I'm proud as a pup with a new collar to welcome you to the first edition of my monthly report Take It From Terry™. After a long hiatus while completing my book Turn Strategy Into Action, I am back and committed to providing you with proven ideas to make you more effective, along with a healthy dose of whimsy and fun.
Please check out my totally retooled website www.ManagementPro.com. Come and join the conversation at my blog Terry's Toolbox™, which is meant to be lively and provocative.
Whether you are an old friend, a new acquaintance, a client, or a workshop graduate, I warmly welcome you to what I hope is a long and beneficial relationship.
Each month I'll invite someone you should meet to contribute an article. Our guest writer this month is one of the hottest naming professionals in the country. Alexandra Watkins is the Chief Innovation Office of Eat My Words, a widely creative boutique naming firm in San Francisco known for creating names that generate buzz and revenue. Alexandra came up with the names my newsletter and blog, which she explains after she shares her SMILE and SCRATCH Test™.
How To Create Magnetic Brand Names That Stick
By Alexandra Watkins, Eat My Words
The secret to creating powerful, unforgettable and sticky brand names is simple: a name should make you smile, instead of scratch your head. I’m still baffled why companies insist upon naming themselves something that is meaningless to their customers, difficult to spell and hard to pronounce. Some leading offenders: Tcho, Vumber, Naymz, Technoganic, Doostang, Motiva, Ziizoo, Fragranza, and Mathnasium.
Start-ups and old-school naming firms fall in love with “invented” names for three reasons: 1) They sail through trademarking because they are unique; 2) the domain names are usually available for $9.95 on Godaddy; 3) people want the ego boost of coining a word. Invented names are the easy way out yet most invented names are forced and unnatural sounding.
My #1 head-scratcher is a company called Xobni. What is Xobni and how the heck do you pronounce it? “Zob-knee” is “inbox” spelled backwards. Cute to the founders. Dumbfounding to customers. If you have to spell, explain or teach someone how to pronounce a name, it's a bad name.
To create and evaluate names, we’ve created Eat My Words ® SMILE and SCRATCH Test ™. It’s a fun and logical way to screen any company or product name. Run your own names through it and you’ll instantly be able to see if you have a winning name or if you should scratch it off your list.
SMILE - qualities of a powerful name:
Simple – one, easy-to-understand concept
Meaningful – your customers instantly "get it"
Imagery – visually evocative - creates a mental picture
Legs – carries the brand, lends itself to wordplay
Emotional – empowers, entertains, engages, enlightens
SCRATCH it off the list if it has any of these deal-breakers:
Spelling-challenged - you have to tell people how to spell it
Copycat – similar to competitor's names
Random – disconnected from the brand
Annoying – hidden meaning, forced
Tame – flat, uninspired, boring, non-emotional
Curse of Knowledge – only insiders get it
Hard-to-pronounce - not obvious, relies on punctuation
Some names we’ve created that pass the Test include a chain of frozen yogurt stores called SPOON ME, a natural energy drink for women named BLOOM, and a home cleaning robot named NEATO. For more examples, visit www.eatmywords.com.
Here is the explanation behind the names I created for Terry Schmidt,
Terry's Toolbox™ is the ideal name for Terry's blog because it is chock full of valuable business tools, information and wisdom. The 'umbrella' name is broad enough to cover everything under the sun (just as the Eat My Words blog, The Kitchen Sink, is also a great umbrella name and encompasses anything we throw in there). Terry's Toolbox is incredibly visually evocative, which helps people remember the name. People remember images much more easily than they remember words or letters.
Take It From Terry™ is the perfect name for Terry's newsletter because it positions him as the expert that he is. It has the double meaning of 'take my advice, I know what I'm talking about' and 'take it - it's free.' It's friendly and approachable, just like Terry, and fits perfectly with his ManagementPro brand and positioning as a strategic thought leader.
BIO
Alexandra Watkins
Chief Innovation Officer,
Eat My Words
Alexandra first got hooked on naming when Gap hired her to create
cheeky names for their first line of body care products. Soon
after, she broke into the business by weaseling her way into Landor
via a Match.com date. With her fresh, unconventional naming style,
Alexandra soon became a go-to resource for countless branding
and naming firms around the country. And Landor sent her enough
business to open her own firm. Since then, she’s generated
thousands of names for snacks, software, sunscreen, social networking
sites, sportswear, shoes, sugar scrubs, serums, and seafood. (And
that’s just the S’s!) She’s also named lots
of things that make you fat and drunk including a nationally recognized
bacon cheeseburger (which ironically, must remain nameless) and
no less than 4 vodkas.
Prior to Eat My Words, Alexandra was an advertising copywriter
for 20+ years, working at leading ad agencies up and down the
West Coast, including five years at Oglivy and Mather, where she
helped pimp everything from Microsoft to Mighty Dog. In the mid-nineties
she jumped on the dot com gravy train, and rode it until it crashed
in her SOMA backyard. Alexandra took the money and ran, spending
a year in Australia, New Zealand, Bali and Fiji disguised as a
21-year old backpacker. Upon her return, she reinvented herself
as a namer and started Eat My Words. Alexandra gets her passport
stamped as often as possible. She has eaten her way through 31
countries, where she’s sunk her teeth into local delicacies
including barbequed squirrel in Tanzania, ostrich carpaccio in
South Africa and stewed camel meat in Libya. Her favorite food
is JIF peanut butter, which she once survived on for two days
on the remote island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca, Peru.
Helping our clients to think bigger and plan smarter is what we do best. Our Logical Framework ApproachT to design and execute winning projects makes it easy to tackle the critical issues on your plate. Every month, we spotlight a different client and share their project design.
This month's project is from the Washington Department of Transportation, and summarizes a heads-up strategy to close out a major bridge construction project and make sure the 60 people involved get great new jobs.
Men and women who are committed to "making a life" and not just "making a living" benefit from periodically taking stock of where they have been and where they are committed to heading. Several times each year, I review the past few months and anticipate the coming year, guided by the trigger questions.
Since we are half way through this year, now is a perfect milestone time to chew on these 32 questions for personal excellence.
Looking Back to Move Ahead: 32 Provocative Questions for Personal Excellence
By Terry Schmidt, Founder www.managementPro.com
Here are 32 provocative questions to ask at least once a year (i.e., on your birthday, new year, or anytime.) Half of these questions reflect on the past; the rest anticipate the future. Prepare for the road ahead by looking at your past with a trained, but compassionate eye.
You can use these trigger questions individually, adapt them to your work team, or modify them to fit your family. These are great conversations jumpstarts to spice up staff meetings or to share with your family over dinner.
Reviewing the past year:
- What was the very best thing about this year for you?
- What new skills or talents did you discover in yourself this year?
- What made you feel most alive this year and why?
- What are the best family experiences you enjoyed this year?
- What work contributions did you most enjoy making this year?
- What was the most creative idea you had this year?
- What community contributions did you make this year?
- What is the most important lesson you learned this year?
- What knowledge didn't you have this year that would have proven beneficial to you?
- What's the best thing you did for the three people you love most?
- What is the most outrageous thing you did this year?
- What was the biggest risk you took this year?
- What gave you a real sense of joy this year?
- What was the smartest decision you made this year?
- What most surprised you about this year?
Anticipating the coming year:
- If you could write one news headline for next year and make it come true, what would it be?
- What will be your number one focus next year?
- What is the biggest risk you are planning for next year?
- What is the biggest decision facing you next year?
- What would you like to do next year that you missed doing this year?
- What would you have to believe to make the coming year your best ever?
- What limiting beliefs would be useful to drop?
- What new belief could create a new destiny for you?
- What new professional skills would be smart to gain next year?
- What is one old negative habit you are committed to change in the year ahead?
- What is one positive new habit you are committed to acquiring?
- What treat are you willing to give yourself to get next year off to a rousing start?
- What new major indulgence would you like to enjoy this year?
- What is it that you want, but have not already achieved?
- What new opportunities do you anticipate will unfold next year?
- What would you like to do next year that would totally surprise most people who know you?
If your head is spinning with insights and ideas, that's great.
- Now take it to the next level - generate your own list of provocative questions. I'd love to see what you come up with!
Here you'll learn about the books which have most influenced me professionally, personally, emotionally and spiritually. I won't be talking about the latest best sellers. Instead, I'll share some outstanding books - some barely known -- which belong in every library and deserve to be read. Here is David Allen's.
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
by David Allen
If you, like me, have way too much to do in too little time, and are frequently derailed by the unexpected, you need a more robust planning system then you'll find in the paper-based standards such as Day-Timer, Day-Runner, Covey, and Franklin. Electronic systems such as Outlook are good for calendars and addresses, but not very helpful for the smart-nosed planning which you and I need to handle everything on our plates.
David Allen's Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those gotta-do's clogging your brain into a framework of files and action lists. Allen, dubbed "the personal productivity guru" by Fast Company, offers a practical approach to time management and personal organization. Allen's message is concise: Organize yourself to free your mind for greater pursuits. That means creating organized lists, writing every thing down and using a logical system that gives you lots of a guilt-free flexibility.
Allen's key concept is that every task, commitment, or assignment has a place and a time. With everything in its proper place and time, you feel in control and replace the time spent on vague worrying with smart, and timely action. Because of these, the accomplishments grow while the pressure to accomplish decreases.
The key psychological insight of this book is that rapid progress comes from taking large, unformed tasks, and breaking them down and organizing them into smaller, sequential steps for exactly what to do and when. Allen offers lots of examplesfor how to do this.
I heartily recommend this book to all those who feel overwhelmed with too many things to do, too little time to do them, and a general sense of anxiety that something important is being missed.
Allen's book delivers fresh insights into how to have more energy, be more relaxed, and get a lot more accomplished with much less effort. We all need that!
The Washington Post publishes a contest in which they invite readers to supply alternate meanings for various common words. Here are some of my favorites. Whether you laugh out loud, smile, or just arch an eyebrow, you'll have to agree that the English language is a wonderfully plastic medium when molded by the minds of master wordsmiths.
Twisted Definitions for Common Words, Part One
From The Washington Post
Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.
Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.
Bustard (n.), a rude bus driver.