealing the essence of your first, most important story.

Writing 10,000 words is easy. Refining your story down to 10 words is arduous.

But get it right, and you’ve faceted the diamond of your story crown.

Neither fish nor fowl, master nor minion

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What’s the name for a person who is neither a consultant nor a contractor?

The term facilitator doesn’t cut the mustard for the definition I’m after.

Online thesaurus’s aren’t coming to the party either.

value proposition thinking
“Uumm, what to call the role of helping people unearth their heart and soul and value proposition?”

Neither consultant nor contractor

Because I’m trying to name the role – it is neither a contractor nor a consultant – that sits at the heart of the workshop process of unearthing a Million Dollar Message.

Former consultant and analyst Matthew Hodgman, who has reinvented himself as a dramatist, reckons the part I play sits between a “client telling you what to do, and you telling the client what to do”.

He said the role is a bit like that of a ‘dramaturge’ in the theatre. This is the wise-head person who helps in many different aspects of a play, opera or movie making, including being the director’s right hand person, but is neither master nor minion.

The best description I’ve come up for the MDM workshop is ‘reflective listening foil’ and ‘co-design intelligence’.

But a single word – one which expresses operating in the trenches with a client to reveal the 2-10 words that make up a business’s heart and soul and value proposition statement – would be really handy.

It’s a bit like being a counsellor, but no one is sick or ill.

So, if  anyone has a term that means you’re intensely working with a client – question-storming to discover the One Central Truth of the offer of their product or service, and then metaphorising to express that offer as poetically as possible – let me know.  

Perhaps it is an opportunity to create a portmanteau (combining two different words to create a new entity; e.g. bankster – from banker and gangster)?

 

Why you can only tell one story (at a time)

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value proposition
You only get one chance to tell a story that is your own

Ever been at a function, say a BBQ, and asked someone what they do…their story business-wise?

Some people come back with, “well, we do lots of things.”

Immediately you begin to switch off.

That person has irretrievably lost their best chance to pique your interest. They’ve frittered their golden opportunity for you to ask “tell me more.”

It’s the same if you click onto someone’s website and you can’t instantly tell what they do, and more importantly, why you should give a rat’s arse.

Unless you’re some kind of digital depths train spotter you’ll click away to another site – and the products or service actually available on that website will never have the good fortune to receive your custom.

Your first story is vitally important

Which is why your first story, your initial message, is so vitally important.

It is why it is crucial to nail an expression that conveys your business “what and why”.

It is why you need to unearth a heart and soul and value proposition.

Because this Million Dollar Message is your encapsulated story, it can’t be, in fact it is impossible to be, created by brainstorming. It means it is a waste of time asking an advertising agency to come up with this statement.

Brainstorming won’t reveal the one central truth of what your story must convey.

Brainstorming can only convey a fictional account of your story – when in fact it must be memorable, poetic, enticing and above all true.

Only question-storming can both reveal and distill the essence of your story. Only question-storming can narrow down to the 2 -10 novel yet familiar words which enables a viewer or listener to literally or figuratively say “tell me more.”

Ten thousand words is easy. Ten words is extremely hard.

But those are your most important words – words that can make or break your business.

If you can’t figure them out yourself (and it is very difficult for us to see the wood from the trees), make sure you get someone who can help bring your most meaningful message to light.