He doesn’t call me Mom, he calls me Lenja.
And how can this small gesture by an 8-year old touch your marketing heart?
This year I gave myself the gift of looking after kids at a summer camp.
My 8-year-old son came along but he was in a different group.
However, he always went to the beach with “my” 12-year-olds.
At one point there were 25 kids on that dock on the beach in Nerezine, plus another 15 in the water, so Noa couldn’t see me.
Suddenly, I hear: “Lenjaaaa!” “Lenjaaaa!”
The tiny little brain of his figured out that if he yelled “Mooom!” 12 heads would turn.
But with “Lenjaaaa!” only 1 would.
With that one word my son delivered the shortest and most epic marketing lesson ever.
My father, 47 years ago, came up with the name and laid the foundation for this brand and the rest was up to me – as the marketing department ;)
The same with your brand.
You want it to be tattooed into the hearts and minds of perfect people, so it also gets tattoed into their wallets.
Do this exercise and test the strength of your brand with the game: THE KIDNAP.
Your director (of marketing) has been kidnapped: the kidnappers give him/her the chance to write 1 letter home, but they also send 2 additional fake letters.
Your team needs to figure out which one is the real letter to save him/her:
They can’t write by hand,
They can’t sign with their name,
They can’t mention the company/brand name, address, phone number…
What “brandable chunks” — words or phrases — would your employees recognize in the right letter? Ask all of them to write 10 brandable chunks and then compare. If you got 7-10 right, boom, you rock. Less than that, go thorugh the process and create your BRANDABLE CHUNKS »playlist«.
Examples of brandable chunks of a »bait and tackle shop«:
- Fresh, live fish prefer fresh, live bait.
- We believe there’s no time like the present, and no present like time.
- No cell phones. No video games. No electronic devices. Just a tackle box and a couple of fishing poles.
- Your luck will change the moment you step through our door.
- It may look like we sell bait and tackle, but what we really sell is the perfect day.
- Just add water.
Magic, ha?
It’s not fluff, it’s something real, tangible, make it melodical and make it YOURS.
Use it on all communication platforms and your employees should know them and use them – no matter what department they are in.
You don’t have to use all the sentences together all the time.
Use them separately, use 2 together, or 4, use 1.
But let it be the same sentence not a version of it and let it be consistent. Use them across your website, on the phone, posts, interviews, email signature, radio, TV or digitial ads, billboards, etc.
Remember the one by MOTEL 6? We’ll leave the light on for you! That is the perfect billboard content, that is all you need because Tom Bodett made this brandable chunk like the tattoo for the Motel 6 brand. Google him, listen to the radio ads! Magic.
You’ll realize how much easier it makes creating marketing content, as those brandable chunks weave like a red thread through all communication channels and make the brand as strong as a “tattoo.” These brandable chunks are future-proof and don’t change with a new agency – they are a tattoo.
And if you add audio/sonic brandable chunks to this, you’ve won.
I’m cheering you on like your Mom would.
