Hard at Work
I subscribe to a daily blog called, TheHiredGuns that features advice, contract jobs, employment opportunities, coaching and training in Manhattan. Daryl Lang contributes gems of wisdom in his blog – in much the same style as Seth Godin – only different.
Yesterday morning’s post by Daryl caught my attention in that is discusses the necessity of having a well designed and a well-thought-out branding statement that he calls The Haiku Resume. It suggests that having a great personal tag line can enhance your brand, perhaps even better than your resume.
This is not easy to do – it’s very hard to capture your essence in 5 to 7 words. A few companies have done this, and it’s very effective:
- “The Ultimate Driving Machine” – BMW
- “Good to the last Drop” – Maxwell House Coffee
- “A Thousand Songs in your Pocket” – Apple iPod
Daryl found one dentist’s tag line that he thought was effective:
- “Because a Smile Goes a Long Way”
According to Daryl, a tag line requires a lot of hard work in articulating the essence of your brand. It is experience based.
I also subscribe to Seth Godin’s daily blog. In this mornings post, Seth explores “Long Work vs. Hard Work.”
Seth says Long Work requires stamina, fortitude and a lot of time, while Hard Work is the product of thought, experience and emotional connection along with a heightened risk of failure.
According to Seth:
“…long work often sets the stage for hard work. If you show up enough and practice enough and learn enough, it’s more likely you will find yourself in a position to do hard work.”
Seth goes on to say that Hard Work is also experience-based allowing quicker and more successful results at the expense of greater risks.
I was fascinated by the parallels of these two posts. Perhaps you will be too.
I found these two separate blog posts both similar and interesting in that each of them suggest that in order to be successful it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. It does take a long time to get to the point of expertise where one’s experience allows them to create a memorable tag line or to do the hard work in a short period of time.
Here is what I took away from these articles :
- Great and memorable tag lines must be both descriptive and concise as they communicate the essence of the brand.
- While success is not always the result of long work, hard work is not possible without it. Its called experience.
You can read the original post by Daryl here, and the original post by Seth here.
What is your personal tag line and are you working long or hard?
References:
The Hired Guns: http://www.thehiredguns.com/
Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/hard-work-vs-long-work.html
Photo Credit: Hard at Work by Samantha Decker on flickr
Other Booyango blogs that you may be interested in:
- Your Value Prop – its more like an Oreo than you know
- How to Prepare a 30 second Elevator Speech
- Resume Search Optimization
Tags:
Benefit, Best, Creative, Daryl Lang, Hard work, Opportunity, Resume, Seth Godin, Tag line, Think, Work
