Using Symbols to define your Unique Selling Point
Without a bit of help it’s hard to identify your own difference. Using symbols can help you identify the essence of the way you do business
Here are four businesses I know well and the symbols or images I’d use to define them
Lomax and Skinner – Flight
In her book The Years, Virginia Woolf describes the arrangement of millinery in London shop windows as separately a flight of hats and flights of hats. This woman does not chuck words at the page, there is diligence behind every description
A flights of hats is a wonderful phrase for a collection of millinery but particularly for the millinery of Lomax and Skinner. Flight describes the drift of the will-o-the-wisp, achingly delicate quality in their hats. It describes their lilting , teasing, downland swift poise.
Business Coaching Sussex - Arrow speeding towards the target
Marisa Guthrie, who happens to be my own business coach, will get to the nub of a thought before you’ve even finished it expressing it
The speed at which she processes information and her clear path of reasoning is partly a result of instinct, partly experience and partly her extraordinary sensitivity. It is a pleasure to witness, in the same way Olympic gymnastics are lovely, or a trapeze artist who lands on one square centimetre where landing on another would mean disaster, makes for compelling viewing. That kind of knife-point precision is fun and exciting in whatever form it takes.
Seven Sisters Spices, Chloe Edwards – The Designer
Chloe is a talented and original conjurer of spices. But Chloe is a visual artist too, as anyone who follows her on Instagram will know. She’s a designer
The job of design is to put together words, colours, shapes or images that in their entirety communicate a particular message. It’s recognising which elements to use and how they all weave together that makes someone a designer.
Chloe knows about taste, aroma, texture, scent and flavour. She designs a multi-layered sensual experience in the food she creates.
Darling Buds of Sussex, Tracey Kirker – The Wild Waterfall
Tracey’s pretty face belies her anarchist tendancies. This woman has a wicked sense of humour and a sideways take on life
Her blooms escape formality and dance deliciously instead, structured but free, always joyful and sometimes dramatic when the woman who will carry the bouquet wants to to express that part of herself.
It's worth trying to think of a single image or symbol that defines you as way of achieving clarity when it comes to explaining what’s different about you, not just to others but to yourself.
It’s not always the obvious one and it might make you delve a little deeper into what is unusual or valuable about what you do.
Mine would be someone pulling back heavy curtains and letting light flood into a darkened room or standing at the top of a hill and being able to see for miles and miles. The Clarifier.
Contact me if you want some Clarity around the business message on your website, and how best to communicate that.