The first Big Question of branding (plus special offer for Boot Camp)

Next week, approved on Thursday August 27, find we’ll be holding another Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Boot Camp in Ottawa with partners the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI)and Brandvelope Consulting. As part of the Camp, page we’ll be dealing with the 4 Big Questions of Branding – the four fundamental things humans need to know about any product as they build their mental picture of it. You’ll find a preview of Question #1 below in SlideShare format.

Discount on Boot Camp registration for Beg to DIFFER readers.
For those interested in attending our Ottawa Brand Strategy Boot Camp, scroll down to find out more.

The 1st Big Question of Branding:

More about Boot Camp:

Blog Post: 5 Reasons to Attend the Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Boot Camp
Info from OCRI: OCRI Event Page

Discount on Boot Camp registration for Beg to DIFFER readers.
For those interested in attending Boot Camp, we’re offering a special discount for readers of this blog. To claim your discount:
1) Click through the presentation above: (1st Big Question of Branding)
2) Register for Boot Camp.
3) When registering, quote the name of the mystery product used as an example in the presentation below and you’ll receive $25 off the price of either half day or full day Boot Camp.
4) If you want to invite a colleague or recommend this to someone else, please do! They’ll also qualify for the discounted price.

Quick registration links (provided by OCRI):

Register Online | Register by Fax | Add to your Outlook* (Half-Day) | Add to your Outlook* (Full-Day)

Tag lines: if they don’t help people, there’s no point

When I was in Korea a few years back, adiposity I was struck that even in cities where very few people spoke English, find “upscale” stores always had an English tagline under an English name. But the words didn’t seem to matter: most were incomprehensible, cialis 40mg vague, or with uninteded double entendres (as below). Weirdly, these businesses seemed to have taglines simply for the sake of filling space under their name with letters, not because anyone would get information from them. You know what’s even weirder? It happens here too.

Fitting and Feeling - w
For this Korean tag line, you can at least tell what they were going for. But are they really offering both those services?

A global plague:

Lest we seem to be picking on obscure stores in non-English speaking countries, a couple of weeks ago, we pointed out this tagline from a local real estate agent – and we could have chosen many more from that industry alone.

And size of company doesn’t seem to matter. Check out this bit of tagline vapidity from a major international brand – spotted in July 2009. “Sychronizing the world of commerce” is actually less meaningful than “Fitting & Feeling” – and I imagine UPS has a few more people working on their materials than Teman.

ups-truck-slogan
Another space-filler tagline - UPS fails to deliver.

Say something nice… or say nothing at all

KR - KY - Good Feel
Another uncomfortable tagline from a Korean store - but it just looks right to have one doesn't it?

Or rather, just say something useful.
Like every other aspect of your brand, a tag line is supposed to be a tool to help people understand something about your brand – some aspect of your service that will help them make a purchase decision in your favour.

A good tag line needs to inform me or help me differentiate you from your competitors; maybe it will make a leadership claim or offer me a guarantee; at the very least it should give me a clever “hook” to remenber you by; otherwise it’s just filling a space.

Here’s a secret that should never have to be spoken: a tag line isn’t a design element. It’s actually a set of words that happen to be occupying  prime real estate on your sign, page, or Web site. So make sure they “pay their rent” by actually doing useful things.

At Brandvelope, we have a whole set of tools to help clients develop really useful tag lines. But without getting too deeply  into that topic in this post, just remember that at the very least, make sure it’s helping somebody.
Tomorrow: 25 useless taglines from brands that should know better.

Brand brief: Toronto keeps its nose in the air

After our criticism of Toronto’s Web site, malady and some garbage-scented barbs thrown their way in last week’s Brand Jam, side effects it looks like Tourism Toronto has decided to approach the end of the garbage strike with their tongues firmly in their cheeks and their noses in the air.

new-1

The just-announced tag for a late summer advertising campaign – wait for it:

“Toronto never smelled so good.”

  The original article I saw on this is quoted here:

Toronto Star article: The whiff of opportunity for Tourism Toronto: When you attract attention for all the wrong reasons, you might as well try to play it for a laugh. That’s the thinking behind a new promotion launched today by Tourism Toronto with the slogan “Toronto never smelled so good.”

Now, to me, this looked like a “fresh” approach to a thorny problem: how to put a positive and even humourous spin on a negative situation. So I gave them the benefit of ther doubt, and whatever the ramifications, I have to admire the guts of the Toronto Tourism folks:

Metro: Slogan smells ‘so good’“We’re going to take the strike head-on, and use it as an opportunity to invite people back,” Weir said. “It’s been top of the newscasts for the last 40 days. The best thing we can do is let them know the experience here is as high-quality and exciting as it’s ever been — and now there’s no garbage piled up.”

Andrew Weir, vice-president of Tourism Toronto

But in coverage on CBC radio in Ottawa last night, our drive-home host Adrian Harewood talked about the slogan, and spent several minutes of air time chatting with newsman Lawrence Wall about it. The focus of the conversation: Is it true?

Apparently, many Toronto parks and public spaces still smell fairly pungent after being used as dumps. Reaction from some Torontonians has been even more pointed:

24 Hours: Does Toronto smell good to you? Toronto never smelled so good. Really? You sure about that? Pretty certain it stank like rotting landfill on my way in to work yesterday.

Like an old horn-dog perched at a local watering hole ogling young waitresses, the post-strike branding has the distinct smell of desperation, which is as off-putting as bad breath, really.

So while it’s an attention-getting (and brave) approach, the problem with this slogan is not that it isn’t effective: 1) it’s not true; 2) it can be seen as making light of a serious and divisive issue in the city, and 3) raises questions that actually focus more attention on something that tourists don’t want to think about.

Should be interesting to see the reaction as this unfolds.

Live Twitter Feeds about the strike

Government abbreviations in one word: NOMO!

As an Ottawa naming and brand strategy consultant, order I once thought the technology industry was the world’s biggest offender in the realm of unhelpful abbreviations. But then I started working with the Canadian federal government…. alphabet soup everywhere. My answer in one word: NOMO!

NOMO

The problem with acronyms / abbreviations / initialisms / alphabet soup

So there it was: “Governments MIA when it comes to good acronyms” – one of my biggest PPPs (Personal Pet Peeves) being addressed right on the front page of yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen. The article is a useful introduction to the importance of, doctor and hair-pulling frustration involved with, sick unhelpful abbreviations and insider short-hand in government.

The article even shows awareness at the political level from the same party that once called itself CCRAP. But it doesn’t go far enough.

As a taxpayer, I’ve had enough trouble navigating my way through the small range of government services I actually use. But as a consultant whose job it is to help fix brand communication problems, I’ve been right in the middle of the tangled thicket of jargon and shorthand.

Client: Your CV is impressive: PMRA, TBS, PWGSC…
Me: Great! so we can work together?
Client: Maybe, but the DG and the ADM might RFP, so PMO, PCO, and TBS are Cc-ed. CRA, DND, and PHAC as well…
Me: Uh, right.
Client: So as an SME SP without SC…
Me: I’m SOL?

And that’s before we actually get to work. Once I do, my consulting task is usually to explain existing services and programs in plain language, as I’ve done with Public Works and Government Services Canada (TPSGC-PWGSC), Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS-SCT),  Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA-ARLA), and others. But I can’t do that until I’ve gone through the lengthy process of myself figuring out the thing I’m supposed to be explaining, (so the PMBB isn’t the same as the NMAO?) and then making sure that my clients can in turn understand and explain it in the simplest possible terms – without shorthand.

At other times, I’ve actually had the joyous opportunity to name, or better yet un-name or re-name, a government entity. For example, a few years ago, I helped Industry Canada launch a new coast-to-coast service for business, which we called simply “Canada Business”. A boring name perhaps, but the intent couldn’t be plainer, and even better, doesn’t need to be abbreviated (“CanBiz” and “CB” were rejected early in the process).

Why the terms don’t help

But in trying to talk about this problem, the word “acronym” itself is one of the problems. So is“initialism”. So is “abbreviation”. I’ve tried sorting through this with a glossary at wordie.com. But I apologize if it’s still confusing.

And to technically-minded bureaucrats, these words have such specific definitions, and are so widely abused, that the debate always gets gleefully sidetracked into the debate over which term applies to which unhelpful short-form. Is FINTRAC an initialism? Is PHAC an acronym? Should we name our new program CANPAPHTHPT?

The average citizen says: “WTHC” (Who The Heck Cares)?

My modest proposal:

So I say we short-circuit the debate with one new word that describes the whole range of unwieldy shortenings:

NOMONYM: (NOUN) any unhelpful short-form, nickname, abbreviation, acronym, initialism, jargon, or insider buzz-term.

I created the word by (helpfully) abbreviating the phrase “NO More Obscure Nomenclature!” Although “NO-MOre-NYMs” works just as well.

In common usage, I recommend that this term be further shortened to “NOMO” and shouted loudly at government seminars, workshops, and brainstorming sessions.

Usage examples for “NOMO”:

  • Scenario 1: CRA needs a TTB from the WTH before you get an XYZ.
  • Response: all the people shout “NOMO!”
  • Scenario 2: government announces BPH moves RPHCAN to TLA.
  • Response: all the people shout “NOMO!”
  • Scenario 3: the DND/CF CEFCOM JTF-Afg and TFK BGen of ISAF, launches Operation ROOB, UNYIP, JANOOBI (I’m not making that up)
  • Response: all the people shout “NOMO!”

Use NOMO as a noun, a verb, an adjective, whatever you like. But shout it loudly, so it is heard throughout government boardrooms, corridors, brainstorming sessions – anywhere a NOMO might rear its ugly head.

And as the movement spreads, we go through the whole portfolio of government agencies, services, and terminology, weeding out NOMOs wherever we find them.

Perhaps then government can do the one thing that citizens need most:

C.O.M.M.U.N.I.C.A.T.E.

The whole NOMO series: