Comments on: Unique Positioning in One Sentence

By: Jennifer Jarratt

Jennifer Jarratt — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:58:33 +0000

What struck me about this post (thanks, David) is that it isn’t _ever_ about you! It’s always about the people you serve, your customers and _their_ experience with you!

By: Deborah S. Bosley

Deborah S. Bosley — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:55:08 +0000

This 4-H story illustrates a problem that occurs all too frequently: creating information for an audience without talking with the audience. In my field, we argue for two approaches: First, talk with members of the intended audience about your message, information, etc., and second, test the resulting document (usability) with members of the intended audience. Some of my clients recognize the value of each; others do not. That said, David’s story shows us that the best marketing plan or, for that matter, any ‘message’ begins with input from the intended audience.

By: Praveen

Praveen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:36:03 +0000

great writeup David, to Sidetrack a bit regarding a typical Dinner Party situation like the one mentioned by steve above , I am definitely Uncomfortable with using my Job description to convey “Who I AM” as a person, yes I have been doing that over the years , How do I connect what I actually do to Who I really am . I prefer to say “I backpack in the Lijiang province of China” or take junior youth classes to “consult on Middleware Platforms for an Investment banking company” . May be a blog post on “Personal Mission statements” would be enlightening.

By: Barney

Barney — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:20:34 +0000

This is really helpful. I’m getting a human rights training business going with a colleague and we definitely need the dinner party answer to the question ‘What’s your business about?’ Actually that will also help define what the business’s blog is about.

The older I get, the shorter I want people’s explanations to be. I have to sit through too many meetings in government offices where officials seem to take pleasure in long PowerPoint presentations (never Apple’s Keynote, which would improve things).

By: DH

DH — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:30:42 +0000

Steve,

You’ve got it – you are right on the money with that approach. It’s also NOT an elevator speech because those are too long in today’s world.

Thanks for commenting,

David

By: Steve Downes

Steve Downes — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:28:04 +0000

David, In my organisation we call it the ‘dinner party answer’. You know the situation, you’re at a dinner party with friends and strangers and the person next to you says “So what do you do?”. You neither want to bore them to tears, but you do want them to ‘get’ what you do. So we set ourself the challenge of answeing that question. In our case it’s “We make people and organisations digitally famous” (try putting ‘digitally famous’ that in Google by the way).

We use the approach for all our clients.