Marketing is tough for geeks, and strangely, it has been really hard for Dean and Me, too. One of the most enduring problems we’ve had in our virtual marketing department has been figuring out a slogan.

The word slogan originates from an ancient Gaelic word sluagh-ghairm, which roughly translates as “Battle Cry” — it’s kind of weird to think of the most enduring slogans as battle cries, with a bunch of business guys storming into battle in suits, throwing business cards and yelling “Just Do It!” or “Things Go Better with Coke!” as they tear across the misty moors of the Scottish Highlands towards a horde of rampaging barbarians…

With Infovark, we have churned through a few of them, and some of them have stuck, and some of them have not.

The Enterprise Wiki that builds itself!

This was our original slogan, that we used for all our internal previews — I still kind of like it, because it shows an important feature of Infovark (auto content generation), it’s short, and it has an exclamation mark in it. (I really like them!) In the end though, we decided that it contained too much misinformation. After all, Infovark isn’t an enterprise Wiki like Confluence or Social Text, and while it does have a few wiki features, we felt that people would get the wrong impression. So that was the end of that.

Our next brainstorming session produced:

Your Personal, Portable, Connected Information Engine

This one had its charms, but ultimately we felt that it was too long and complex, and perhaps too geeky. The only real feature it highlights is portability, which is fairly obvious since most of the content that Infovark collects is on your local machine anyway. And while developers and IT guys are fine with the notion of an “engine” lots of people just think of cars.

The portable connected Information Assistant for People on the Go

We flirted with this one for our entry into the Enterprise 2.0 Launch Pad. To be frank, I hate this one. I really like the notion of Infovark as an assistant, but the word has been ruined by talking paper-clips, and “People On the Go” sounds like some kind of cheesy advert for a laxative. This one didn’t last very long.

And then, in the middle of yet another difficult marketing brainstorm session, Dean came out with this gem:

Share all your work, without all of the work

Well, I said it over and over, and liked it more and more. It tells you exactly what Infovark does best (share) and tells you that it can be done with no effort (auto content generation). It highlights what I think is the coolest feature of Infovark, that it’s a “contribution engine” (oops — again with the engines) and that it can overcome the biggest barrier to user adoption — forcing people to change the way that they work.

So, that’s the new Infovark slogan. (For now, anyway.)

Now, off into battle! (Where did I put my business cards?)

No related posts.