What's In a Name? Plenty, Experts Advise; Catching the Entrepreneurial Bug; Podcasting: Grab Your Mike and Go
What's In a Name? Plenty, Experts Advise
When Scott Levy took over as CEO of KAR Printing six years ago, he knew he wanted to narrow the company's focus. Levy was eager to concentrate on producing four-color advertising inserts, the kind of ads that are stuffed in mailboxes and newspapers. But once the focus was changed, Levy was left with a 350-employee company whose name no longer matched its mission. "We still were getting lumped in with all the commercial printers," he says. Plus, the name was pretty generic and lifeless. Levy sought help from A Hundred Monkeys, a four-person branding and strategy shop based in Mill Valley, Calif.
After months of creating and then whittling down a list of 45 possible names for his company, based in Austell, Ga., Levy had a winner. He is now CEO of Doodad--as in those pesky little "doodads" in the newspaper. Not everyone was captivated by the whimsical moniker, Levy recalls: "My dad, a shareholder, said, 'What is this doohickey thing you named the company?' But I told him it was catchy and it puts a smile on people's faces. What's so wrong with that?"
The name is ambiguous enough to encompass unknown future lines of business, says A Hundred Monkeys' Danny Altman. "Remember, you are going to have to live with your name a long time," he adds. "The name is also the germ of all your marketing efforts." Altman says he asks lots of existential questions of clients--"Who are you? What do you believe? Who do you want to connect with?" That helps him gather the material he uses to fashion not only a memorable name but also an effective one.
Catching the Entrepreneurial Bug
Unemployment has dipped to its lowest level since before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and employers may be having trouble finding those self-starting, young go-getters that every human resources department desires. At least that's what business strategist Roger Herman is finding as he talks to company executives and corporate recruiters around the country. "There just don't seem to be as many available as in the past," he says.
Herman theorizes that many recent college graduates, with memories of corporate scandals fresh in their minds, loathe the idea of having to work for large corporations and instead are trying to start their own businesses.
Podcasting: Grab Your Mike and Go
Thinking about adding a blog to spice up your company website? Those often snarky online diaries may seem cutting edge to you, but they're really so 2004. What? You don't have one yet? OK, get your blog up and running tout de suite and then think about adding a podcast, an Internet radio file that customers or employees can download from your site. All it takes is a microphone and free editing software that's only a Google search away. The big guys are already doing it. At Fastlane, the corporate blogging site for General Motors, car enthusiasts can download mini radio shows about cool machines like the Corvette Z06.
In July, some 70,000 podcasts were downloaded, according to Michael Wiley, director of new media at GM. "I think the opportunity is unlimited," Wiley says. "They are cheap to produce, and you can put together a pretty good product with even rudimentary facilities."
But what if you're not a behemoth like GM? The benefits apply to organizations of any size. "It's affordable 'narrow-casting,' feasible to do whether your audience is 10 or 1,000 people," says communications consultant Neville Hobson. It can pay off big time. Attorney Craig Williams says his blog (mayitpleasethecourt.com) and podcast have generated close to $1 million worth of client referrals since they started three years ago. He thinks of his site as "my handshake to the world."
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This story appears in the September 26, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.