The One Big Thing

You may remember the scene from the movie “City Slickers.” Jack Palance holds up his index finger to Billy Crystal to indicate it was “the one thing” he needed to discover while herding cattle. It seemed so simple; just identify “the one thing.”

I was recently asked to write a post for www.thebettyfactor.com on “the one biggest challenge facing marketing communications students.” Easy, right? I thought so initially. My problem was narrowing down that “one thing” with so many challenges new professionals face today. What did I come up with? You’ll have to go to www.thebettyfactor.com to find out.

What’s In A Name?

When it comes to branding, there’s a lot of value in the name you choose. I’m sure you can pick out examples of brand names that don’t work in businesses today, but to keep myself out of trouble, I’m going to pick on two companies that no longer exist. I have personal knowledge of both because I worked at both. But please don’t try to make too much of the connection between the fact that I worked for these companies and they no longer exist!

I enjoyed my time working at PowerQuest Corporation. For those of you who do NOT know who or what PowerQuest was, try to guess what types of products or services the company offered based on its name? What did you come up with? Something supporting electric utilities? Something to do with batteries? Those are common guesses. But no, the company made computer software to manage computer and server storage systems.

What does that have to do with the name PowerQuest? Absolutely nothing. The product names were things like PartitionMagic (software to safely and easily partition a hard drive), ServerMagic (same thing for a server), and Drive Image (software to make an exact duplicate of a hard drive for easy disaster recovery). Those names make sense and had good brand recognition.

At one computer trade show a customer was wandering down our aisle looking at signs and appearing lost. A PowerQuest employee said, “Can I help you?” The man said, “I’m looking for the PartitionMagic company.” “That’s us; PowerQuest,” the employee replied. “No,” the customer said, “I’m looking for PartitionMagic.” The product brand stuck with him; the company brand did not.

In some cases, this is fine. Many companies keep the focus on the product brand instead of the company brand. But if the time comes that you want to focus on the corporate brand, it’s hard to make the shift away from a strongly branded product to a weakly branded company name.

Another technology company I worked for was emWare, which created embedded device networking software (it’s complicated; but that’s not important in the point I’m making). The name fit okay with the technology, but the spelling and pronunciation left me correcting editors and writers all the time. The lowercase e to start the name was the first stumbling block. It was hard to get writers who are accustomed to capitalizing proper names to write emWare. And when they wanted to start a sentence with the company name, it was almost impossible! In addition, the company pronounced the e and the m separately, so it came out ee-em-ware. But most people read emWare as em-ware. Imagine that! I was in favor of letting it go with the em-ware pronunciation, but the CEO insisted that was wrong.

The point? When choosing a company or product name, be considerate of your key publics and the media. Don’t make it hard to figure out who you are and what you do. Instead of focusing on how “cool” the name can look or sound, think of how intuitive it is for someone who doesn’t know anything about you. Branding is a balance between art and science. If you get too caught up being artistic or scientific, however, you merely confuse people. Like good writing, make it easy, make it clear, make it connected and you’ll come out ahead.

The Value of Specific Praise

I recently read an article by Kerry Patterson of VitalSmarts in his monthly “Kerrying On” column about how highly workers value a little appreciation. I learned a long time ago the value of being specific in the praise you provide to others. A general “good job” has much less impact than “Thanks for helping me create those charts for the presentation. That made a huge difference in the quality and saved me a lot of time. I appreciate your willingness to help out and share your expertise.” Yet we often don’t take the few extra seconds to be specific about praise.

I hope you’ll indulge this personal example. When my son Bryan was in fourth grade, we went to a parent-teacher conference and heard his teacher explain how helpful Bryan was with other students in the class. When we got home, I was talking to Bryan and told him, “Your teacher told us how happy she is that you’re willing to help other students in the class. Mom and I appreciate that, too. It shows that you’re trying hard to learn, and it’s a great example to other students when you’re willing to help the teacher like that. Thanks for being the kind of person who wants to help others.” Bryan walked over to me, put his arms around me, and said, “I love you, too, Dad.” Note that I didn’t use the words “I love you, Bryan,” in this conversation. But that’s exactly what he heard when he received specific praise about his performance.

While we may not want co-workers to think “I love you,” the message that comes with genuine, specific praise is one people crave. You are valued. You are important. You belong here. That’s a message that people cannot hear enough, whether they are your employees, your family members or your neighbors. When you praise, praise specifically. The results are worth the few extra seconds it takes.