Earlier in this series of articles about branding and naming, I promised I’d talk about what to do if your brand was your birth (or assumed) name.
HUMANIZING:
You know by now that you want to have an evocative name – one that appeals in some way to the “human” in everyone, that creates an identity that can be associated with images, experience, emotion or ideals.
This is why “Joe’s Car Wash” is a far better name than the seemingly clever double entendre of “Autowash”. It is memorable. “Joe” is a person; therefor a personality exists or can be created around him.
YOUR OWN NAME:
If your brand name is your own name, you’ve already started that process. Now what you have to do is create a phrase to go along with it. It’s what marketer Bill Schley calls a “Micro-Script”.
If you think about it (not too much, though!), the mind always wants less, not more. Even when we want to know a lot about something, we seek to break that knowledge down into small, simple parts. And most importantly, we make judgements based on the smallest bits of information – the thing we perceive first or the quickest.
THE STORY BITE:
What Bill Schley calls a micro-script, I call an “Emotional Message”. It is not just a sound bite, it’s a story bite. It resonates in others; it starts a story in the customer’s mind; it creates curiosity. It – as the venerable Robert Collier put it – “enter(s) the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind”… or it creates a new one.
Do you want to figure out what that is for you? Email us at hello@21thirteen.com or call us at 646 808 0249. We’re looking forward to telling your story.
