The truth won’t kill your business, but a non-truth my well push it down that path. Having a value proposition which doesn’t resonate with who you are, or who people think you are is extremely counterproductive. You’re not only trying to fool your customers, you’re trying to fool yourself. As an example, for a few … Continue reading Why you should tell the truth when naming your baby
Category Archives: Marketing
Just look what a growing sense of tech self belief is achieving…the 14th TIN report has just been released – and what wonderful reading it is for New Zealand. Here are the combined ICT, High tech manufacturing and biotech industries cracking over $11 billion dollars in revenue, growing at more than 11% over last year, … Continue reading Tech self belief and telling our stories
Describing ‘who’ you are means unearthing your ‘what and why’ Telling someone you’re a lawyer or dentist tells me a little bit about your business. It is who, with a very small ‘w’. Such a generic description doesn’t reveal your heart and soul however. Using a broad descriptor for your who doesn’t provide an opportunity … Continue reading Finding ‘who’ means unearthing your ‘what and why’
Imagine you read, “XYZ company, delivering creative solutions collaboratively, while empowering intelligent customer synergies”. Do you have a clue what they do? Have any of the words they’ve used to describe themselves provided points of difference compared to competitors? Would this first statement encourage further exploration of a website? The answer is unlikely – unless … Continue reading Why generic words are meaningless
What makes a slogan, tagline or value proposition valuable? Simple…it only requires two components. Those two are – what makes you distinctive and what makes you desirable? It needs to be as succinct and poetic as possible, expressing why you’re just that little bit special, in words which are novel yet familiar. And if you … Continue reading Your value proposition only needs two things
Google’s pretty useful. It is difficult to imagine the internet without its all-pervasive presence. But trying to overly appeal to its search algorithm is an ugly way to craft your first story. Indeed, if one of the ultimate truth tests of your primary message is to respond to “what do you do?”, then attempting to … Continue reading Keywords according to Google do not a story make
Hairdressers seem particularly prone to them – “Hair today, gone tomorrow”, “Hair apparent”. Garden landscapers are often close behind – “I dig gardening”, “Gardeners know all the dirt”. We’re talking puns, word play which hopefully raises a smile (as an aside, the language knowledge needed to understand a pun is very sophisticated. This is because … Continue reading Put a pun in your first message at your own peril
Sometimes we all need to stop – and take the time to look up. A colleague’s friend recently went to watch her son’s school cross country race. Naturally she cheered her son across the finish line. And having given him a compulsory congratulatory hug, she was about to leave. It was about then she realised … Continue reading Taking the time to look up
Many of us have struggled with what to call something or someone. In the case of a child’s name it can be a nightmare. After all, we don’t want to lumber our offspring with either too common a handle or something so obscure it invariably results in variations on ‘pardon?’. A business name is similar, … Continue reading Why your business name should start your story
After Michelangelo sculpted his statue of David in Florence in 1504, he was asked how he created such a masterpiece? “It’s simple. I took away everything that wasn’t David,” he replied. Viewing the magnificent more than four metre David, it’s obvious Michelangelo is being slightly disingenuous. But his ‘simple’ idea to remove the unnecessary bits … Continue reading Simple is better…but hard to achieve