chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in What’s In a Name?

Re: What’s In a Name?

yuregininsesi — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:34:34 -0000

Your post has reminded me of a story. Many years ago, I was made redundant from a global telecoms company. I ran the creative studio. This company had decided to cut the payroll and outsource specialist departments. Ironically, they still wanted to use me. So I was offered the contract to produce all marketing materials for Europe Middle East and Africa.

Re: What’s In a Name?

SEO company Buckinghamshire — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:02:22 -0000

If you run a small business then you need to be a 'jack of all trades' and there is no single title that will represent this. Titles conjure up a variety of images and if you are unable to communicate well and form relationships with potential clients then no matter what the title, you'll not gain their respect and will not win their business!

Re: What’s In a Name?

dls — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 21:16:15 -0000

I've been reading all the posts & comments & have been trying to come up with something like that myself without much success. How about this for answering the question; I'm a
blogging income entrepreneur.

Meaning I write & find affiliate/business ways to
make money online while blogging.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Rick — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:20:25 -0000

I wear many hats in my office as well. I don't think I would have it any other way. Knowing you have a job to do is great, however having many jobs to do - along side the ability to develop ideas and create new projects - is my preferred way to work.

Great post.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Gabriel Rossi — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:50:56 -0000

Prospects do care about what we are called because they have too many choices to consider. Isn't time a precious thing nowadays? We need shortcuts!

The ideal name starts the positioning process, sets up a communications premise and links directly to a selling proposition. A good name is different, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, a springboard to good graphics and advertising, brief (no more than four syllables), appropriate (but not merely descriptive), and legally defensible

Furthermore, we (humans) tend to do business to whom we trust and admire. In this case, trust is directely related to specialization. You can only communicate your focus by transmitting consistent branding signals. The name of your brand is one of them.

Surely, there's a lot of importance in a name.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Flipsem — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:26:12 -0000

Obviously blown away by this offer I bit their arm off. My next problem was how on earth could one man service and keep this contract without falling over big time.

I knew a local agency that already had all the resources available so in the short term I could tap into them for back up. I was not prepared to divulge my client name to this agency until we had an agreement in writing. All I wanted to support from them to cover the potential massive influx of business.

During a meeting with this agency they were more concerned with the role and tile I was going to use, account director, or creative director. When I said I would be doing both roles and they would offer support as and when needed. They said I would need to decide either I was either one or the other.

Dismayed by their attention to tiles and not just getting on with the job. I told the “business development director” I was no longer interested in working with them and cut the meeting short.

One year later, this agency went bust. During that year I had decided to hire in the help I needed and we turned over just under half a million pounds in just one year.

Who cares what we are called as long as we get the job done.

Thank you for your post and reminding me of my story.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Lech — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 11:10:58 -0000

Where I come from, only select few can follow the I-don't-care-about-labels attitude successfully. The rest requires a label to differentiate themselves and their services from the "gray mass," and to affiliate with a group of professionals (e.g. to share information & knowledge). "Doctors," "lawyers," "project managers"... that's meaningful stuff. Such labels support any first impression we want to make and help us connect with others. Our profession or title is often our stake. A public person's name plays a similar role, albeit in different conditions. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, please :-)

Cheers!

Re: What’s In a Name?

Arno Diepeveen — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:16:52 -0000

xsellerator

Re: What’s In a Name?

Charles Lau — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 20:03:45 -0000

@aliza sherman it's true. It's about the consistency of a brand. A band is just like a brand which represents certain communication to millions of people out there. I won't want to hear a band singing another type of song when i'm expecting them to sing certain type of song. Likewise, i don't want to buy a bmw with a toyota kind of communication. Well, i don't mind the other way round. :)
I guess it's about maintaining your brand or to exceed your brand's expectation.
But here i believe we're talking about a name tied to a person. A person can have many names. That's where i feel @nicky jameson is right about using description instead.

Re: What’s In a Name?

aliza sherman — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 18:13:51 -0000

I agree about doing. But for those of us who consult as part of our "doing," the rest of the world sadly needs names or labels - not to box us in necessarily, but to understand what the hell we do.

This used to be one thing I hated about the music industry when I was working with bands. A new band would come out (Nirvana, for instance) and people would insist on knowing what kind of music they played. Then every new band after would be defined by Nirvana standards, using Nirvana's name when describing other bands' music. "Like a cross between the B52s and Nirvana."

Ultimately, the bands felt boxed in and resented the labeling, but without it, the band couldn't sell it to the manager & the manager couldn't sell it to the A&R guy who couldn't sell it to the label and the label couldn't sell it to the public.

When the public is not "in the know," they need to know what to call something. Or someone.

I change my label for my audience. I may be a writer one moment, a social media consultant the next, a podcaster, an aspiring documentary filmmaker, a Second Lifer, a mom. A wife. (Whoa, that last one still feels odd to this late bloomer).

I'd rather come up with my own labels, however, than have others thrust them on me and have still others view me or judge me by those inaccurate names rather than the ones I give myself.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Nicky Jameson — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:03:21 -0000

@charles Lau - that's why, when someone asks "what do you do?" rather than saying "I'm a Copywriter" or "I'm a " fill in the blank" I prefer to say something like "I help businesses to sell their services, increase sales and boost their profits..."
Then, when they "Really? How?" I expand by telling an illustrative story ;) I sometimes don't even need to mention my title at all. Also, you would be amazed how many mistake "Copywriting" for "Copyrighting".

Re: What’s In a Name?

Charles Lau — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:33:22 -0000

A name can really restrict what you are doing and who you are. Some people will call themselves an expert in twitter. But these people can also be an expert in blogging. And when they are outside, they might be also an expert in driving or whatever. Well, it's true but we still need a name. It's like a brand to a person.

I define myself as an Internet reviewer. But this word can mean so many things. I can be reviewing websites. I can be reviewing mobile internet. I can even be reviewing servers and networks. Though I have some background in computer networking, I would like to define more towards a website reviewer. But who will really understand what that can mean in another way?

Re: What’s In a Name?

Jamie Lee — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:01:56 -0000

Linked over from Darren Rowse's tweet. So glad.
I, too, am unaware of any incident to which this post may be a response, but - like Darren - your line about just doing vs putting boxes around things really resonates with me. I am a project manager and writer by trade - both things typically require much forethought and many "boxes," but this year I'm anxious to disentangle from hyper-organization and do a little more jumping into the fray - learning from actual experience instead of analyzing on the sidelines.
It's an exciting prospect! Glad to have your blog to help inspire my journey.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Nicky Jameson — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:11:25 -0000

My take...
With a few exceptions, you can give yourself any title you want if you're an entrepreneur or free agent. We define ourselves.. at least we should be able to - as whatever we want to. The exceptions of course are the professions - you can't call yourself a medical doctor, accountant, dentist, engineer, architect etc unless you have the credentials to prove it. I think even journalist used to come under the "prove the credentials" mantle, which may have been why you got the questions.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the first thing people do is seek to neatly label and box you up so that they can understand according to their own terms of reference.

Even the question "what do you do?" becomes a "sift. classify and box" process... easy to answer to when you work in a traditional setting, difficult when you're outside it or transitioning from it. I think the New World (primarily entreprenuerial and New Media) is charting a new path. At least I hope so. The corporate world revolves around titles and often to approach them (assuming you want to do business with them) you have to relate to their titles first, unless you know them personally. Also, just try dealing with recruiters - they will insist on squeezing you into a reconizable box.

A VP, President, Director, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Technology Officer, CEO, CFO etc in a large corp. is generally appointed by a board of directors. People defer to and respect certain titles more than others. The higher up the chain the more weight they carry. They make the decisions. The saying "birds of a feather flock together"is still true. I have seen instances where people will select who they talk or do business with solely based on their title. In the business world, you're more likely to get an audience with a CEO if you are a C-level executive,- not a blogger or an author (unless you're world famous) or something else they've never heard of.

I believe people are more than their titles.Titles shouldn't matter, but they do to some - very much. At the same time, when you say you're a long list of things the tendency is still for people to think "jack of all trades, master/mistress of none."

In today's fluid world tapping into our many skills and abilities and having several careers/jobs will be necessary so hopefully that limited thinking is also on the way out and we can quite happily say what we "are" (Copywriter, Consultant or Advisor) rather than what we "do".

By the way I rarely ask people what they do... I prefer to ask the question "Who are you?" I think it gives people more latitude. Oddly enough, some people start by telling me "what they do - or what they did!

Re: What’s In a Name?

Clay Franklin — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 02:44:38 -0000

this article comes at a good time for me. I need a new company name by the end of the year. I have ben struggling with the identifiers like cfmarketing, or socialmediamaven inc and realize I may be better off with a non descriptive name like xoplace inc. or just The Clayton Company.

thanks for the good read,
Clay

Re: What’s In a Name?

Sally Falkow — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:04:53 -0000

struggled with back when I was doing traditional PR. The reason is we do too many things - and people can't quite get to grips with that. You say to a propective customer I can do it all and their eyes glaze over.

I figured out that I am a communication strategist. That made sense to clients. It gave me an area of "specialty" - I only deal with things that pertain to communication. And of course it gave me the scope to tackle many areas of the company - internal and external.

And that is still what I am. Now I do it online more than offline. That's all.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Gabriel Rossi — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:44:06 -0000

Hi Chris,

Most of the time, strong personal branding requires a solid idea inside the prospects' mind. Furthermore, a single defined word can solve a lot of problems and save a lot of money over time, especially for professionals who want to grow large. Changing names require much more communication—advertising, design, and so on. However, these efforts are usually not sufficient.

On the branding perspective (the only one i touch on this comment), i don't agree with you. People need shortcuts to fool their lack of time. A good (personal) brand stands for one word in the mind.

Cheers. Great article.

Gabriel Rossi- Brazil

Re: What’s In a Name?

kitykity — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:12:24 -0000

I am kitykity. I have been for about thirteen years. In fact, I had to have my username be eight characters because the dial-up internet at the time wouldn't allow it to be longer. Now it's my brand. It's so much my brand as when I go to conferences, people actually call me "Kitty" or "Kitty Kitty" now. I'm in it for good. :)

Re: What’s In a Name?

katbron — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:48:56 -0000

Everyone has shared some really good thoughts - I agree with Todd Smith though - when asked what I do, it forces me to sort out the most important skill set. I found out a long time ago that you can't be all things to all people - but you can come pretty darned close. For me, it is "what is it I do best" - OK then, that's what I do. For me, I see you as a mentor, a leader and someone who goes where no man has gone before - a trailblazer. So keep blazing - I'm following!

Re: What’s In a Name?

frank — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:42:21 -0000

The title I have at work only restricts me or puts me in a box if i let it. I bring my skills to the table in everything i do and outside of my 'title (area of real job responsibilities)' insert my self where i see fit (or some times where i am interested).

What i've found working in a large company is that if you bring value, a positive attitude and your perspective ... you can be useful - even make impact - outside of your little box (designated by your title).

It's not about the title ... it you are a person who wants to do things, make impact, have interest in things other than your specialty, etc ... then you can. Your title is a box for you only if you let it be.

Re: What’s In a Name?

Ciri Fenzel — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:56:42 -0000

Chris. I too agree that we should no longer limit ourselves with a title. Rather we should do all that we dream of doing, and be all that our clients need us to be. Thanks for the post!

Re: What’s In a Name?

Danny Brown — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:12:23 -0000

PS- Chris, if you're going to respond to comments then for God's sake get a profile picture sorted out, man!! :)

Re: What’s In a Name?

Danny Brown — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:08:17 -0000

I used to be known as Dave the Cardboard Box but the people said it wasn't reflective of who I was, or professional enough. Now I see that cardboard boxes are great starting points for standing up on to have conversations - man I wished I kept that name... ;-)

So yes, the name is fairly immaterial - it's what you do with it that counts.

Re: What’s In a Name?

LeifHansen — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 01:05:26 -0000

Oh my, this couldn't have come at a better time for me Chris. As I mentioned in my tweet, I've really been struggling with this issue, and it always helps to remember that I'm not alone in my struggle.

I guess I'm further behind the game than most the rest of you as the question "what do you do" still causes much too much stress. I spend much of my day answering it (usually simply in my imagination).

I think that Bill (above) was onto something when he pointed out that the desire for simple answers (titles, elevator pitches, etc.) tend to come when you only have a short time to help someone explain why they should hire you. And when you're self-employed, espcially in the early stages, this increases the 'need' to have a simple answer.

I feel the unresolved tension between the above poles of "just be yourself"/"titles are losing value fast"/etc. and the other side of "limitations can help you to make hard choices to focus on what is most truly import to you".

Yet I'm also trying to relax into the paradox. Hoping that I'll soon learn how to enjoy the game, let the story unfold, and not worry so much about figuring out 'who I really am' (vocationally).

Warmly,
Leif
http://www.SparkGuy.com (my year old lame attempt to express myself)
http://www.twitter.com/leif...

Re: What’s In a Name?

chrisbrogan — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:16:44 -0000

@Pascal - how did I ever get lucky enough to have you around? You're a treasure.