Say it Better

Your Description of Your Work Doesn’t Have to be Life-Changing, Yet ….

…. To be client-attracting, it must be engaging. Make it stick in their minds using a memory hook. Yours can relate to your name, kind of work, remarkable quality or skill, appearance - or perhaps a rhyme or word play. BNI founder, Ivan Misner, author of Seven Second Marketing, offers many examples, including three that I've paraphrased here:

• "Let me take the world off your shoulders," offers Sharon Howard, massage therapist.

•  Lance Mead of Lunar Travel Agency stands out from other agents when he says "Ninety percent of all accidents happen in the home. So travel."

• Photographer, Robert Stewart writes, "My pictures say a thousand words so you don't have to."

Sayings to Provoke Your Own Way With Words

”Art is never necessary. It is merely indispensable.”

    ~ New York Times art critic, Michael Kimmelman

"Regarding SPAM, I'm comfortable with the size of my penis, I don't care that young girls want me, I've got more than enough insurance, and I can't help you escape from jail in Ghana, so please, go jam somebody else's in-box." 

   ~ Mark T. Gould, New Haven, Connecticut

"Some times you just have to live long enough for your message to catch up." 

   ~ Rev. Al Sharpton

 "Sex is about appetite. Love is about endurance." 

   ~ Jack Valenti

"Creativity isn't the conclusions you have drawn, but how you pry them back open." 

   ~ David Crismon, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Even if They Didn’t Intend to, Get 'Em to Recall What You Say

Here’s four ways:

One. Imagine that the brain is like a wall with clothes hooks on it. 

For the brain to catch and retain a detail, that detail must hang on one of the memory-inducing hooks that are already in the brain. The biggest hooks are the three universal and core life experiences: 

1. Family. 

2. Hometown or town where you have lived or are living. 

3. Past or current kind of work. 

For family, relate what you're saying to a family situation: yours, theirs, someone else's, or even a metaphorical family of services. Or relate your topic to the listener's work situation or work with which she is familiar. People also remember landmark places where they live, have lived, or have visited or well-known places. For example, our business is in Sausalito, which evokes pleasant by-the-bay memories for most who've visited here.

Two. Motion makes memories. 

Whenever people are moving or see movement, they remember more and are more emotional about what they remember. Get customers in motion with you in a positive experience and they will be more fervent, vivid, and believing fans, more likely to evoke their bragging rights and likely to share their experience with others. That's why we literally move to offer samples, getting people to reach out, so they feel the experience more deeply.

An experience is most memorable when you and the other person are both in motion, such as when you shake hands, walk together, or reach to exchange something. Pick those ripe moments to say the most vivid, specific detail you want the listener to remember and repeat to others. Times are next most memorable for the listener who is in motion even if you are not. Ask the person to reach or turn for something while you're saying your tasty tidbit to remember. The next most memorable movement is when you are in motion, even if your listener is not. A final valuable way to evoke a memory is for you both to watch motion from something or someone else.

Warning: Movement is a two-edged sword -- it is never neutral. 

The listener who experiences something negative where motion is involved will also remember the experience longer, and more intensely. As to a vibrating pole, we hold on sooner, longer, and more strongly to the negative incidents of life than to the positive, because the primitive triune part of our brain - wired to help us survive - causes us to respond to appearances of danger more strongly than to those of delight.

Three. Speak first of the other person's most current, pressing interest. 

Just as those in the market for new cars are most likely to hear car ads on the radio, all people listen sooner when you first speak about what is most on their mind at that moment. Sadly, in fewer than five percent of interactions when we want something from someone else do we first speak about what matters most to them. We are more likely to speak about our own interests first.

Four. Speak in vivid, specific details that have a high emotional value for the listener.

The good news? If you practice speaking first about the other person's interests, then about what you share in common, and only then about how that commonality relates to your interests, four amazingly powerful changes occur in how that other person relates to you. The person listens sooner, listens longer, remembers more, and assumes you have a higher IQ than if you first speak about your own interests. 

Recent Quotes That Stick in Your Mind, Perhaps Unfortunately

“What I do really isn’t fishing. More like waterboarding for worms.” - Man to man, overheard fishing off a public pier in San Francisco.

Every year the New Yorker magazine invites artists to remix their original cover image. Guess who got inserted.

"For the last 10 years people bought cars and refrigerators and TVs like they were going grocery shopping. Now people are grocery shopping like they're buying a car." - Mike Moriarty, A.T. Kearney business consultant

Nominations for Diagram Prize for the oddest book title include Baboon Metaphysics, Curbside Consultation of the Colon and The Large Sieve and its Application. 

“One cure for a country beset by government bureaucracy and incompetence may be some old-fashioned corruption. In countries with robust institutions, corruption decreases efficiency. But in weak states, graft and bribes can ‘grease the wheels’ by enabling intelligent investors to circumvent a crooked, incapable government and invest money directly in the private sector.” - The Atlantic

"Will Americans embrace a heroine who skulks like a spy among the intelligentsia, an apparently unlettered concierge..." - Caryn James on The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Get the f#%k out of here or I'll throw you out the window.” - Pete Stark, in discussing the national debt with interviewer, Jan Helfeld

"A belief that our prices are too high, that we run misleading advertising, and that we care more about playing golf with doctors than about helping them understand our medicines—all of this has earned our industry a reputation near the bottom of all American institutions." - Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler, in a speech acknowledging that drug companies like Pfizer don't have much credibility when discussing healthcare reform

"Don't you know?" one girl asked another in the Alameda, California Library last week, "Ben Franklin is Aretha Franklin's father. But he's, like, dead now. Way dead."

. ..” how can humans intervene to breed and teach the birds what they’ll need to survive without also wearing away those birds’ natural apprehension of people; without inadvertently building a race of whooping cranes that feels comfortable hanging out on golf courses and in schoolyards and the fetid little ponds around retirement communities?” - Joe Duff on using ultralights to lead whooping cranes on a safer migration

If They Didn't Listen the First Time Why Would They Hear Next Time?

“People don't ‘get’ the important messages leaders try to send the first time around”, believes The Change Master Rosabeth Moss Kanter. “This isn't intentional, but there's too much noise and too many distractions... so use the principle of redundancy.” 

Yet you don’t have to be a “leader” to be heard, nor rely on repetition. Just be relevant. It’s more likely that we don’t remember a message because it didn’t matter to us.

To say it so it’s meaningful to others – enough that they’ll remember and act, here’s some simple steps:

1. Determine the single, specific behavioral change you seek.

2. Step into their shoes.  See the situation their way.

3. Find the emotional trigger within that situation or their lives (fear or desire).

4.  Among the many details in your head, find the key comparison between “what is” and “what could be” that would matter to them if they did #1.

5. Craft your three-part messsage:

a. What "is"  (the bad situation)

b. What could be – when (not if) “we” act to change it.

c. Why act now.

6. Ask them to signify that they will join you in this act by doing something now. (raise right hand, stand….)

6. Hone #5 and #6 steps so that every word counts.

7. Repeatedly practice saying it out loud and writing it so that your body moves with the message.

If you are crafting a message you will write rather than speak, you might as well practice saying it too because:

•  It will help you make your written message more brief and conversational.

• You’ll be so sought-after when they read you message they are going to want to talk with you about “our” idea.  

How to Hook Them In

When asked the secret to writing suspenseful books, Stephen King cited Elmore Leonard, “he just left out the boring parts.” Whether you are writing or talking - pull people in with a hook.

Example: Experience orchestrator, Steve Neiderhauser, recounts this advice from James Bonnet, “’Look at story through the eyes of the problem.’” In Jaws, the movie doesn’t spend ten minutes showing the shark swimming alone the Maine coastline chasing sea lions or splashing about. No, the movie gets to the problem - a shark chomping on humans.”

For your hook, think of a…
• Startling detail
• Problem that affects them
• Opportunity that they could capture
• Contrasting options such as an impending worst case/best case scenario
• Question that enables them to feel good (helpful, smart, appreciated, understood…)

Also create your captivating opening “hook” or scene if you manage a store, event or other consumer-serving experience. In fact, storyboard their time, from the first sight to the last smell as they leave. That way you can reduce the boring or irritating moments and multiply the positive – especially those where they gain bragging rights and leap at the chance to tell others.

“Experience is helpful....

Colin Powell says, “but it is judgment that matters.”

“Robert is the guy I want in the foxhole...

... with me during incoming fire,” Sen. Obama says in an interview. “If I’m wrong, he challenges me. He’s not intimidated by me.” As to whether Mr. Gibbs keeps him happy, “he never does,” Sen. Obama jokes.

Oh that we all had such a friend, walking with us at (most every) step.

Tip: Notice the three-part, elevating quotability power of his comment:
1. Be brief and specific …
2. Providing an unexpected mental picture (“in the fox hole with me”), and
3. Leavening one’s remarks with self-deprecating humor.

Oh, and find a buddy who’ll commit to being your “Gibbs” and vice versa. Then forge at least one close-knit team in your work or your personal or social life.

“Clever, kind and connected” (What's your slogan?)

That political goal tops even the re-invented Barack Obama slogans in cool catchiness. Yet the two bright Gen Xers’ goals for their government sound a lot like Obama’s. (And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) Last month, in a “bloodless coup” 40 year old David Bartlett became the premier of Australia’s smallest state, Tasmania, bringing along his deputy, Lara Giddings. With a career in IT and intellectual property, Barlett recognizes the power of a captivating idea.

Bartlett promised a "new government" and measures to restore public trust in government. “And I want our politicians and our democracy connected to its people.”

"We need to foster innovation, we need to foster investment in technology," he said.

A Memorable Me2We Motto for You

Echoing comments made about Obama, The Connected Republic’s Martin Stewart Weeks notes that Bartlett’s slogan’s “got everything - the desire to be smart and innovative, the inference of a socially inclusive and compassionate approach and, best of all, the wonderfully ambiguous and multi-faceted notion of ‘connected’ - technologically, socially, politically), it’s one of the best summations I’ve seen from a political leader that puts the focus on ‘connectedness’ right at the heart of the political program.

It will be interesting to see how he turns the slogan into a program.”

Political or business slogans are difficult to craft - and to be credible, as Tami Ansary suggests. What would be your frequently-quoted, slogan-as-mission statement for your work or life – with others? Be brief. You may not even need words.

Here’s help
• Tag Line Generator, created by Marcia Yudkin
• Sloganalysis enables you to create two taglines for and see the pros and cons of both

The Art of Naming: How to Make it Positively Stand Out

Who “blew” it? How ironic. The widely reported prediction today, that Microsoft’s linchpin product is “in danger of collapsing,” comes on the heels of criticism for the corporate giant naming a beta product the “Blews.” Not a sunny Vista (sorry I couldn’t help myself) but a double whammy to give Microsoft the blues, again. The next irony? Blews is billed as the next step beyond “typical news-aggregation sites” to help readers of political blogs, “see the view from the other side.”

Are you about to name your new group, product, program, company, cause, or service? Worse yet, is a committee involved in crafting the name? If you are changing a well-known name, why? Refurbished image? Re-naming after a merger? From some adept naming pros, here’s some tips that may save you some public embarrassment or financial grief.

Success story: This spring, “a 16-year-old company that sells air to ground telecommunications equipment to airlines, will launch a broadband wireless service for twitchy airplane passengers who need their Internet fix at 40,000 feet.” Gleeful Igor, created for their client, Aircell, an apt name on the new service: Gogo.

Per Igor, a great name can:
• achieve separation from your competitors, reinforced, if possible, by a secondary meaning
• demonstrate to the world that you are different and unforgettable
• reinforce a unique positioning platform
• create positive and lasting engagement with your audience
• propel itself through the world on its own, becoming a no-cost, self-sustaining PR vehicle
• provide a deep well of marketing and advertising images
• be the genesis of a brand that rises above the goods and services you provide
• completely dominate a category

To set the right context for your brainstorming on a name, here's some criteria and ten questions to answer, from WriteExpress:
1. Who are my consumers?
2. What am I naming?
3. What type of a name do I want?
4. How long should the name be?
5. Do the sounds in the name have the right appeal?
6. What associations should the name evoke?
7. What are the foreign language implications of the name? Some clearly are.
8. How should I test the name?
9. How will the name appear in directories?
10. Can I trademark the name?

I'd add, will it lend itself to line extensions, such as Riverbed, with a product line Steelhead.

In each of ten categories of company names, brainstorm by your self and with others for several names in each area, provided by The Name Inspector, Christopher Johnson. Note the pros and cons in each category. Even if you aren’t seeking a name for your firm, these categories will help prime your creative “naming” pump.

1. Real words
Examples: Apple, Wink, Pandora,Gather

2. Compounds
Examples: Bubbleshare, Tailrank, Jumpcut, LaborFair

3. Phrases
Examples: StumbleUpon, Alltop, LinkedIn, DoorOne, Spoon Me 9double meaning there)

4. Blends or fusions
Examples: Technorati, Wikipedia, Brandscendence

5. Tweaked words
Examples: iPhone, eSnips

6. Affixed words
Examples: Dogster, PostSecret

7. Made up or obscure origin
Examples: Odeo, Spanx, Bebo, Zimbra

8. Puns
Examples: Farecast, LicketyShip, Tongue Fu, Consumating

9. People’s names (real or fictitious)
Examples: Ning, Bix, KikoKiko
Though witty to some, the Slate + Ben & Jerry’s “Yes, Pecan” campaign is another reminder: know ALL parts of your "market". Yet it did generate a heap of publicity.

10. Initials and acronyms
Examples: Guba, AOL

11. Whimsical or down right strange
Examples: Qoosa, TagTooga, Tandango and Fandango

12. Learn from past successes.
Examples: AltaVista is Spanish for high view.
Mozilla Foundation is a combination of Mosaic-Killer and Godzilla.

13. Use the right letter(s)
Examples: Want to sound high-tech? Go for lots of Z's and X's, such as Xanax, Xalatan, Zyban and Zostrix.
Want to sound poetic? Try Lyrica, Truvada and Femara. That’s what Indianapolis Star reporter, John Russell learned. Yet Guy Kawasaki (and I) adamantly disagree.

Now that you have some prospective names, review each, considering the criteria suggested by Intuit’s Laura Messerschmitt, writing at Biznik:

Is the name:
• memorable and distinctively different?
• easily spelled and pronounced?

Does it:
• suggest the products and services you offer?
• distinguish you from the competition?
• have the potential to be appropriate for new products and services you may offer later on?

Want to discover more on the anatomy of crafting a positively memorable name?

Now what's some of your favorite names for firms, products, non-profits, causes, services, or...?