Marketerms™ and Fake Trademarks
Create your own words. Own your ideas. Stand out and be memorable.
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One of my favorite strategies for differentiating yourself and Earning Attention is to name your ideas. Give your ideas unique, made-up names and use them regularly in your content, marketing, and sales materials. I call these customized, invented names Marketerms™. ( See what I just did there? :-) ) For bonus points, CAPITALIZE or Bold your Marketerms™ whenever you use them. For extra bonus points, add a fake trademark symbol every time you use it.
Department of Differentiation’s Marketerms™
When we recently launched the Department of Differentiation, we did our best to differentiate our differentiation company. Part of it was the unusual logo, the old-timey photocopied paper background, and red stamps. And part of it was the introduction of some new Marketerms™. We named our service offering Competitive Differentiation Strategy™ or CDS™ for short. Instead of calling ourselves Strategists or Consultants, which is pretty generic and boring, we made up a new type of postiion: DifferentiAgent™. We made up names for the different phases of our strategy work. Instead of a research phase, we have a Reconaissance Mission™ and an Internal investigation™.
Is this all a bit dumb? Yes. Yes, it is.
Will you remember it more than you would remember a more standard announcement of a strategic consulting partnership? We certainly hope so.
Does it give you a sense of who we are and whether we might be fun to work with? We certainly hope so.
Even though this is my first time writing about Marketerms™, I have used them for a long time.
Pacific Content’s Marketerms™
Several years ago, in a whiteboarding session with the four co-founders of Pacific Content, we were trying to come up with an easy way to demonstrate a recipe for successful podcasts from brands. We talked about the need to make a real show instead of an infomercial, we talked about not having CEOs as hosts of shows, not having clients be the primary guests on shows, and we talked about the willingness to commit budget, time, and resources to produce and market the show.
In a burst of inspiration, our CFO, Rob Leadley, drew a basic XY graph on the whiteboard and put Creative Bravery™ on the bottom axis and Commitment™ on the vertical axis. Instantly, we had a clear, memorable recipe for podcast success… and we also created our first two Marketerms™
Then we tried it out with our client, Slack. We were sitting in a fancy San Francisco restaurant, and we had a big charcuterie board. We told them about what success in podcasting looked like, and then we went to work on the charcuterie board and created the graph on the wood block with knives as the X and Y axis and pieces of meat and cheese representing different levels of Creative Bravery™ and Commitment™. They loved the charcuterie demo and fully bought into both Creative Bravery™ and Commitment™.
We wrote blog posts about Creative Bravery™ and Commitment™, we talked about it in presentations, we talked about it in podcast interviews, we talked about it when we had new business inquiries, and we talked about it a LOT with our clients. The chart even got published in Eriz Nuzum’s terrific podcasting book, Big Noise, with full credit given to Pacific Content. Pacific Content “owns” the term Creative Bravery™ in podcasting and brand storytelling, which greatly helps the brand and positioning.
My Resume: Human Mullet™ and Attention Strategist™
When I left Pacific Content, I wrote a post on Medium announcing that I was starting a new role as a Human Mullet™. I went on to explain that this was part of a larger Mullet Career Strategy™, which meant balancing work and creative projects: Business in the front and Party in the back.Once I started writing about Earning Attention in this Substack last year, I decided to update my LinkedIn profile. I changed my current job to Attention Strategist™ and wondered if anyone would notice and/or think it was fun or interesting. Well, in the next podcast interview I did, the first question was, “On LinkedIn, your title is an Attention Strategist - what is an Attention Strategist?” The unusual title Earned Attention from the podcast host and also put out the news that I am now an Attention Strategist to the podcasting industry.
(Of course, I have updated it again to DifferentiAgent™…)
#MustardMonday
Marketerms™ don’t even have to be external-facing. They can build your internal culture, Earn Attention from your team, and differentiate your employment brand. One Monday, I showed up to work wearing a dijon-coloured sweater I had bought recently. Oddly, another team member, Rehmatullah, was also wearing a yellow sweater that was almost the exact same shade of dijon. We took a selfie together and posted it in Slack with the caption, Happy #MustardMonday!
We had a regular Monday morning meeting for the whole company, and I decided to start wearing the mustard-coloured sweater to the meeting every week and began wishing everyone a happy #MustardMonday. And soon, over half the little boxes of people on Zoom were wearing yellow clothes to the Monday meeting. Eventually, this bizarre ritual was acknowledged off the top of the meeting with just the words “Mustard, mustard.”
When I left Pacific Content, I received souvenirs from the world’s foremost museum of mustard… as well as an assortment of fancy mustards.No other company on the planet has #MustardMonday, partly because it’s really dumb and there is no perceived, obvious value in having #MustardMonday.
But it was a unique part of our culture, and for me personally, it symbolized a lot of what made it special to work at Pacific Content. (As evidenced by my goodbye cake, maybe everyone there is thrilled to no longer have to start the week saying “Mustard, mustard”?)
The Fake Trademark
In case you were wondering, I have not trademarked any of these terms. I just enjoy used the trademark symbol because it’s fun and entertaining. Semi-regularly, people reach out to ask if I have actually trademarked these Marketerms™ - it is a great conversation starter!
Just using the ™ symbol earns attention because it’s WEIRD that someone would try to trademark a term like Competitive Differentiation Strategy™ or… Marketerms™.
Why Marketerms™ Work
I am fully willing to acknowledge how dumb some of these terms are, with Marketerms™ being the worst of all of them all. However, I have a hunch that my explanation of Marketerms™ would have been a lot more boring if I described it as “proprietary corporate brand terminology.” I believe our new business would sound more boring if we offered “a strategic proccess for business evaluation and positioning” instead of Competitive Differentiation Strategy™.
I’m obviously not the first person to suggest this… although I am the first to coin it as Marketerms™! Think about how many people reference Ann Lamotte’s “Shitty First Draft” when talking about writing. Or how many creatives talk about Steven Pressfield’s “Resistance.” Or how many business leaders refer to Jim Collins’ Flywheel or Hedgehog concepts. The examples could go on and on and on.
The point is that when you create a name for an idea that is central to why you exist, who you are serving, what you do, or how you do it, it becomes linked to you in the minds of those who discover it.
Even though it’s something EVERY writer deals with, who owns the idea of the Shitty First Draft because she named it? Ann Lamotte.
Even though the voice in your head telling you no one will like your creative work is universal, who owns the mindshare of this experience because he named it “Resistance?” Steven Pressfield.
Marketerm™ Criteria
The key to success with an original term:
It has to be accurate. Shitty First Draft, Resistance, and the Flywheel all ring true.
It has to be unusual and surprising. If you want people to remember it, there has to be something unexpected, weird, or unusual about it. That’s what makes it yours, and that’s what makes it memorable.
You have to use it and own it. It has to become part of your vocabulary. You have to use it like you would use any other word or phrase and treat this unusual term like it’s normal.
The value of owning a concept cannot be overstated. Effective Marketerms™ create a vocabulary that your brand can use and own, and that others - often your clients and sometimes even your competitors - will begin to use as normal words. Every time someone asks us about Competitive Differentiation Strategy™, it increases the value and effectiveness of our new Marketerm™.
Unique language stands out. It’s memorable. It Earns Attention.
Your Marketerms™ Assignment
What are the unique ideas, strategies, processes, or tactics that your company uses? Are there things you believe and stand for that separate you from your competition?
Here’s your challenge: try to come up with a unique name for it. (You don’t have to do the stupid fake trademark thing, don’t worry). Make it a name that fits your company voice, values, and culture. And something that will resonate with your audience and that they will remember.
Do a brainstorming exercise with members of your team and come up with as many ideas for Marketerms™ as you can for things your company does well or uniquely. You’ll know when you find some good ones. Try it out in your sales decks, blog posts, or social channels.
Own that Marketerm™!
What’s Earned My Attention Recently
Inside Oatly’s Marketing
I LOVE Oatly’s marketing bravery. Thanks to Dominic Girard for sending this article from their now-former Creative Director, Kevin Lynch, about how they Earn Attention.
Brands In Audio
Kudos to the joint effort between Sounds Profitable and Lower Street to assemble a new home for all the podcasts being produced by brands. It’s great to see participation from the entire industry to showcase the unique power of podcasts for progressive marketers.
Cracking the Code for Profitable Narrative Podcasts
A great article featuring the smart folks at Canadaland, who have created a business model that solves one of podcasting’s biggest challenges - how do you make a profitable narrative series?
If you’re seeking to create a differentiation strategy for your business and your marketing, please fill out a Clearance Request at The Department of Differentiation.
Love everything about this, especially #MustardMondays. People often think being memorable = being overly serious or idolized, but often it's the opposite emotions of playfulness and relatability that stick with us the most. Also, need to work on growing out my own Mullet Career Strategy™ 💇♀️