At a conference yesterday I managed to snag nine business cards. Not actually a good thing as I didn’t ask for any. I guess I stuck my had out when they were offered so I got what I deserved.

Of the nine, only one conformed to the old standard of name, job title, company contacts, logo. Not including the mandatories the word count splits like this: 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 18, 18, 48, 52.

The 2 card – “wooden jigsaws” – nails the point of a good business card. I might not remember the name of the fella or his company, but if I ever want some wooden jigsaws I’ll know where to start. One of the 18s – not the worst – says “Benefits realisation through user involvement”, the other thirteen words don’t make it any clearer. Will I call this guy? No. Why? I don’t know when I should.

If you’re going to put some extra love on your business card, make it count.

Business cards aren’t clever, they can’t do your job for you. It’s a very rare sole who will squint their way through your printed verbiage to work out why they should remember you. If you’re not sure what to write, ask your customers – they normally have a pretty good handle on why they give you money.

Mr Jigsaw tells you what his company is up to, great. If the best you can do is just filling in the white spaces, leave it blank.

Neatly filed under Making Promises on March 27, 2009

What’s the difference between brand and positioning?

I’ve been wriggling around this one for years. Part of the problem is that everyone uses them to mean something that they are talking about, and not even the same kind of thing as the last time they used the word.

Both words can be verbs or nouns. To brand, positioning (yes, I know), the brand, the positioning. I have a sneaky feeling that sometimes they’re used interchangeably, and I know that sometimes they’re both used as one thing – the brand positioning. Which all leaves me a bit confused.

So here’s my attempt at definitions, which take pieces of everything I’ve read and tries to put them together in an order I can understand.

Brand is another word for reputation. That reputation may be captured by a name, logo or symbol. A longer description of reputation may be the expected delivery experience as measured against the promise.

To brand, the verb this time, is to do things in order to create an expectation of a particular delivery experience.

Positioning is the place you occupy in the mind of the customer. Places are definite, so can only be occupied by one thing at a time. Positioning is relative, so only makes sense in relation to the positioning of others. Displacing somebody else’s positioning is difficult.

Positioning, the verb, is to do things in order to place your company in a particular positioning (the noun).

Treating brand and positioning as messaging issues means they’ll only ever be cladding, bolted on to the outside.

Neatly filed under Making Promises on March 25, 2009