Seeing that pic of StarDocs Coffee yesterday made me think of how I'd franchise my novels into businesses if the opportunity ever arose. I can't really see a chain of java joints in my future -- not really my thing -- but I wouldn't mind lending my brand to a couple of Lynn Viehl book shops. I could have fun designing a Dark Need goth tea room franchise, too, only they probably wouldn't let me decorate the places in black and red. Rats.
Evermore the theme park might work, if I could convince the cast of Full Metal Jousting to staff it and they'd let me live there. Or maybe some Kelly's quilt shops might be fun (assuming quilting ever comes back as a needlework trend.) StarDoc would only work for me as the name of a free medical clinic franchise, which no one would want to run because there's no money in it, so that's off the table.
I know: PBW retreats. Affordable and comfortable beach cottages where writers or readers can spend a couple of weeks working in peace ad solitude. Full prestocked with all the tech, books and supplies they need. Sun, sand, sea and stories . . . yep, that would be my dream franchise.
What would be your dream franchise using your titles, your name or any of your favorite things? Let us know in comments.
Showing posts with label branding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label branding. Show all posts
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Wordsmithing
According to Margaret Wolfson's article on branding in the current issue of Poets & Writers, brand name styles can be grouped (broadly) by one of the following categories, all of which I've used myself:
Metaphoric/Allusive (Darkyn ~ a metaphor for vampire)
Coined/Divergent Spelling (Kyndred ~ divergent spelling of the word kindred to link it to Darkyn)
Descriptive (Paperback Writer ~ a blog written by a novelist)
Eponymous/Origin (Lynn Viehl ~ a brand pseudonym)
Creative Compounds (StarDoc ~ a coined compound of star + doctor)
Phrases (Tales from the Lost Ledger ~ my only phrase brand, I think, comprised of the novella's subtitle, which is also a subversive element in the story)
Alphanumeric/Acronym (PBW, a coined acronym of Paperback Writer, aka shorthand for me, which is easier to remember and spell than any of my bylines.)
There are plenty of approaches to brand naming, including hiring a professional to do it for you. As writers we are forever forging words into stories, however, and I think the best brands are those we create ourselves and that have meaning for us (and some of the most successful brands started out as a personal mark by the brand's creator.)
Why are writers so suited to successful brand-making? We are wordsmiths who already forge immense things every day using only words. Writers dream in words, and use them to construct new people, places and even entire universes. We are exactly like the classic variety of smith, too, except that the page is our anvil, words are our metals, imagination our furnace and writing skills the tools we use to hammer out, hone and perfect our stories.
Smithing words into brands is also one of the most important exercises you can do as a writer, not only to group and define your work under a recognizable symbol, but to make your mark on the Publishing world as well. Stop and think about the word brand for a moment. One definition of it is as a permanent mark to record and display ownership. When you mark something with your brand, it should say to the world "This is mine."
Writer brands range from individual character names (Harry Potter ~ J.K. Rowling), setting names (Mitford ~ Jan Karon), novel titles (Twilight ~ Stephenie Meyer) to group names such as name-linked novel titles (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, etc. ~ Janet Evanovich) or series brands (StarDoc ~ Yours Truly). The writer's own name can become a brand as well (Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe) but unless they inspire a great many people during their lifetime (like Dr. Maya Angelou) that's usually a posthumous brand.
For me coining the words and using divergent spellings for my own brands has worked best, and inspiration can come from anywhere. StarDoc was born during a shower, when I was thinking about a newspaper article about a marine biologist. They ran a photo of the guy standing beside his Jeep, which sported the vanity license plate. I kept thinking how perfectly apt and utterly cool that plate was (SEA DOC), and then made the leap to my own brand (and don't ask me how, to this day I don't know what really prompted it) by mentally swapping out SEA with STAR. So there's one technique that might help you come up with your own brand; invent an imaginary vanity license plate for the work you want to mark.
Wordle, my favorite online word toy, can be extremely helpful with brandsmithing, too. On the create page, feed Wordle lists of keywords, synonyms and other descriptors, and let it form a word cloud for you like this one, which is compromised of a few title ideas plus synonym lists for the words fire, light and burn (and here's something I've recently discovered about editing your Wordle creations: if you want to remove any word from the cloud, right click on it and a little remove-word window will pop up; left click on the window and Wordle will regenerate the cloud again in the same format and layout minus the word you don't want.)
One more thought -- wordsmithing a brand takes time and often a lot of thought and work, so don't expect to come up with a brilliant concept overnight. Be diligent, keep tinkering at it but also remain open to any source of inspiration, and you'll have the best chance of creating the brand that leaves your mark on the industry.
Metaphoric/Allusive (Darkyn ~ a metaphor for vampire)
Coined/Divergent Spelling (Kyndred ~ divergent spelling of the word kindred to link it to Darkyn)
Descriptive (Paperback Writer ~ a blog written by a novelist)
Eponymous/Origin (Lynn Viehl ~ a brand pseudonym)
Creative Compounds (StarDoc ~ a coined compound of star + doctor)
Phrases (Tales from the Lost Ledger ~ my only phrase brand, I think, comprised of the novella's subtitle, which is also a subversive element in the story)
Alphanumeric/Acronym (PBW, a coined acronym of Paperback Writer, aka shorthand for me, which is easier to remember and spell than any of my bylines.)
There are plenty of approaches to brand naming, including hiring a professional to do it for you. As writers we are forever forging words into stories, however, and I think the best brands are those we create ourselves and that have meaning for us (and some of the most successful brands started out as a personal mark by the brand's creator.)
Why are writers so suited to successful brand-making? We are wordsmiths who already forge immense things every day using only words. Writers dream in words, and use them to construct new people, places and even entire universes. We are exactly like the classic variety of smith, too, except that the page is our anvil, words are our metals, imagination our furnace and writing skills the tools we use to hammer out, hone and perfect our stories.
Smithing words into brands is also one of the most important exercises you can do as a writer, not only to group and define your work under a recognizable symbol, but to make your mark on the Publishing world as well. Stop and think about the word brand for a moment. One definition of it is as a permanent mark to record and display ownership. When you mark something with your brand, it should say to the world "This is mine."
Writer brands range from individual character names (Harry Potter ~ J.K. Rowling), setting names (Mitford ~ Jan Karon), novel titles (Twilight ~ Stephenie Meyer) to group names such as name-linked novel titles (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, etc. ~ Janet Evanovich) or series brands (StarDoc ~ Yours Truly). The writer's own name can become a brand as well (Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe) but unless they inspire a great many people during their lifetime (like Dr. Maya Angelou) that's usually a posthumous brand.
For me coining the words and using divergent spellings for my own brands has worked best, and inspiration can come from anywhere. StarDoc was born during a shower, when I was thinking about a newspaper article about a marine biologist. They ran a photo of the guy standing beside his Jeep, which sported the vanity license plate. I kept thinking how perfectly apt and utterly cool that plate was (SEA DOC), and then made the leap to my own brand (and don't ask me how, to this day I don't know what really prompted it) by mentally swapping out SEA with STAR. So there's one technique that might help you come up with your own brand; invent an imaginary vanity license plate for the work you want to mark.
Wordle, my favorite online word toy, can be extremely helpful with brandsmithing, too. On the create page, feed Wordle lists of keywords, synonyms and other descriptors, and let it form a word cloud for you like this one, which is compromised of a few title ideas plus synonym lists for the words fire, light and burn (and here's something I've recently discovered about editing your Wordle creations: if you want to remove any word from the cloud, right click on it and a little remove-word window will pop up; left click on the window and Wordle will regenerate the cloud again in the same format and layout minus the word you don't want.)
One more thought -- wordsmithing a brand takes time and often a lot of thought and work, so don't expect to come up with a brilliant concept overnight. Be diligent, keep tinkering at it but also remain open to any source of inspiration, and you'll have the best chance of creating the brand that leaves your mark on the industry.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
Titles That Brand
Harry Potter and Twilight are two mammoth author brands. When anyone says the name Harry Potter, one inevitably thinks of Harry's author, J.K. Rowling. The same is true of Twilight; that single word forever owns Stephenie Meyer. Both are series titles; Rowling used Harry Potter as a title prefix for her global-bestselling novels, while Twilight began as the title of Meyer's first novel and went on to become the brand name for her entire series, the movies, the merchandising, etc.
On a far more modest level I've branded and rebranded my works and myself with multiple titles: Darkyn, PBW and StarDoc have proven to be the most popular. I coined Darkyn and StarDoc; PBW is shorthand for my blog title. Single, easy-to-remember words can be powerful brands for lesser-known authors, especially multi-genre/multi-series writers like me. You may not remember which pseudonym I'm currently using, but PBW will stick to the roof of your mind because 1) it's extremely short, 2) it's simple and 3) it's an identifier: PBW, aka Paperback Writer, aka that chick with the writing blog.
Branding is an art all on its own, and you can spend years chasing the right word(s) that define you and/or your writing. Your first idea may not be your best, either. Before inspiration struck me one night in the shower, I called my SF medical adventure stories the Border FreeClinic series. Back in 1998, I dubbed my Darkyn tales the Darkling stories (which wasn't bad; it simply wasn't right.)
For novel branding, I prefer brand words that tell a story in a single glance. Star + Doc = galactic physician. Dark + Kyn = shadowy relatives. When I had to come up with a title for the books my publisher had me write as a spin off of the Darkyn series, I worked for weeks combining and recombining words without success. Finally I threw out everything and meditated on it. I knew I wanted to use Kyn for the connection to the original series, but what to pair with it? Who were these characters? I knew them as ordinary mortals with extraordinary abilities whom the Darkyn should really dread. And that was when the light bulb came on; dread was the word I needed to complete the series brand. Kyn + dread - a = Kyndred.
To find brands for your works or yourself, the best place to start is with word lists. Begin jotting down every word that describes you, your stories, your style, or anything that is strongly related to you or what you write. You don't have to automatically go for one-word or simple branding; the keyword here is memorable. For example, you may not know who Daniel Handler is until you hear his pseudonym: Lemony Snicket. Marjorie Liu's series title Dirk & Steele invokes images of honed, bladed weapons (which aptly applies to her characters.) Patricia Briggs's Alpha and Omega pulls double duty by reflecting on the soup-to-nuts hierarchy of her werewolf pack's social structure as well as the unusual relationship between her protagonists, an alpha and an omega werewolf.
Don't instantly discount your pseudonym as a brand - I can't ever recall any of the titles of author Carl Hiassen's novels, but I remember his name due to the surname. I do the same with Susan Elizabeth Phillips because hers is probably the longest author name I know, plus it's as elegant as her writing.
If you can't think of memorable words off the top of your head, hit the thesaurus and make some synonym lists based on your keywords. Focus on words that invoke an immediate emotional reaction, or that invoke instant imagery. Once you have a couple of pages, play with the words by pairing them with each other as new compound words, changing the spelling slightly and/or recombining parts of them to form coined compounds. You can also feed your lists to Wordle and generate a cloud that will shuffle the words around and create interesting groupings; I find this works best if you select a horizontal or mostly horizontal appearance so that you get a more linear cloud.
To run a fun test of how memorable your brand is, add it to a list of similar words, show it to someone for a minute, take the list away from them and ask them which word they remember first. If they say your brand word(s), it's probably the winner.
On a far more modest level I've branded and rebranded my works and myself with multiple titles: Darkyn, PBW and StarDoc have proven to be the most popular. I coined Darkyn and StarDoc; PBW is shorthand for my blog title. Single, easy-to-remember words can be powerful brands for lesser-known authors, especially multi-genre/multi-series writers like me. You may not remember which pseudonym I'm currently using, but PBW will stick to the roof of your mind because 1) it's extremely short, 2) it's simple and 3) it's an identifier: PBW, aka Paperback Writer, aka that chick with the writing blog.
Branding is an art all on its own, and you can spend years chasing the right word(s) that define you and/or your writing. Your first idea may not be your best, either. Before inspiration struck me one night in the shower, I called my SF medical adventure stories the Border FreeClinic series. Back in 1998, I dubbed my Darkyn tales the Darkling stories (which wasn't bad; it simply wasn't right.)
For novel branding, I prefer brand words that tell a story in a single glance. Star + Doc = galactic physician. Dark + Kyn = shadowy relatives. When I had to come up with a title for the books my publisher had me write as a spin off of the Darkyn series, I worked for weeks combining and recombining words without success. Finally I threw out everything and meditated on it. I knew I wanted to use Kyn for the connection to the original series, but what to pair with it? Who were these characters? I knew them as ordinary mortals with extraordinary abilities whom the Darkyn should really dread. And that was when the light bulb came on; dread was the word I needed to complete the series brand. Kyn + dread - a = Kyndred.
To find brands for your works or yourself, the best place to start is with word lists. Begin jotting down every word that describes you, your stories, your style, or anything that is strongly related to you or what you write. You don't have to automatically go for one-word or simple branding; the keyword here is memorable. For example, you may not know who Daniel Handler is until you hear his pseudonym: Lemony Snicket. Marjorie Liu's series title Dirk & Steele invokes images of honed, bladed weapons (which aptly applies to her characters.) Patricia Briggs's Alpha and Omega pulls double duty by reflecting on the soup-to-nuts hierarchy of her werewolf pack's social structure as well as the unusual relationship between her protagonists, an alpha and an omega werewolf.
Don't instantly discount your pseudonym as a brand - I can't ever recall any of the titles of author Carl Hiassen's novels, but I remember his name due to the surname. I do the same with Susan Elizabeth Phillips because hers is probably the longest author name I know, plus it's as elegant as her writing.
If you can't think of memorable words off the top of your head, hit the thesaurus and make some synonym lists based on your keywords. Focus on words that invoke an immediate emotional reaction, or that invoke instant imagery. Once you have a couple of pages, play with the words by pairing them with each other as new compound words, changing the spelling slightly and/or recombining parts of them to form coined compounds. You can also feed your lists to Wordle and generate a cloud that will shuffle the words around and create interesting groupings; I find this works best if you select a horizontal or mostly horizontal appearance so that you get a more linear cloud.
To run a fun test of how memorable your brand is, add it to a list of similar words, show it to someone for a minute, take the list away from them and ask them which word they remember first. If they say your brand word(s), it's probably the winner.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
Define Yourself
Five Questions About Branding
All About Me: Tomorrow you'll write your autobiography (or someone else will write a biography) with a focus on your writing life. What's the title?
If I write it, Cacoëthes Scribendi (read the poem on Bartleby.com)
If someone else writes it, That @$!&#* *&$!@# @*&%$#!
Catalyst: Your writing triggers a new literary movement. What will it be called?
The Unmoved
Symbolic: Your marketing department asks your for something animal, vegetable or mineral that they can convert into a logo and put on all your books. What do you choose?
What else? Cheetah
Tag Phrase: A book buyer wants a brief tag phrase to identify you in their catalogue (i.e. Stephen King is frequently touted as "Master of Horror".) How do you tag yourself?
Jill of All Genres. Ha. No, probably stick with Paperback Writer.
There Can Be Only One: Your publisher asks for one word to define all your writing work. What's your word?
Amaranthine (only because they probably wouldn't let me use αμαράντινος)
Now it's your turn to define yourself: what are your answers to the questions? Tell us in comments.
Image credit: © Paul Buxton | Dreamstime.com
All About Me: Tomorrow you'll write your autobiography (or someone else will write a biography) with a focus on your writing life. What's the title?
If I write it, Cacoëthes Scribendi (read the poem on Bartleby.com)
If someone else writes it, That @$!&#* *&$!@# @*&%$#!
Catalyst: Your writing triggers a new literary movement. What will it be called?
The Unmoved
Symbolic: Your marketing department asks your for something animal, vegetable or mineral that they can convert into a logo and put on all your books. What do you choose?What else? Cheetah
Tag Phrase: A book buyer wants a brief tag phrase to identify you in their catalogue (i.e. Stephen King is frequently touted as "Master of Horror".) How do you tag yourself?
Jill of All Genres. Ha. No, probably stick with Paperback Writer.
There Can Be Only One: Your publisher asks for one word to define all your writing work. What's your word?
Amaranthine (only because they probably wouldn't let me use αμαράντινος)
Now it's your turn to define yourself: what are your answers to the questions? Tell us in comments.
Image credit: © Paul Buxton | Dreamstime.com
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
June: Branding
I. A Rose by Any Other Name
What is Branding?
Branding is something we humans have been doing to show ownership forever. Some of the earliest depictions of humans branding livestock were carved into a tomb wall in Egypt four thousand years ago.
In the days of the old American West, a rancher would burn the same mark onto the hides of all his cattle. This brand mark, usually a symbol, letter, character or number, served as a simple means of identifying the cattle as belonging to the rancher, and discouraged others from taking and using the animal for their own purposes.
Today we don't use red hot irons to stamp our mark on our belongings -- we have label-making tape, Sharpies, and the heart-shaped tattoo for that -- but the brand lives on, and has become the keystone of successful modern marketing.
According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers."
Two phrases here are the keys to effective branding: "to identify the goods and services" and "to differentiate them from those of other sellers." Or, in other words, define what you've got, and how it's different from what everyone else has.
II. Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?
Brand Impressions
To create a brand, you need a brand name that instantly identifies you to the consumer. The brand can be your name or pseudonym, the title of a book or series, or something closely related to you and/or the work you do.
Acronyms, or words formed from the initial letters of a group of words, can be effective brands. ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), IBM (International Business Machines), PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), and RWA (Romance Writers of America) are all well-recognized acronym brands.
When you have a lengthy brand name, or a name not likely to be remembered, a clever acronym may be the way to go (which is why I've used PBW as both a personal and blog brand; it's easier to remember and to use than Paperback Writer, or all 486 of my pseudonyms.)
Abbreviated, coined and recombined words also make excellent brands. Microsoft (microcomputer software), FedEx (Federal Express), iPod (internet podium, I think), and Mac (MacIntosh computer). The uniqueness of this type of brand has differentiation built into it, which is why I like them a lot -- StarDoc and Darkyn, two of my coined series names, have been my most successful brands.
III. What Makes You So Hot?
Brand Differentiation
Everyone and their brother writes vampire fiction these days, but few stand out in my mind. Why? No branding. Having a great title is not enough; there are at least fifty other authors with great titles hitting the shelf at the same time as your books. A vampire fiction writer needs something that makes their book stand out from all the others being thrown at the reader. It should be a brand that will jog the readers' memory when the next novel is released, so there has to be some common connection, too.
Look at some of the brand names that are already out there on the market:
Black Dagger Brotherhood (J.R. Ward)
Darkyn (mine)
The Carpathians (Christine Feehan)
The Vampire Chronicles (Anne Rice)
Vampyricon (Douglas Clegg)
What do we all have in common? Unique brand names that 1) define our series, 2) connect our books, and 3) don't sound interchangeable. When you put together a brand name, you want to create something that becomes as synonymous with your vampire fiction as "Buffy" is with the television series.
Start by making lists of single words that relate to you, your work, the type of story you tell, your voice, and anything else you feel sets you apart from other writers and can be strongly defined. Use an online thesaurus to pull in synonyms, or search old poetry, song lyrics and prose for phrase inspiration. Play with the words you find and see what you can come up with.
IV. Only a Harley is a Harley
Brand Impact
I am not a marketing guru; I only play one here at the blog. But I have (informally) studied marketing for years, and I've watched what works. The right word or phrase can make all the difference. And a strong, creative brand name is like having a personal publicist who never sleeps.
One final thought on how a brand can impact many things, including customer expectations:
The impact of brands can be powerful, signaling positive or negative value to customers and other constituencies. All else being equal, a strong brand enables a company to command a premium price for a product or have higher market share when charging the same price as a competitor. In other words, brands have the power to "shift demand." For example, Harley-Davidson, which is an extremely strong brand in the motorcycle market, can charge up to three times the price of a competitor's product for a motorcycle with essentially the same engineering quality and performance characteristics as imitations. Moreover, Harley customers are willing to wait for months for a motorcycle, simplifying the company's inventory management. Only a Harley is a Harley. -- The Ultimate Intangible: Measuring and Managing Brands as Strategic Assets by Kenneth Roberts and Eric Almquist
Related Links:
Search for acronyms and abbreviations at Abbreviations.com.
BrandChannel.com, "the world's only online exchange about branding."
Creating a Unique Brand Name by Martin Jelsema
Snopes.com debunks the myth behind the three most valuable brand names on Earth.
The Reality of Brands: Toward an Ontology of Marketing by Wolfgang Grassl
What is Branding?
Branding is something we humans have been doing to show ownership forever. Some of the earliest depictions of humans branding livestock were carved into a tomb wall in Egypt four thousand years ago.
In the days of the old American West, a rancher would burn the same mark onto the hides of all his cattle. This brand mark, usually a symbol, letter, character or number, served as a simple means of identifying the cattle as belonging to the rancher, and discouraged others from taking and using the animal for their own purposes.
Today we don't use red hot irons to stamp our mark on our belongings -- we have label-making tape, Sharpies, and the heart-shaped tattoo for that -- but the brand lives on, and has become the keystone of successful modern marketing.
According to the American Marketing Association, a brand is a "name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers."
Two phrases here are the keys to effective branding: "to identify the goods and services" and "to differentiate them from those of other sellers." Or, in other words, define what you've got, and how it's different from what everyone else has.
II. Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name?
Brand Impressions
To create a brand, you need a brand name that instantly identifies you to the consumer. The brand can be your name or pseudonym, the title of a book or series, or something closely related to you and/or the work you do.
Acronyms, or words formed from the initial letters of a group of words, can be effective brands. ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), IBM (International Business Machines), PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), and RWA (Romance Writers of America) are all well-recognized acronym brands.
When you have a lengthy brand name, or a name not likely to be remembered, a clever acronym may be the way to go (which is why I've used PBW as both a personal and blog brand; it's easier to remember and to use than Paperback Writer, or all 486 of my pseudonyms.)
Abbreviated, coined and recombined words also make excellent brands. Microsoft (microcomputer software), FedEx (Federal Express), iPod (internet podium, I think), and Mac (MacIntosh computer). The uniqueness of this type of brand has differentiation built into it, which is why I like them a lot -- StarDoc and Darkyn, two of my coined series names, have been my most successful brands.
III. What Makes You So Hot?
Brand Differentiation
Everyone and their brother writes vampire fiction these days, but few stand out in my mind. Why? No branding. Having a great title is not enough; there are at least fifty other authors with great titles hitting the shelf at the same time as your books. A vampire fiction writer needs something that makes their book stand out from all the others being thrown at the reader. It should be a brand that will jog the readers' memory when the next novel is released, so there has to be some common connection, too.
Look at some of the brand names that are already out there on the market:
Black Dagger Brotherhood (J.R. Ward)
Darkyn (mine)
The Carpathians (Christine Feehan)
The Vampire Chronicles (Anne Rice)
Vampyricon (Douglas Clegg)
What do we all have in common? Unique brand names that 1) define our series, 2) connect our books, and 3) don't sound interchangeable. When you put together a brand name, you want to create something that becomes as synonymous with your vampire fiction as "Buffy" is with the television series.
Start by making lists of single words that relate to you, your work, the type of story you tell, your voice, and anything else you feel sets you apart from other writers and can be strongly defined. Use an online thesaurus to pull in synonyms, or search old poetry, song lyrics and prose for phrase inspiration. Play with the words you find and see what you can come up with.
IV. Only a Harley is a Harley
Brand Impact
I am not a marketing guru; I only play one here at the blog. But I have (informally) studied marketing for years, and I've watched what works. The right word or phrase can make all the difference. And a strong, creative brand name is like having a personal publicist who never sleeps.
One final thought on how a brand can impact many things, including customer expectations:
The impact of brands can be powerful, signaling positive or negative value to customers and other constituencies. All else being equal, a strong brand enables a company to command a premium price for a product or have higher market share when charging the same price as a competitor. In other words, brands have the power to "shift demand." For example, Harley-Davidson, which is an extremely strong brand in the motorcycle market, can charge up to three times the price of a competitor's product for a motorcycle with essentially the same engineering quality and performance characteristics as imitations. Moreover, Harley customers are willing to wait for months for a motorcycle, simplifying the company's inventory management. Only a Harley is a Harley. -- The Ultimate Intangible: Measuring and Managing Brands as Strategic Assets by Kenneth Roberts and Eric Almquist
Related Links:
Search for acronyms and abbreviations at Abbreviations.com.
BrandChannel.com, "the world's only online exchange about branding."
Creating a Unique Brand Name by Martin Jelsema
Snopes.com debunks the myth behind the three most valuable brand names on Earth.
The Reality of Brands: Toward an Ontology of Marketing by Wolfgang Grassl
Friday, December 16, 2005
Word
Jordan got me thinking about branding the other day, and I started playing with the idea of word association as branding.
Association is used in many psych tests to determine and explore a subject's free or conditioned responses to words, images, concepts, or other mental stimuli. Single word associations often prove to be the most memorable because, well, they're easy to remember. Here in the U.S., when we hear single word brands such as Pepsi and Oreo we all think of soft drinks and cookies because we've been conditioned to associate those words with their respective products. Even when a manufacturer diversifies, we still associate the word with the original product -- which is why a Kleenex usually means facial tissue to most people, just as a Xerox usually means a copy.
Some famous authors' surnames become single-word brands. Say King or Rowling and most readers recognize the author and can often reel off some of their titles. (Rowling is easier because all hers start with Harry Potter and the..., a series form of branding.) Speaking of titles, they can be just as much a brand as the surname, as with Sue Grafton and her alphabet-titled mystery novels, starting with A is for Alibi and currently at S is for Silence.
The trick with branding is to create a unique word or phrase that in time will immediately identify you to readers. If you don't want to wait around for your surname to earn that kind of attention, you generally need to create and reinforce your brand through your career.
StarDoc and PBW are definitely the most successful one-worder brands I've created, with Darkyn coming up fast. All of these brand something I do: SF, the weblog, the dark fantasy. I never found a brand for the GH and JH romance novels, probably because I've had to switch gears three times in romance, and I'm looking at a fourth shift, but I also think a single-word romance brand is harder to nail. There are more romance writers than there are writers in any other genre, I believe, based on the number of titles released each year. That does work against us, as even famous romance author surnames generally aren't known outside the genre unless they go mainstream (say Stephen King and Mary Balogh to romance readers and they know immediately who you're talking about; say the same names to a horror reader and she/he will ask, "Mary who?")
Still, I think one-word branding can be done for any writer. I'm going to pick on Jordan for a minute to demo this: when I think of Jordan Summers, the first words that come to mind are serene, mystical, balanced, searching, curious, calm, oracle, meadow, journey and temple.
I can explain some of them; I often visit Jordan's weblog when I'm annoyed or ticked off because reading her posts always calms me down. How I got meadow and temple is probably influenced by some of the free associations I've made with her personality and work. Add devoted in there, too. Jordan is not all about the writing at her weblog, but it's woven into everything there even when she's not talking about it. She's always looking to improve (something that resonates with me at the foundation level) and she doesn't mind laughing at herself when she messes up. Add in the endless curiosity about the process and the business you don't get much more pure writer than that. (Have no idea where oracle came from, but that's Jordan, too.)
All of those words mean very different things to other people, however, so they don't work as a brand for Jordan. But by rearranging them, making up lists of synonyms, recombining them and so forth I might create a single word to capture Jordan (which I will not be presumptuous and do as I've likely embarrassed the poor woman enough by now.) The same thing can be done for any writer, and any writer's work. You've just got to play with the words.
Practice: if you could describe yourself or your work with one word, what would it be?
Association is used in many psych tests to determine and explore a subject's free or conditioned responses to words, images, concepts, or other mental stimuli. Single word associations often prove to be the most memorable because, well, they're easy to remember. Here in the U.S., when we hear single word brands such as Pepsi and Oreo we all think of soft drinks and cookies because we've been conditioned to associate those words with their respective products. Even when a manufacturer diversifies, we still associate the word with the original product -- which is why a Kleenex usually means facial tissue to most people, just as a Xerox usually means a copy.
Some famous authors' surnames become single-word brands. Say King or Rowling and most readers recognize the author and can often reel off some of their titles. (Rowling is easier because all hers start with Harry Potter and the..., a series form of branding.) Speaking of titles, they can be just as much a brand as the surname, as with Sue Grafton and her alphabet-titled mystery novels, starting with A is for Alibi and currently at S is for Silence.
The trick with branding is to create a unique word or phrase that in time will immediately identify you to readers. If you don't want to wait around for your surname to earn that kind of attention, you generally need to create and reinforce your brand through your career.
StarDoc and PBW are definitely the most successful one-worder brands I've created, with Darkyn coming up fast. All of these brand something I do: SF, the weblog, the dark fantasy. I never found a brand for the GH and JH romance novels, probably because I've had to switch gears three times in romance, and I'm looking at a fourth shift, but I also think a single-word romance brand is harder to nail. There are more romance writers than there are writers in any other genre, I believe, based on the number of titles released each year. That does work against us, as even famous romance author surnames generally aren't known outside the genre unless they go mainstream (say Stephen King and Mary Balogh to romance readers and they know immediately who you're talking about; say the same names to a horror reader and she/he will ask, "Mary who?")
Still, I think one-word branding can be done for any writer. I'm going to pick on Jordan for a minute to demo this: when I think of Jordan Summers, the first words that come to mind are serene, mystical, balanced, searching, curious, calm, oracle, meadow, journey and temple.
I can explain some of them; I often visit Jordan's weblog when I'm annoyed or ticked off because reading her posts always calms me down. How I got meadow and temple is probably influenced by some of the free associations I've made with her personality and work. Add devoted in there, too. Jordan is not all about the writing at her weblog, but it's woven into everything there even when she's not talking about it. She's always looking to improve (something that resonates with me at the foundation level) and she doesn't mind laughing at herself when she messes up. Add in the endless curiosity about the process and the business you don't get much more pure writer than that. (Have no idea where oracle came from, but that's Jordan, too.)
All of those words mean very different things to other people, however, so they don't work as a brand for Jordan. But by rearranging them, making up lists of synonyms, recombining them and so forth I might create a single word to capture Jordan (which I will not be presumptuous and do as I've likely embarrassed the poor woman enough by now.) The same thing can be done for any writer, and any writer's work. You've just got to play with the words.
Practice: if you could describe yourself or your work with one word, what would it be?
Sunday, April 24, 2005
More Branding
I'm an advocate of authors branding themselves and their weblogs as well as their novels. Put away the white-hot irons; it doesn't have to be that painful. Making yourself easier for anyone to remember just requires some creative thinking.
Take PBW. Short for Paperback Writer. Now, raise your hands if you know my real name* (uh-uh-uh, no Googling.) I also write under seven other names. Without my bibliography, are you going to remember all of them, how to spell them, and which I use for what genre? Hardly.
PBW, on the other hand, is short, easy to type, and makes an immediate connection to me and the weblog. It's like PW. It's like PB&J. People remember it.
Acronyms aren't the only way to brand yourself. A short, unusual or striking name, nickname, pseudonym or blog name tends to stick better than those which are long, ordinary, or forgettable. Good examples:
1. BestSF -- Mark Watson's SF review site. The name is very simple and says it all in six letters.
2. BookAngst101 -- An anonymous industry pro who goes by the handle Mad Max Perkins and writes about publishing, marketing, and how to handle both.
3. Bookninja -- maintained by the never silent but evidently ever-lethal Peter Darbyshire, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, and George Murray.
4. Fark -- Bet you can guess what F word Drew Curtis was really thinking of when he named his site.
5. Galleycat -- edited by Nathalie Chica, who is also Cup of Chica.
6. His Nibs -- weblog of Norman Haase, owner of His Nibs, online source for unusual fountain pens as well as fine writing instruments and pen supplies.
7. Pullquote -- operated by Cinetrix; there's a double-brander for you.
8. Slashdot -- originated by Rob Malda; now owned by Open Source Technology Group.
9. Snarkywood -- written by some ladies named Martha, Lauren and Amy.
10. Tamboblog -- website of author Tamara Siler Jones, whose signature nickname is Tambo.
Other online resources for branding info:
Julie Andersen's article The Importance of Branding Yourself in a Niche Market.
Tim Bete's article Eight Ways to Promote Your Writing Online talks about online branding.
Tom Brosnahan's article Author as Brand Name.
A Single Southern Guy Across America discusses blog name branding and evolution when he was just A Single Southern Guy in America.
*It's Sheila Lynn Kelly. This week, anyway.
Take PBW. Short for Paperback Writer. Now, raise your hands if you know my real name* (uh-uh-uh, no Googling.) I also write under seven other names. Without my bibliography, are you going to remember all of them, how to spell them, and which I use for what genre? Hardly.
PBW, on the other hand, is short, easy to type, and makes an immediate connection to me and the weblog. It's like PW. It's like PB&J. People remember it.
Acronyms aren't the only way to brand yourself. A short, unusual or striking name, nickname, pseudonym or blog name tends to stick better than those which are long, ordinary, or forgettable. Good examples:
1. BestSF -- Mark Watson's SF review site. The name is very simple and says it all in six letters.
2. BookAngst101 -- An anonymous industry pro who goes by the handle Mad Max Perkins and writes about publishing, marketing, and how to handle both.
3. Bookninja -- maintained by the never silent but evidently ever-lethal Peter Darbyshire, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, and George Murray.
4. Fark -- Bet you can guess what F word Drew Curtis was really thinking of when he named his site.
5. Galleycat -- edited by Nathalie Chica, who is also Cup of Chica.
6. His Nibs -- weblog of Norman Haase, owner of His Nibs, online source for unusual fountain pens as well as fine writing instruments and pen supplies.
7. Pullquote -- operated by Cinetrix; there's a double-brander for you.
8. Slashdot -- originated by Rob Malda; now owned by Open Source Technology Group.
9. Snarkywood -- written by some ladies named Martha, Lauren and Amy.
10. Tamboblog -- website of author Tamara Siler Jones, whose signature nickname is Tambo.
Other online resources for branding info:
Julie Andersen's article The Importance of Branding Yourself in a Niche Market.
Tim Bete's article Eight Ways to Promote Your Writing Online talks about online branding.
Tom Brosnahan's article Author as Brand Name.
A Single Southern Guy Across America discusses blog name branding and evolution when he was just A Single Southern Guy in America.
*It's Sheila Lynn Kelly. This week, anyway.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Lost
I've talked about how giving your novel a title is a form of branding, because once the book is published, you'll forever be known as the author of [insert title]. It's also the primary promo for your novel, especially if it's a catchy or interesting title.
I presently have a novel I need to retitle before I send out the proposal. The original title is good, but circumstances beyond my control have just rendered it unusable. I can think of more titles I wouldn't give it than one that works, which made me think of how many titles I must have sent over the years to the Lost Library.
I created the Lost Library when my 7th grade English teacher threw away the only copy of a short novel I had written and shown to him (and for which I have still not forgiven him, the jerk.) The only way I could console myself was by make-believing that my book had been whisked off by magic means to a mysterious place where all lost writing goes. Silly, yeah, but I was thirteen and traumatized. I think I also still believed in Santa Claus.
The Lost Library has taken plenty more of donations from me over the years. Writing I misplaced, writing I threw out, tore up, burned, rewrote, lined through and on one memorable occasion, balled up and threw into the ocean. The last one seems very romantic, but I should mention that if you're doing this from the shore it does float back almost right away. Do it from a boat.
Who would work at the Lost Library? A nice lady librarian, of course. The one whose name you could never remember when you were a kid. She'd sit at the front counter while she uses white-out to erase all the catalog cards for new arrivals.
Whole book manuscripts would be shelved, short stories stuck in magazine racks, and in between all those sets of encyclopedias that computer CDs made obsolete, crumpled-up note pad pages being flattened out like flowers you press between the pages of a Bible. Title ideas maybe printed on ribbons and wound up in balls and left on the floor for the lady librarian's cat to play with. She'd have to have a great cat.
There would have to be a special bin for lost shopping lists, Christmas lists, and to-do lists. Poems would hang from mobiles; paper castles in the air. Somewhere in the back corner shelves of the nonfiction section, shoe boxes filled with the love letters that I never mailed and the journals that I've destroyed. Computers to store all the e-mails I've deleted. A few folders of sad song lyrics (I could never come up with a happy one.) Posters printed with the names I chose not to give my children.
I can do this all night, you know.
You can't check out anything from the Lost Library, but on rare occasions the nice lady librarian whose name we will never remember sends them back. Today while I was digging through a business file I found the only copy of a longish short story I wrote seventeen years ago. Maybe the Lost librarian sent it back because her magazine rack got too crowded, or it was something worth finding again.
I presently have a novel I need to retitle before I send out the proposal. The original title is good, but circumstances beyond my control have just rendered it unusable. I can think of more titles I wouldn't give it than one that works, which made me think of how many titles I must have sent over the years to the Lost Library.
I created the Lost Library when my 7th grade English teacher threw away the only copy of a short novel I had written and shown to him (and for which I have still not forgiven him, the jerk.) The only way I could console myself was by make-believing that my book had been whisked off by magic means to a mysterious place where all lost writing goes. Silly, yeah, but I was thirteen and traumatized. I think I also still believed in Santa Claus.
The Lost Library has taken plenty more of donations from me over the years. Writing I misplaced, writing I threw out, tore up, burned, rewrote, lined through and on one memorable occasion, balled up and threw into the ocean. The last one seems very romantic, but I should mention that if you're doing this from the shore it does float back almost right away. Do it from a boat.
Who would work at the Lost Library? A nice lady librarian, of course. The one whose name you could never remember when you were a kid. She'd sit at the front counter while she uses white-out to erase all the catalog cards for new arrivals.
Whole book manuscripts would be shelved, short stories stuck in magazine racks, and in between all those sets of encyclopedias that computer CDs made obsolete, crumpled-up note pad pages being flattened out like flowers you press between the pages of a Bible. Title ideas maybe printed on ribbons and wound up in balls and left on the floor for the lady librarian's cat to play with. She'd have to have a great cat.
There would have to be a special bin for lost shopping lists, Christmas lists, and to-do lists. Poems would hang from mobiles; paper castles in the air. Somewhere in the back corner shelves of the nonfiction section, shoe boxes filled with the love letters that I never mailed and the journals that I've destroyed. Computers to store all the e-mails I've deleted. A few folders of sad song lyrics (I could never come up with a happy one.) Posters printed with the names I chose not to give my children.
I can do this all night, you know.
You can't check out anything from the Lost Library, but on rare occasions the nice lady librarian whose name we will never remember sends them back. Today while I was digging through a business file I found the only copy of a longish short story I wrote seventeen years ago. Maybe the Lost librarian sent it back because her magazine rack got too crowded, or it was something worth finding again.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Branding
In business, when you want to sell a concept, you need a word or phrase to communicate your idea to potential buyers. Often you can cook up this brand name by raiding the description of your product, as Microsoft did (microcomputer software.)
Writers do basically the same thing when they create novel and series titles. We try to hit the perfect word or words that will capture the browsing reader's attention. Personally I prefer one-word titles like StarDoc and concepts like Darkyn, but I also like hitting the poetry books and listening to music to get ideas. If Angels Burn came from a rather terrifying poem by Pushkin. My JH novel Into the Fire was originally titled Dance Into the Fire, a line from the theme song of View to a Kill.
Darkyn is a splice of two words, dark and kyn, the latter being a medieval spelling of kin. Unlike StarDoc, which hit me out of the blue while I was taking a shower, I spent an entire week scribbling on a pad and trying different combinations of words before I hit on Darkyn as the brand for the series.
Coming up with a new, memorable catch phrase for a title or series concept is simply a matter of playing with words. Keeping it simple is really the trick. Writers love to be wordy, which is why many have titles that read like bad bumper stickers. If you want your concept to jump out at people, don't load it up with a lot of artistic baggage. Make a list of single words that fit your novel's time period, setting, protagonist, theme, conflict and plot, i.e.:
Dark Ages
garden district
New Orleans
loner
reconstructive
angry
abandoned
redemption
sacrifice
savior
possession
Once you have your basic list, take each word and play word association. You don't have to keep making lists, if you're not a list person, but do try combining and recombining different words. If you're stuck for words, head over to a site like Vocabulary Helper. My personal favorite is the Visual Thesaurus, because it presents the information the way writers and other creative people tend to think.
Remember to have fun with it, too. Make a game of it with friends. Approaching it with a sense of humor will relax you and often turn up ideas you might otherwise have been too uptight to recognize.
Writers do basically the same thing when they create novel and series titles. We try to hit the perfect word or words that will capture the browsing reader's attention. Personally I prefer one-word titles like StarDoc and concepts like Darkyn, but I also like hitting the poetry books and listening to music to get ideas. If Angels Burn came from a rather terrifying poem by Pushkin. My JH novel Into the Fire was originally titled Dance Into the Fire, a line from the theme song of View to a Kill.
Darkyn is a splice of two words, dark and kyn, the latter being a medieval spelling of kin. Unlike StarDoc, which hit me out of the blue while I was taking a shower, I spent an entire week scribbling on a pad and trying different combinations of words before I hit on Darkyn as the brand for the series.
Coming up with a new, memorable catch phrase for a title or series concept is simply a matter of playing with words. Keeping it simple is really the trick. Writers love to be wordy, which is why many have titles that read like bad bumper stickers. If you want your concept to jump out at people, don't load it up with a lot of artistic baggage. Make a list of single words that fit your novel's time period, setting, protagonist, theme, conflict and plot, i.e.:
Dark Ages
garden district
New Orleans
loner
reconstructive
angry
abandoned
redemption
sacrifice
savior
possession
Once you have your basic list, take each word and play word association. You don't have to keep making lists, if you're not a list person, but do try combining and recombining different words. If you're stuck for words, head over to a site like Vocabulary Helper. My personal favorite is the Visual Thesaurus, because it presents the information the way writers and other creative people tend to think.
Remember to have fun with it, too. Make a game of it with friends. Approaching it with a sense of humor will relax you and often turn up ideas you might otherwise have been too uptight to recognize.
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