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Branding and the 3-word Theme

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I was checking out David Zinger’s twitter page and noticed his 2009 3-word theme.  They are “Authentic, Connections, Engage.”  A part of me wants a 5 page manifesto on his choice of these words and why they are important to him this year.  (he probably wrote a blog post on this, but I missed it).

I got to thinking about the very topic that he is an expert on, employee engagement and all its relationships with deploying brand to the employee audience.  I’ve done many branding exercises but perhaps this is the right way to address it.  Certainly when trying to brand and engage, we think about our mission, values, elevator pitches, etc… but when it can be boiled down to just 3 words, how much more powerful is that?  With Zinger’s 3 words, I was actually intrigued enough that I have sat around thinking about what those words mean to him, and to me, perhaps engaging the creative and curious part of my own brain even more towards his message than a 5 page manifesto would have.

I don’t know that this is a tool for all, and in reality it might just be a personal tool to help Keep Zinger sharp and focused.  For the masses, the impact is a broad range from brilliant to confusing depending on where you lie in the spectrum of already knowing David and what he does.  I’m sure this is not the only thing he deployed to reflect his 2009 goals, but at the heart of it, I think it’s quite well executed.  I don’t think this was the starting point, I think this was boiled down from an analysis of his key goals for 2009, in what was probably an excruciatingly time intensive process.  Once you understand your core values, then you can go ahead with the details of the media plan and how you’re going to execute.

If I remember, I’ll ask him to post a reply to today and get some of his thinking.

Thanks David!!

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2 responses to “Branding and the 3-word Theme”

  1. […] Words Follow-up to yesterday’s post written by David […]

  2. David Zinger Avatar

    I am so glad you posted this as I lost site of what my 3 word theme was for 2009. For 2010 it was engage-mobilize-produce. I just realized that for 2011 my 3 word theme is engage-educate-enliven. I will be focusing more of my work on education both online and offline in 2011 and look for some efficient and happy convergences of these two paths.
    David