Posts Tagged ‘Book
Primal Branding Series #5 – Sacred Words. What do you say?
Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
What are sacred words? I believe the best example is Apples’ “i”s. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc. Apple has created a language all their own for their products.
Smaller businesses have sacred words too! Remember that bake shop / candle shop / soap shop that has really smart names for their flavors? That’s sacred words in action.
Have you ever heard the following phrase just roll off of somebody’s tongue? “A grande non-fat sugar-free vanilla latte, extra hot, no foam, please.” That’s sacred words in action.
Allow me to share with you a story. My co-workers and I regularly visit this sandwich shop for lunch. They have many options for the sandwiches. What size? What kind of bread? Cheese? So, we challenge ourselves to go through the entire ordering process without them having to ask us one single question. This is us learning their language, their sacred words. That’s sacred words in action.
Why are sacred words important? Because every culture has a language of their own. To have your own culture, your own cult, your own following, you must create the language your culture / cult / following will use.
As I have done in previous weeks, I’d like to take these primal branding principles to the next level. I’d like to see how scared words are leveraged not only by businesses, but by people. What works for corporate branding should work for personal branding too.
What does sacred words mean for personal branding?
There are two fronts to this question. Are you a follower or are you the leader? At any given time, you are both.
First, you’re a follower in your industry. You must know the sacred words in your industry to fit into that cult. This is to know the jargons. This has obvious implications if you’re looking for a job. Your resume needs to reflect the right jargon. You need to be on the same page, speaking the same lingo, with your interviewer.
Second, you’re a leader in your industry and in your own personal brand. In your industry / company, you define the words your people would use.
Allow me to share another story. A boss of mine used to use the term “EEC”. Always act and speak with EEC. What’s EEC? Energy, Enthusiasm, and Conviction. EEC was his term. This was his scared word.
As a leader of my own personal brand, I have built a reputation of being a good worker with a good attitude. When was the last time you heard someone say “spiffy”? I used to say that all the time when people ask “how’s it going?” In fact, once I didn’t say “spiffy”, I said something along the line of “great”… my co-worker called me out! “Oh, not spiffy?” This was how I knew that “spiffy” was my scared word.
As I grew in my career, I’ve retired “spiffy”. Currently, my default answer is “can’t complain”. Simple enough right? But it’s actually quite powerful when it’s integrated with other aspects of my personal brand. Consider the following conversation that actually happened:
Marketing Director: How’s it going?
Me: Can’t complain.
Marketing Director: Well, you wouldn’t even if you can.
My simple “can’t complain” reinforces my personal brand of being a good worker with a good attitude.
How do you answer “How’s it going?” What are your scared words?
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Primal Branding Series #4 – Pagans. What are you not?
Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
This is perhaps the easiest code to understand as a marketer. You always go to the market with a single minded message, and this is what this code element is all about.
You need to know what you are. More importantly, you need to know what you are NOT. You CANNOT be all things to all people!
If you’re the creative type, you are not going to be the all about math type.
If you’re selling imports, you are not going to be carrying locally produced goods.
Now, there are several caveats.
One, you don’t have to have just one brand. You could be selling imports and locally produced goods. However, they have to be different brands. You have to have different stores, and they have to have different positioning. On a personal branding basis, this would be harder to execute. In the end, you are your personal brand, and you are somewhat limited to one positioning. Maybe you’re a Jack/Jill of all trades, but you can only be a true expert in one thing. It takes a LOT of work to be a subject matter expert. So, if you claim that you’re an expert in everything, you would have a credibility problem…
Two, this does not give you the license to be bad at something. There is still cost of entry (ie. minimum requirements). Just because you’re the creative type, doesn’t mean you cannot do basic math. You still need to know enough to keep track of your hours, billings, etc. For a business that focuses on imports, this does not mean you could forget about the locally produced goods business. You still need to keep an eye on all your potential competitors, and that often include those that you’re not in direct competition with. After all, there are only so many dollars in your consumers’ wallets, and these dollars move across different categories and segments.
Why is it important to stand for one thing? Then you know who you’re trying to target, and more important who you’re NOT trying to target. It makes your marketing effort more effective.
So, do you know what you stand for? Do you know what you are NOT?
Primal Branding Series #4 – Rituals. Do you know yours?
Continuing with my series on Primal Branding by Patrick Hanlon
“Rituals are the meaningful repeated points of contact between you and your guest, customer, client, or target market.”
These rituals come in many forms. For example, you putting a piece of lime into a Corona is a ritual. It was not based on history or culture or taste. It started as a bartender’s invention. Capitalized by marketers. Once the masses adopted this practice, a ritual was born.
Another example of ritual could be you expecting fare sales in your inbox every Tuesday. Therefore, you faithfully check your inbox or airline websites every Tuesday. That is a ritual.
In the blogsphere, a commonly adopted ritual is to post on a regular basis. If you post every Monday, your readers can build a ritual around reading your blog every Monday.
Alas, I have not adopted posting on a regular basis. I have found with my visitor stats that posting every other day have been most effectively. However, I have not necessarily take advantage of this insight. And really, there is no excuses considering I could write the posts ahead of time, and post-date the publishing.
(So readers, please comment if you think my irregular posting is affecting your blog reading ritual…)
On another front, let’s consider how else a business could apply ritual and build this code into everything you do.
Let’s look at the definition one more time: “meaningful repeated points of contact”.
That is something that happens already! Naturally! The trick is to identify them and to leverage them. Like anything, it is much easily to leverage what organically and naturally happen with your business than to build something new. Leveraging existing rituals is much easier than building new rituals. It would also make your brand more authentic.
For example, if you have a book store. Your products are part of an existing ritual. Your books are part of book club meetings. So, why not capitalize on that ritual and host the meetings? Perhaps suggest the next book to read for the club? Chances are the club would buy your suggestions at your store, rather than your competition.
On a personal branding front, what ritual are you already part of? What do people expect of you?
At work, I keep a candy jar in my cube. Many people think of me when 3pm comes around. That is a ritual, and, yes, there are many ways to leverage this. In addition to just building good will, it also offers me great opportunity to connect with different people in the office that I may not be working with right now. Sometimes, I could just bounce ideas off of them in those moments that they are in my cube.
But like any branding efforts, any mistake could derail the whole campaign. If you are always late to meetings, that would become your ritual and part of your brand!
So, what ritual are you already part of? Is there a way for you to leverage that to positively reinforce your brand?
Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeanne lives in NYC. 
