Don’t repeat your ‘what’ if your business name gives me a clue If, by luck or construction, your business name gives me a clue what you do…great start. Doing so allows you greater freedom in playing with the next few words, especially to achieve an emotional connection with a potential customer. If I know your … Continue reading Don’t repeat your ‘what’ if your business name gives me a clue
Category Archives: million dollar message
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’
The new, improved (irony intended) Metlink bus service relaunched in Wellington in early July. With it they gave us a new slogan come value proposition. “On our way”. At first blush it is OK. But, if it is their customers, including me quite often, who are the important people – the addition of one simple … Continue reading One letter change’s Metlink’s value proposition
If you’re Nike, with millions of dollars to throw at advertising, you can afford to promote an aspirational slogan. “Just do it” is a psychological reminder to be and stay active, with added sweat. Naturally, Nike hopes you’ll carry out such athletic activities in their kit. Their messaging is an oblique reminder of their brand. … Continue reading Just do it?…most of us can afford aspiration
The start of your website story is directly equivalent to a headline. And while the first words a stranger reads may not be news as such, this is how we should treat them for a visitor. It is the statement that encourages them (or not) to find out more. It is the encapsulating summary of … Continue reading It’s a headline…shouldering lots of heavy lifting
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
Any business could create its narrative from many different objective viewpoints We all, as a business have different stories, different parts of our whole. But we can tell only one. Deconstructing your business to find your One Central Truth is necessary to unearth who you are. A Million Dollar Message emerges from a structured chaos … Continue reading A business is invariably many stories…but you can tell only one
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