JOURNEYS TO BAGDAD: But the goer afoot must not be conceived as primarily an engine of muscle. He is the best walker who keeps most widely awake in his five senses. Some men might as well walk through a railway tunnel. They are so concerned with the getting there that a black night hangs over them. They plunge forward with their heads down as though they came of an antique race of road builders. Should there be mileposts they are busied with them only, and they will draw dials from their pokes to time themselves. I fell into this iniquity on a walk in Wales from Bala to Dolgelley. Although I set out leisurely enough, with an eye for the lake and hills, before many hours 14had elapsed I had acquired the milepost habit and walked as if for a wager. I covered the last twenty miles in less than five hours, and when the brown stone village came in sight and I had thumped down the last hill and over the peaked bridge, I was a dilapidated and foot-sore vagrant and nothing more. To this day Wales for me is the land where one�s feet have the ugly habit of foregathering in the end of the shoes.
Of every 100 people who are hospitalized for a stroke, 15-40 will return home someday, but they will require home care services for rehabilitation. Stroke rehabilitation is one of the key components of stroke care. The goal of rehabilitation is to assist stroke survivors to reach his or her optimal level of physical, social, and emotional function.
Is it possible to bring dead limbs back to life by having someone move them around? You betchum, and the good news is a full and complete recovery can happen at any time, just as suddenly as when you lost everything.
Jack and Jill was written for the youth of our time, but if you have EVER enjoyed any of the books written by Louisa May Alcott you are bound to fall in love with this one too. Click the book cover to download the complete, page-turning book. Or, Click HERE to read it on the web.
An Enemy To The King
A Derring Do Romance from France.
The Softer Side of Sizzles
How to Make Your Name Memorable By Michel Fortin
Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.
We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people?s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.
Names are often the best tools ? and sometimes the only ones ? for accomplishing this efficiently.
In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process ? elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.
So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.
What Does it Do?
To make a company or product name truly memorable, it should convey its main feature or benefit. It should be suggestive. Even if it?s unique, it should, in some way, communicate what it is or does in one fell swoop.
If I give you the word ?Die Hard? for instance, you will think of a battery that dies hard. If I tell you ?Jiffy Lube,? you will naturally assume that it?s a garage offering oil changes in a jiffy. If I tell you ?Band-Aid,? you will picture an adhesive bandage that comes to your aid. If I said ?Minute Rice,? you will assume it?s rice that cooks in minutes.
Suggestive names don?t have to be genetic, either. You can easily create a unique name, which somehow communicates its core benefit, its purpose, or at least its nature.
Think of names like ?Kleenex? (cleanliness), ?Windex,? (windows), ?Duracell? (durable battery cell), ?Nicoderm? (nicotine skin patches), ?Cusinart? (kitchen accessories), ?Pine-Sol? (pine solvent or cleaner), ?Travelocity? (travel), etc.
Names that do not convey at least the basic nature of a company will be easily forgotten. This includes hard-to-pronounce words, abbreviations, and acronyms such as ?MGF Holdings LLC.?
It also includes self-titled companies such as ?Michel Fortin International? (which was, believe it or not, the name of my original company close to 20 years ago ? one that nonetheless failed ? and later changed to The Success Doctor, Inc.).
Benefits are particularly effective because such a name would make a company or product instantly appear as if it had some added value. When placed alongside a competitor offering an identical product, a benefit-based name positions itself above the competition in the mind.
As a result, the name will thus be quickly remembered when people make their decision to buy.
Rhymes Move Minds Since the invention of the printing press, the written word has made it easy for us to forget names. Consequently, the process of rhyming has in the same way gradually fallen out of favor.
But strangely, what we remember the most are, for example, the nursery rhymes that we were told as children. In today?s memory management courses, people are told to use rhymes and word association in order to improve their memory.
Rhyming is therefore effective because it is pleasing to the ear and helps to hook words easily in the mind. Beyond ease-of-recall, rhyming also tends to add credibility.
Psychology professor Dr. Matthew McGlone, in his article ?The Keats Heuristic: Rhyme as Reason in Aphorism Interpretation,? has found that rhymes not only make a phrase more memorable, they also make it more believable. According to his research, people preferred ?woes unite foes? over ?misfortune unite foes? or ?woes unite enemies.?
We are a beauty-driven culture, and words are not excluded. The esthetically pleasing sound of a rhyme makes it cognitively easier to assign greater perceived value, accuracy, and believability. In other words, rhymes confer a greater sense of credibility.
As Dr. McGlone points out, ?People often attribute the aesthetic quality of a rhyme to the statement?s validity, which suggests that people may unknowingly equate beauty (a rhyme?s singsong quality) with truth.?
(According to his research, while it may not be the only reason, a major factor that played in O.J. Simpson?s acquittal during his murder trial was certainly Johnny Cochrane?s incessant claim, ?If the glove don?t fit, you must acquit!?)
While some names can easily rhyme since they use multiple words (e.g., ?Blinds of All Kinds,? ?Lean Cuisine,? ?Reese?s Pieces,? or ?Ronald McDonald?), most names are made up of only one word.
If they can not rhyme at least within themselves (e.g., ?Rodeo,? ?YouTube,? or ?Coca-Cola?), then the job would be conferred unto their taglines ? those small sentences that follow and complement names.
For example, if I said ?It takes a licking but keeps on ticking,? you will probably remember this phrase if not instantly recognize the product with which this tagline is associated. And if the tagline rhymes with the name (such as ?Uh, Oh! Better get Maaco!? or ?When you need an edge, use Pledge?), the name will stick even more effectively as a result.
(For instance, a more recent example is Windows® Vista?s ?The Wow Starts Now.?)
Repetition Resonates
What do ?Saran-Wrap,? ?Coca-Cola,? ?Krispy Kreme,? ?Chucky Cheese,? ?Willy Wonka,? ?Barbie,? ?Google,? ?Hamburger Helper,? ?Crispy Crunch,? ?Blockbuster,? and ?Pipeline Profits? all have in common?
Rhymes are not limited to vowels (often called ?foot rhymes?). Sometimes, head rhymes (or ?alliteration?) can create the same effect as the other. Why? It is because they all do the same thing. It contains repetition.
The repetition of consonants give a name that pleasant and obviously effective singsong quality. Repetition makes a name memorable by making the pronunciation more simple. In other words, it is definitely easier to remember a string of similar sounds than it is to remember a combination of totally different sounding words.
(Did you ?see the softer side of Sear?s? lately?)
In fact, consonants are great for many other reasons. Studies show that strong-sounding or ?choppy? consonants (like the sound of ?P,? ?D,? ?T? and ?K?), used particularly at the beginning, help recall by adding emphasis.
They are called plosives. And according to naming guru Steve Rivkin, who co-wrote ?The New Positioning? with Jack Trout, ?It makes linguistic sense to start a brand name with a strong-sounding consonant or plosive.?
Plosives, and rhymes and alliteration specifically, help to make a name more memorable. These are called mnemonics. Mnemonics are not only useful but also effective, particularly in the branding process.
Bottom line, from the simplest product to the most abstract or complex technical service, a memorable name helps to make the company or product memorable as well. In fact, it may even become genericized and used as the term that defines all others in its category.
(By the way, can you Xerox that document and FedEx it, please? If you don?t know how, just Google it.)
--- About the Author ---Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog at http://www.michelfortin.com/ and subscribe to his RSS feed.
Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.
We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people?s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.
Names are often the best tools ? and sometimes the only ones ? for accomplishing this efficiently.
In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process ? elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.
So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.
What Does it Do?
To make a company or product name truly memorable, it should convey its main feature or benefit. It should be suggestive. Even if it?s unique, it should, in some way, communicate what it is or does in one fell swoop.
If I give you the word ?Die Hard? for instance, you will think of a battery that dies hard. If I tell you ?Jiffy Lube,? you will naturally assume that it?s a garage offering oil changes in a jiffy. If I tell you ?Band-Aid,? you will picture an adhesive bandage that comes to your aid. If I said ?Minute Rice,? you will assume it?s rice that cooks in minutes.
Suggestive names don?t have to be genetic, either. You can easily create a unique name, which somehow communicates its core benefit, its purpose, or at least its nature.
Think of names like ?Kleenex? (cleanliness), ?Windex,? (windows), ?Duracell? (durable battery cell), ?Nicoderm? (nicotine skin patches), ?Cusinart? (kitchen accessories), ?Pine-Sol? (pine solvent or cleaner), ?Travelocity? (travel), etc.
Names that do not convey at least the basic nature of a company will be easily forgotten. This includes hard-to-pronounce words, abbreviations, and acronyms such as ?MGF Holdings LLC.?
It also includes self-titled companies such as ?Michel Fortin International? (which was, believe it or not, the name of my original company close to 20 years ago ? one that nonetheless failed ? and later changed to The Success Doctor, Inc.).
Benefits are particularly effective because such a name would make a company or product instantly appear as if it had some added value. When placed alongside a competitor offering an identical product, a benefit-based name positions itself above the competition in the mind.
As a result, the name will thus be quickly remembered when people make their decision to buy.
Rhymes Move Minds Since the invention of the printing press, the written word has made it easy for us to forget names. Consequently, the process of rhyming has in the same way gradually fallen out of favor.
But strangely, what we remember the most are, for example, the nursery rhymes that we were told as children. In today?s memory management courses, people are told to use rhymes and word association in order to improve their memory.
Rhyming is therefore effective because it is pleasing to the ear and helps to hook words easily in the mind. Beyond ease-of-recall, rhyming also tends to add credibility.
Psychology professor Dr. Matthew McGlone, in his article ?The Keats Heuristic: Rhyme as Reason in Aphorism Interpretation,? has found that rhymes not only make a phrase more memorable, they also make it more believable. According to his research, people preferred ?woes unite foes? over ?misfortune unite foes? or ?woes unite enemies.?
We are a beauty-driven culture, and words are not excluded. The esthetically pleasing sound of a rhyme makes it cognitively easier to assign greater perceived value, accuracy, and believability. In other words, rhymes confer a greater sense of credibility.
As Dr. McGlone points out, ?People often attribute the aesthetic quality of a rhyme to the statement?s validity, which suggests that people may unknowingly equate beauty (a rhyme?s singsong quality) with truth.?
(According to his research, while it may not be the only reason, a major factor that played in O.J. Simpson?s acquittal during his murder trial was certainly Johnny Cochrane?s incessant claim, ?If the glove don?t fit, you must acquit!?)
While some names can easily rhyme since they use multiple words (e.g., ?Blinds of All Kinds,? ?Lean Cuisine,? ?Reese?s Pieces,? or ?Ronald McDonald?), most names are made up of only one word.
If they can not rhyme at least within themselves (e.g., ?Rodeo,? ?YouTube,? or ?Coca-Cola?), then the job would be conferred unto their taglines ? those small sentences that follow and complement names.
For example, if I said ?It takes a licking but keeps on ticking,? you will probably remember this phrase if not instantly recognize the product with which this tagline is associated. And if the tagline rhymes with the name (such as ?Uh, Oh! Better get Maaco!? or ?When you need an edge, use Pledge?), the name will stick even more effectively as a result.
(For instance, a more recent example is Windows® Vista?s ?The Wow Starts Now.?)
Repetition Resonates
What do ?Saran-Wrap,? ?Coca-Cola,? ?Krispy Kreme,? ?Chucky Cheese,? ?Willy Wonka,? ?Barbie,? ?Google,? ?Hamburger Helper,? ?Crispy Crunch,? ?Blockbuster,? and ?Pipeline Profits? all have in common?
Rhymes are not limited to vowels (often called ?foot rhymes?). Sometimes, head rhymes (or ?alliteration?) can create the same effect as the other. Why? It is because they all do the same thing. It contains repetition.
The repetition of consonants give a name that pleasant and obviously effective singsong quality. Repetition makes a name memorable by making the pronunciation more simple. In other words, it is definitely easier to remember a string of similar sounds than it is to remember a combination of totally different sounding words.
(Did you ?see the softer side of Sear?s? lately?)
In fact, consonants are great for many other reasons. Studies show that strong-sounding or ?choppy? consonants (like the sound of ?P,? ?D,? ?T? and ?K?), used particularly at the beginning, help recall by adding emphasis.
They are called plosives. And according to naming guru Steve Rivkin, who co-wrote ?The New Positioning? with Jack Trout, ?It makes linguistic sense to start a brand name with a strong-sounding consonant or plosive.?
Plosives, and rhymes and alliteration specifically, help to make a name more memorable. These are called mnemonics. Mnemonics are not only useful but also effective, particularly in the branding process.
Bottom line, from the simplest product to the most abstract or complex technical service, a memorable name helps to make the company or product memorable as well. In fact, it may even become genericized and used as the term that defines all others in its category.
(By the way, can you Xerox that document and FedEx it, please? If you don?t know how, just Google it.)
--- About the Author ---Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog at http://www.michelfortin.com/ and subscribe to his RSS feed.
Self Defense is Defensible
We haven’t had any more prowler alarms. I went home and combed the woods. Found a few items that appeared to be a little weathered. So, I left them there. And now focus my attention on the spots where I found the foot prints, etc. Pepper hasn’t barked or chased anything other than the deer and the cats in the last couple nights, so I’m going to say we’re ok for now. And as I feared, the kids used some of the self-defense stuff on each other.
Jessie and Jonathan got into a knockdown, drag-out this morning. Jessie won. And Jessie was justified in her reasoning too. Our newfound burglar alarm (Drake, the dog) was outside this morning to use the bathroom. He barks at the door when he’s done and wants back in. Jonathan became annoyed that he was barking and decided to hit the dog (rather than just let him in) to make him shutup.
Jessie witnessed it and went to just beating the hell out of him. The whole time screaming, you don’t hit my dog!!!!!! So, I had to pull them off of each other. Jonathan was getting his licks in when he could, but they were few and far between. I asked what had happened and Jon went on about how he was right for hitting the dog because his barking was annoying him. So, I asked him if I could just knock the crap out of HIM everytime he opened his mouth and it was annoying to me? He said, no that’s different. And I said, NO, THAT’S FAIR.
And then I yelled at him for hitting Jessie, because he is supposed to be a man, and real men don’t hit women. And he told me that she hit him first. And I told him that he needed to learn how to remove himself from the situation without using force if at all possible, and that a real man would exercise restraint because his opposition was female and predominantly weaker. He got mad, because of course, Jessie had just kicked his butt good -- and not the other way around.
Then I had a talk with Jessie and told her that she’d better be careful when fighting, especially with someone of the opposite sex. Because, even if it’s not right for a man to hit a woman, it’s not right for a woman to hit a man either unless it is in self-defense. And that the next time she walks up and hits a man like she IS a man, that she always need be prepared to get hit back like she was a man. Because most of them, WON’T exercise restraint just because she’s a girl. And that she couldn’t rely on the fact that she is a female to get special treatment.
That’s not right and it doesn’t always work.
But, oh she was so upset about him hitting that dog. And I don’t blame her. He had no right to and no reason to. The dog was doing as he’s been trained to do: bark when he’s ready to come back in. All Jon had to do was open the door and let him in. So, anyway…it was just a big mess this morning. I pulled them both together and told them that if I EVER caught them fighting with each other that way again, that they’d both see just how tough they really were because they’d have to deal with me. It was a big long lecture.
On another subject. I went to see Bo off yesterday afternoon. It was a tearful event. He introduced me to all the people in his flight. He was a nervous wreck, and really second guessing himself on whether or not he should go or run like crazy. And the closer it came to time for him to leave me, the more I questioned if it was right of me to let him go.
He is my oldest son, and it hurt me terribly to watch him go. He’s not old enough to go. He’s not mature enough to make the decision to go. This poor kid is only 21 years old. And he’s still MY baby that I carried around on my hip until he was bigger than I was.
He hugged me and told me he loved me and told me thank you for everything I’ve done for him. And that he was proud to call me his mom, and that he’d be home for Christmas. He said he’d call me within the next two days to give me the address of where I could write to him. And asked me to please write. And as I watched him walk through all the levels of security at the air port, my heart just crawled up my throat and broke into a million pieces every time he turned to make sure I was still there.
He’d give a brave little smile and wave and nervously turn back around to walk a little further. It took every ounce of courage I had to watch him walk away and not break through all the security gates and bring him back home with me. That was by far, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I hope he calls soon.
Jessie and Jonathan got into a knockdown, drag-out this morning. Jessie won. And Jessie was justified in her reasoning too. Our newfound burglar alarm (Drake, the dog) was outside this morning to use the bathroom. He barks at the door when he’s done and wants back in. Jonathan became annoyed that he was barking and decided to hit the dog (rather than just let him in) to make him shutup.
Jessie witnessed it and went to just beating the hell out of him. The whole time screaming, you don’t hit my dog!!!!!! So, I had to pull them off of each other. Jonathan was getting his licks in when he could, but they were few and far between. I asked what had happened and Jon went on about how he was right for hitting the dog because his barking was annoying him. So, I asked him if I could just knock the crap out of HIM everytime he opened his mouth and it was annoying to me? He said, no that’s different. And I said, NO, THAT’S FAIR.
And then I yelled at him for hitting Jessie, because he is supposed to be a man, and real men don’t hit women. And he told me that she hit him first. And I told him that he needed to learn how to remove himself from the situation without using force if at all possible, and that a real man would exercise restraint because his opposition was female and predominantly weaker. He got mad, because of course, Jessie had just kicked his butt good -- and not the other way around.
Then I had a talk with Jessie and told her that she’d better be careful when fighting, especially with someone of the opposite sex. Because, even if it’s not right for a man to hit a woman, it’s not right for a woman to hit a man either unless it is in self-defense. And that the next time she walks up and hits a man like she IS a man, that she always need be prepared to get hit back like she was a man. Because most of them, WON’T exercise restraint just because she’s a girl. And that she couldn’t rely on the fact that she is a female to get special treatment.
That’s not right and it doesn’t always work.
But, oh she was so upset about him hitting that dog. And I don’t blame her. He had no right to and no reason to. The dog was doing as he’s been trained to do: bark when he’s ready to come back in. All Jon had to do was open the door and let him in. So, anyway…it was just a big mess this morning. I pulled them both together and told them that if I EVER caught them fighting with each other that way again, that they’d both see just how tough they really were because they’d have to deal with me. It was a big long lecture.
On another subject. I went to see Bo off yesterday afternoon. It was a tearful event. He introduced me to all the people in his flight. He was a nervous wreck, and really second guessing himself on whether or not he should go or run like crazy. And the closer it came to time for him to leave me, the more I questioned if it was right of me to let him go.
He is my oldest son, and it hurt me terribly to watch him go. He’s not old enough to go. He’s not mature enough to make the decision to go. This poor kid is only 21 years old. And he’s still MY baby that I carried around on my hip until he was bigger than I was.
He hugged me and told me he loved me and told me thank you for everything I’ve done for him. And that he was proud to call me his mom, and that he’d be home for Christmas. He said he’d call me within the next two days to give me the address of where I could write to him. And asked me to please write. And as I watched him walk through all the levels of security at the air port, my heart just crawled up my throat and broke into a million pieces every time he turned to make sure I was still there.
He’d give a brave little smile and wave and nervously turn back around to walk a little further. It took every ounce of courage I had to watch him walk away and not break through all the security gates and bring him back home with me. That was by far, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I hope he calls soon.
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