What do you do when looking for potential partners?

If you’re like me, you inspect their website to see who they are, what exactly they do and what their current priorities are. When asked to list their company’s activities, a surprising number of people tick ALL the boxes. So we’re supposed to believe they are producers, distributors, video production companies, publishers, composers and managers that also do licensing and soundtrack supervision. Yeah, right.

A quick look at their website will tell you what they actually do to pay the rent, which is more useful. Why the confusion? Although the companies probably have a fair idea of why they are attending a trade fair, why don’t they think it through and tell the other participants clearly what they have and what they want? Small companies often say they don’t have the time to work on their websites. But bigger companies are just as bad at targeting their events for other reasons.

So here are four simple steps to focusing your trade fair communications.

1. It might seem obvious, but it’s worth sitting down with a partner to list your top three priorities, such as “finding licensors for our work”, “finding material to release locally” and “hooking up with a mobile platform”. Now go and look at your company website. Is it clear what your priorities are? And what you have to offer? How recent is the latest news?
2. Update and adapt your website to clearly tell people that you are attending – and why. If your website is both for consumers and business, create a dedicated page with the key points to get across.  A page I created for the Cannes Festival 2009 continues to get direct hits due to the keywords (needless to say I have since updated it to reflect current priorities). When sending out e-mails, create a signature that links directly to this page rather than the homepage.
3. Check and re-check all data entered into the event database. I’d say about 10% of e-mail addresses in event databases bounce due to having being badly spelled. Check them once. Check them twice. And check all the websites you mention.
4. Make sure you keep pounding out Twitter (using the right hashtags) and Facebook announcements leading up to the events. Be consistent, be specific and ask for people to get in touch. Link to your business page. Never mind that people don’t answer; you only need a handful of good connections to make a trade fair an astounding success. And nothing attracts attention like success.

So take the time. You’ll find it helps focus any marketing you are doing and creates a loop that will attract the right sort of contacts. If you have questions about communication at trade fairs, call on our copywriting and experience.

The Write Stuff has specialised in trade fairs for 15 years, providing marketing and copywriting services, as well as business development during trade fairs. For 7 years, it developed marketing campaigns for Midem,  Mipcom, Mip Junior, MipTV, Mipim Asia as well as finding names for Mipim Horizons and Amazia.

Car manufacturer Aston Martin (photo) came out tops. But I’d like to fast-forward to a thought that struck me.

A look at the top 20 brands reveals a few interesting nuggets. No less than 9 are the names of people: Aston Martin, Bang & Olufsen, Harley-Davidson, Ferrari, Dom Pérignon, Viviane Westwood, Chanel, Alexander McQueen and Jimmy Choo. There are three “I” names: iPhone, iPod and BBC’s iPlayer (I’m sure Apple are kicking themselves for not trademarking that one!). Four are descriptive: iPhone, iPlayer, Mini and, arguably, YouTube. And lastly, only one acronym is in there, and even that is part of a fuller name, BBC iPlayer. It’s also worth noting that only one of the makey-uppy names that are so fashionable these days makes it into the top 20: Google.

Choose your brand name carefully

If you’re launching a consumer product, I can only repeat how careful you should be in finding a name that has legs – one that will be able to walk tall. The Superbrand review is not a scientific analysis of branding. And there is also more to branding than the name; don’t forget superior products, great positioning and a marketing budget! But it certainly provides a little food for thought if you’re thinking of launching a new brand.

The “cool” factor is not the only one to bear in mind (RyanAir does not need it to be successful, for example). But the results do echo The Write Stuff’s experience using our naming methodology. The names that survive the process are names that enable marketers to build on the connotations and emotions that are relevant to their audiences – and this is as valid for paint as it is for a petrochemical product.

More about product naming and research

When faced with the need for a name, the possibilities are almost limitless – from functional descriptive names such as Northwest Airlines, to evocative names such as Virgin and Twitter to acronyms (a special mention goes to FCUK) and family names such as Cadbury’s.

Somewhere within all those choices there is a best option for the product and market you are entering. Getting to it certainly requires some creative thinking on the part of the writers, but also -crucially – the full involvement of the marketing and product developers. How do they see the product now, three years from now and what is the end game? What makes it stand out and if the answer is nothing, how will it survive in the market? And how can we find a consensus amongst the dozens of suggestions that can arise?

In the most recent project we worked on, the option was simply to change one letter in the spelling of a common word to create the extra character needed to brand the product. We got to it using a fairly precise methodology that helped us focus on and then filter suggestions at every level. That one letter actually says a lot in this case. It makes the name unique enough to stand out, while clearly announcing the product’s one key feature.

Ultimately, we will only run out of brand names when we are faced with a completely commoditised way of producing and marketing goods and services. I’m pretty use that won’t be any time soon.

It will come as no surprise that branding at this level follows a well-trodden path for marketers. There’s a product with a USP and a potential market. The trick is to bring the product under the noses of the right market and let the combination of product and image work its magic. So far, so good. But the product in this case is an actual person (at least at the early stages, afterwards it might become a team).

The trick is to bring the product under the noses of the right market and let the combination of product and image work its magic.

So the image being portrayed is on the front line 24 hours a day, and the person will have to live up to certain expectations on a daily basis. I’m reminded of John Cleese telling the story of when he entered a shop to buy a box of matches. On the way out, he heard the shopkeeper whisper to another client, “Not very funny, is he?”

Be useful

The root issue is that no matter how fab you are deep down as a person, you still have to be useful to others. You have to deliver. So the branding cannot allow itself to become too wrapped up in the aura of the subject. Sure, it has to be personal inasmuch as it is dealing with a person, but shouting “me-me-me” will not cut it. Not even if you shout it louder, or prettier. The branding still has to bear in mind the fundamental question facing marketers: what will this product/person do for their market? What’s in it for them?

For Gerry Murray – who takes a very practical approach to coaching (ie, the coachee has to work hard) – the branding we developed with Guy Stevens of Pix&Com is based around the phrase, “Take That Step with Gerry Murray”. He makes people do things, brings them on a journey of sorts, helps them take a step in the right direction. So the copywriting and soon-to-come website reflect this (check the layouts here). Rather than turning inwards, they have to keep the audience very much in mind. So in this respect, personal branding is not like a personal computer; it really does have to be shared – with the people it’s targetted at.

Gerry Murray will be conducting a weekend seminar called “Reset Your Compass for 2010″ in Leuven, Belgium on January 16 & 17. Follow his writing on Thinking Differently or follow the website at GerryMurray.com

Countdown 100 leadership coaching

I was amazed when an art director at a major agency recently told me that on average, their contact with a client had changed every six months over the past three years. That’s quite a turnover, with the inevitable loss in productivity and continuity. Coincidentally, coach and consultant Serge Pegoff told me that between 25-40% of managers in new positions don’t meet expectations. The managers themselves claim that a lack of support was often to blame.

Pegoff and some coaching colleagues started a programme specifically to enable managers to get up to speed as quickly as possible – roughly 3 months. So when they asked us to develop a brochure and identity, the name Countdown 100 was an obvious choice. It stands out, as other programmes on the market are given horrendous manager-speak names. The visuals, developed by Pix&Com, play on the countdown theme. For details about the programme, visit Countdown 100.

Finding URLs is a bit like finding a brand name. Of course there is a perfect one that sums everything up in between 5-7 letters and is funny, witty and a guaranteed magnet for visitors in itself. Problem is, it’s been taken. There are also a good number of almost-perfect URLs that are very close to your best choice. But as this is a public service type of information, you can’t risk taking a name that might be hijacked by your close neighbour to peddle porn or something (a fate that befell the Festival de Cannes a few years back). So you have to dig a little deeper. With French-speaking copywriter Chantal Debauche we put together a few ideas and then wrote the list of do’s and don’ts to the client’s brief. The URL? Quite simply Gimme the info.

Amongst the recent successful ones is the MIPIM Horizons trade fair, which will run next December in Cannes. In this case, MIPIM asked the Consorcom agency to help them with the name as they wanted to create a new event to accompany the hugely successful MIPIM property market trade fair. As MIPIM Horizons will focus on emerging markets, we naturally focused on that aspect. We kept the mother brand name and developed a range of names evoking discovery, novelty and the like. The Horizons is quite a “natural” choice, as it is easily understandable and evokes a lot of things that are interesting to property developers.

The list, and how to shorten it

Other things you have to look out for when choosing names are, of course, trademark issues. It can be very difficult finding something that does not yet exist. You also have to check them against a list of criteria, such as shortness, the ability to be understood in different languages, their ability to fit into a logo (although that is a secondary issue), the connotations and their “uniqueness”. Depending on the product you are looking at, you might also want to either embrace or avoid trendy words or connotations.

Lastly, you also have to ask yourself about a name’s relationship to other names. In this case, we piggy-backed on the mother brand MIPIM. But is this something that is desirable in each case? Oh, and did I mention having a strategy?

This might seem a lot to think about. But at a certain stage, you have to table some suggestions. Once you go through this process with a number of people (not too many), a shortlist will inevitably emerge. And at that stage, a personal preference or at least consensus will determine the best choice.

But one question no one has ever been able to answer me is: would IBM choose another name if they were given the chance? Some of the biggest companies have the flattest most uninspiring names. Many corporations are still using the original founder’s name even though the family is no longer involved. Is Google a name that can be used in every sector? Imagine they develop some software for the defence industry. Would you recommend they sell it under the banner of Google? So where do you put the limit? The same issue arises every time Virgin rents its name to another company, for example. Does anyone remember Virgin Cola?

Looking down the line, what do you think is the best option for a long term name?

Most recently, I’ve worked with them on finding a name and developing marketing material for Amazia (left), which will be Asia’s foremost entertainment content market from next year.

For more about the agency, visit Consorcom.

Incidentally, The Write Stuff also found the site’s name, an illustration of the principle of resolving issues.