What’s In A Name? Everything!

What’s in a name?

Everything!  Let me show you what I mean here….

What is the worst thing that can happen to you when you are marketing something?

Being forgotten!

There is nothing worse. I have written about this before and how important it is to STAND OUT.

So let’s say you do a great pitch about your power niche practice regarding representing off-beat fashion companies in corporate, real estate, litigation, and other matters. You do everything right.

It is niched — i.e., you only represent fashion companies that are not mainstream.

You are exciting and interesting at the meeting.

You run the pitch perfectly.

And then you leave. Six months later — I mean six days later — I mean six hours later — I mean six minutes later — the party you pitched is trying to remember it. Can she? Will she?

If she can’t remember it, then your pitch — perfect as it was — goes down the drain.

Well, what if you called it your “Freaky Funky Foolish Fashion Practice”?

This kind of jars you. It may even provoke a chuckle. At the pitch, you will probably joke about it with the prospect and make fun whether she can remember it. Maybe even engage in some self-deprecation and make fun of the name. But once you place it in the prospect’s mind, it is hard to forget. The prospect probably won’t remember all of the “F” words, but will remember the alliteration weaving into the key concept of “Fashion.”  When you send a follow-up email, you will refer to it.

And it will “stick” in your prospect’s mind.

Like it or not, that is how our minds work. We remember things that are unusual and forget other things.

As you muse about this, consider that alliteration (remember that from third-grade English class?) is one of the best ways to have names stand out. The teacher referred to the Raven from Poe as the example: “and the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain…”

Other ideas are as follows:

One of my litigators, Kirk Brett, is a tough fellow — as litigators often are — and he calls himself The Wolf, from Pulp Fiction.

Another one of my partners, Todd Eisner, who does a lot with joint ventures — we call Super JV Man.

Since I do a lot to help clients build their business, we often say “Put Bruce to Use.”

My tax partner, Jessica Millett, is all over Opportunity Zones (from the recent Tax Reform Act), so we are calling them Jessica Zones.

This only scratches the surface, but the bottom line is, that which gets named in an interesting manner gets remembered.