Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Where Does Credibility Come From?
According to the Greeks, a persuasive presentation consists of three major elements:
- Ethos (trust) — first you need to establish that you are a trustworthy person. (Click here for more).
- Logos (logic) — once you’re perceived as trustworthy (and only then), you can deliver the logic of your argument. (Click here).
- Pathos (emotion) — to sum up, you need to touch on the audience’s emotions. Why is your recommendation good for them? (Click here).
I’ve always wondered, how do you quickly establish that you’re a trustworthy person? It’s not easy to project trustworthiness to an audience. Credibility is certainly a key ingredient — but that just begs the question, how do you project credibility?
Then I re-read Jay Conger’s article (click here) and discovered that credibility comes from two sources: experience and relationships.
I intuitively understood the experience part. Whenever I speak to an audience, I briefly introduce the relevant details of my experience. I try not to overdo it as I don’t want to come across as arrogant or academic. I find that a little self-deprecation can help. This is typically a variant on, “I know a lot about the topic because I’ve made a lot of mistakes….” Ultimately, however, I want the audience to know that I have been successful. To do this, I often find it helpful to have someone else introduce me. They can brag about me in ways that I can’t.
Conger points out that credibility also includes open-mindedness. Persuasive people are often perceived as good listeners as well as good speakers. They can incorporate what their audience has to say and adjust their positions. This is the relationship aspect of credibility. People who are honest, even-keeled, and who “generously share credit” are perceived as more credible and trustworthy.
But what if your audience doesn’t know that you are honest, even-keeled, and appreciative? What if you’re speaking to the audience for the first time? I find it’s very useful to interview members of the audience before I give a presentation. Then I can discuss my experiences and what I’ve learned. I’m more credible simply because I listened before speaking.
I also like to speak to the audience’s customers before a presentation. Because I’m an outsider, I can ask “dumb” questions of customers. This often produces interesting, even unique, insights that I can pass on to the audience. That demonstrates that I’m open to interesting sources of information and that I have some interesting perspectives to share. That makes me more credible and more persuasive.
Before you approach an audience, think about how you’ll build your credibility and trustworthiness. If you establish that you’re trustworthy early in the presentation, you may well succeed. If you can’t establish your credibility, the rest of your presentation is just wasted time.
Gross National Happiness
We’re happy in Denmark.
What’s with these Danes? On virtually every survey that purports to measure national happiness — or Gross National Happiness — Denmark scores number one. In fact, the Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — typically occupy half of the top ten “happy slots”. I’ve visited all the Nordic countries. They’re really nice but are they the happiest places in the world? Wasn’t Hamlet Danish? He didn’t seem so happy.
As you may have guessed, I’ve been reading the World Happiness Report published through The Earth Institute at Columbia University. (Click here). It’s about 170 pages long and makes for very interesting reading — enough so that I’m going to write about various facets of it from time to time. Here are some of the key questions:
- Is happiness a topic that we can take seriously? According to the study’s authors, there is enough empirical research coming from many different cultures that we can start to make useful comparisons and judgments. I’ll admit that I’m very curious about how to measure national happiness, so I’ll write about the method as well as the results.
- What makes people happy? Money helps but not as much as other factors like social cohesion, strong family ties, absence of corruption, and degree of personal freedom. Interestingly, giving money away seems to make people happier than receiving money.
- As countries get richer, do they get happier? Some do and some don’t. Apparently, the USA is one of those countries that hasn’t gotten happier as we’ve gotten richer. I’d like to dig into that.
- Is the world getting happier? Apparently we are, especially in areas where extreme poverty is being eliminated.
I’ll write occasionally on happiness studies and delve into what makes people happy and what doesn’t — and how all this affects the way we live. Feel free to send me any of your questions about happiness studies and I’ll try to get them answered.
In the meantime here are two questions for you:
- Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are? (0 = extremely unhappy; 10 = extremely happy)
- All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays? (0 = extremely dissatisfied; 10 = extremely satisfied).
In the Nordic countries, the average life satisfaction score is 7.6. If yours is lower than that, maybe it’s time to head to Denmark.
Orlando Keynote
Where’s Travis?
I’m heading to Orlando this weekend and not just because it’s snowing in Colorado and sunny in Florida. On Monday, I’ll give a keynote speech to Amcom Software’s annual user group event, Connect 12. (You can read more about it here.) Amcom’s mission is “To help all organizations save lives and money by universally connecting data and people.” They’re out to make the world a better place and I’m happy to help. I like working with companies that have a strong sense of mission. My mission is to deliver a great speech. Wish me luck.
Branding: How to Name a Sports Car
Tarin or Parin?
You’ve just designed a spectacular, high-performance sports car. It’s beautiful. It handles like a dream. It turns heads. And it’s faster than anything else on the road. Now what do you name it?
Let’s assume that you want to emphasize the car’s speed in the name. Which name sounds faster to you: Tarin or Parin? Think about it for a moment and then read on.
According to researchers at Lexicon, a naming company in California, Tarin implies speed but less luxury. Parin, on the other hand, implies luxury rather than speed. The differences have to do with the pronunciation of the first letter. The initial “t” in Tarin is easy to pronounce — it’s quick like a fast car. The “p” in Parin requires more effort to build — like a luxury car.
“Fine”, you may say, “that works in English but the world is globalizing, so what about other languages?” Funny you should ask. The Lexicon researchers also studied the names in Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Dutch and got essentially the same result. Pronouncing a “t” is easy and fast regardless of your native language.
This example comes from “Famous Names”, a terrific article by John Colapinto that appeared in The New Yorker. (click here). Unlike the old days, naming has become much more of a science. Linguists are studying how sounds evoke emotions and how those sounds might vary across cultures. Some tidbits from the article:
- Short brand names are better than long ones.
- Pronounceability is important. An unpronounceable name simply puts off prospective buyers. The easiest words to pronounce follow a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern like Amazon or Lipitor or Lexicon.
- Alliteration and assonance help a name sound more likable.
- The letters “c”, “v”, and “p” imply vigor and well-being. This is why the Lexicon researchers love the name of Honda’s Civic.
- The letter “b” is the most “reliable” in virtually any language. Hence the BlackBerry (which Lexicon named).
- The name shouldn’t focus on the product features but rather the story you want to tell about the product.
So here’s a fun game: take these guidelines and start inventing your own names. I often do this when I’m out for a walk. I just play with different letter combinations and, when I come up with something that sounds interesting, I write it down. I now have about 80 names on my “potentially useful” list. Some day, they may come in handy.
Brand Names – Defense
Yesterday, I wrote about playing offense by making brand names memorable, meaningful, and likable. That’s all well and good but how do you defend a good brand name once you’ve created it? As with offense, Kevin Lane Keller and others advise you to consider three variables:
- Transferability — can you use the name for brand or line extensions? Can you transfer it to new categories, including more luxe category or more economical categories? JuicyJuice is a good name for a line of juice drinks but probably doesn’t extend to colas or
beers. Some names don’t have much meaning in and of themselves but become so closely associated with specific categories that they can’t be extended. Starbucks, for instance, originally could apply to almost anything but now has become closely associated with coffee. Would you buy wine from Starbucks? Similarly,we perceive Volkswagen to be a reliable, economical car. When VW introduced a luxury car, they called it the Volkswagen Phaeton. By all accounts it rivaled cars that cost twice as much. But it didn’t sell well. Great car; wrong brand. By contrast, when Toyota wanted to move up market, they didn’t transfer their own name. Rather they created a new name: Lexus. Similarly, when they moved to the youth market, they created another new name: Scion. - Adaptability — can you update or freshen the name? Will it grow stale? In the early days of the office automation industry, I remember a company named Cassette Powered Typewriters. They literally added memory cassettes to typewriters to make crude word processors. As their technology improved and as typewriters fell out of fashion, the company had to change its name to CPT. Naming after a time period can also create problems. What do we do with Twentieth Century Fox?
- Protectability — can you legally protect the name? Can anyone else copy the name? Perhaps in a different category? Perhaps in a different country?
Here’s where we start to see conflict between offense and defense. An entirely original, invented name is easier to protect. But an invented name usually has no inherent meaning, no emotional associations, and low likability. You have to teach the market what the name means, always an expensive proposition. It may score high on protectability but it’s probably low on memorability, meaningfulness, and likability.
It’s virtually impossible to create a name that scores well on all six criteria. So don’t feel badly if you don’t create a “killer” name after a few brainstorming sessions. If you need to build brand equity, you should probably focus on offense. If you need to maintain brand equity, you should probably focus on defense. Figure out your brand positions and then figure out which variables to focus on. Above all, help your customers imbue the name with emotion. It doesn’t matter what you think. It only matters what they think.
(This article is based largely on Kevin Lane Keller’s book, Strategic Brand Management).
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