RSS
Home
What's in a name? Use the PAR statement as the basis for your brand proposition (part 7 of 7)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Insert photo caption or credit here
Unite the business concept, the benefit concepts, and what makes you different - every part of your value proposition at the macro level. What's in a name is what you do, why it's good for the buyer.
The seventh component of naming a business for optimal brand recognition works as an umbrella for the six components this series has already covered:
- Use one or two syllables in each word of the name, keeping it short to fit in human memories and small notes
- Use strong consonants to convey energy and definition and support strong word associations through alliteration and homonyms
- Use collapse, combine, and contrast techniques to merge words into suggestive phrases with some creative, surprising twists
- Use metaphors to suggest context and convey additional meaning
- Make it unique in context so that you don't look like all the others; differentiate yourself with three techniques: niche, opinion (point of view that anchors your message), and marketing stories (PAR stories or testimonials). Differentiation is about being remembered.
- Verify the URL availability as early as possible and work with the shape, form, and appeal of the logo.
The exercise suggested here depends upon your written Problem-Action-Result (PAR) statements, whether they're on your resume or not. Tomorrow, The Resume Club will host a PAR workshop at Paradise Cafe in Bridgeport Village from 8 am to 10 am if you're new to PAR statements.
Why use a PAR statement? Two reasons:
- There is a market for what you do (you had a job, and you know other people who do that job)
- You have a unique selling proposition (you have been hired for your jobs, and other candidates were not)
That's what moving from the PAR statement to the brand proposition does.
How to move from the PAR statement to the brand proposition--laughing on the way
There's no point to this if you don't have some fun. Job titles, your own name (especially if it happens to be eponymous), and problems will get you started. When I laugh at myself, it looks like this:
- Find one or two syllables per word from words that make sense for my business: Writer, Columnist, Op-Ed, Examiner, Editor, Susan C Tait, Research, News, Issues, Unemployment, Employment, Portland.
- Strong consonants in my list, in order by relevance: T, P, C, D.
- Collapse, combine, contrast: As I begin to play, I see that stait ->state (as a verb, a synonym for write). Noise Editor (noise/news near-homonym), ReStait (research and name play on words), RUINous News (Research_Unemployment_Issues_News collapsed and combined) all work.
You can generate your own name anagram or look at these high-irony examples in My Gonads Roar (amazon.com). As owner of felines from the Humane Society, I should not be surprised to discover that my name unscrambles to I CAT SANCTUS, although ITS A TUSCAN could refer to a love of Italian food, although I am not now nor have I ever been Tuscan, or Italian.
Check out these combinations that became product names.
- For a niche, I could consider Cat Fancier magazine, cat stories, Italian-Americans and unemployment; but for a point of view, RUINous News for a tight focus on the unemployment issues, and Noise Editor if I want to expand without being tied to unemployment--or if I go deeper into the subject.
- Marketing stories--a couple of PR issues definitely fit, as do any high-volume negotiations, all publications, and, oh yes, the value of preventing RUINous News with a Staitment in a given context.
So I'm not there yet, but I'm working on my brand proposition, which will help me move to a brand story.
Upcoming articles: Tomorrow, some definite Noise Editing on the subject of resume-eating Monsters, RUINous news for job boards, and what does it mean that this week is Flexible Work Arrangement Week and Update Your References Week?
Related Articles:
Comments
