Networking Tips from an 11 Year Old

My nephew Eric clearly inherited my mom’s ‘talking’ gene. He talks non-stop. He can carry on a conversation with adults just as easily as his friends. The last few times we’ve hung out I’ve noticed his ‘ice-breaker’ question leads with “What’s your favorite…?”

After I took him to the final Harry Potter movie…”Aunt Chris, what was your favorite part?” Mine was when you find out Snape was a good guy the whole time and made the ultimate sacrifice to go undercover as a bad guy to watch over Harry because he had been in love with Harry’s mom, Lily, since they were kids. His was the part when the fire was blazing through the room where everything is hidden and it turned into a snake and dogs.

“What’s your favorite thing at Taco Bell?” He’s just a basic crunchy taco with cheese nacho kinda guy. I like the very decadent Crunch-wrap Supreme.

We were watching “The A-Team” movie…”Aunt Chris, who’s your favorite character?” Mine was Bradley Cooper. Eric likes the crazy guy, Murdoch.

Eric is the cutest kid, he’s never met a stranger. It’s so amazing watching him grow up and have this funny, charming confidence. I took him to Chicago for his 10th birthday. We were at a Cubs game and he was dressed head to toe in his Cardinals gear. A Chicago policeman sat next to me and he and Eric hazed and heckled each other the entire game. I love that Eric inherited my mom’s talking gene and that he can talk to anyone (kinda like his aunt Chris). And the next time I’m at a networking event, I’m totally stealing his “what’s your favorite…” as an ice-breaker.

and PS, this photo is from our Chicago trip, pre-Cubs game, he asked if he could order a cappuccino. Of course Aunt Chris said yes. After he added three sugar packets, he took a tiny sip and hated it, so of course, Aunt Chris drank the cappuccino.

24K: Behind the name

24K, Reliv’s healthy energy shot, was officially launched 2.3.11 to rave reviews from the field. Sponsoring and sales are up. We can feel the momentum building. In my 20 year marketing career, I have never worked for a company with a tangible, consumer packaged good so this was a very exciting project for me personally. Name, label, pre-launch teaser campaign, launch and post-launch campaign etc. Pretty Cool!

The process began for marketing back in July of 2010 with writing a document that described the overall strategy for the product so we could begin trying to choose a name. The document detailed the target audiences, the key benefits, why our product would be different and better, and the general ‘personality’ of the product.

We began a series of brainstorming sessions around the key benefits of energy and mental clarity/focus. We cranked out hundreds of ideas. We looked at Greek mythology, we translated the words energy or focus into other languages, created acronyms, tried single letters to the nth degree and made up new words. Every time we narrowed it down to our favorites and these were submitted to legal, they were all taken. This happened over and over. Any obvious word or phrase was trademarked.

Carpe Drink’em was a team favorite that never made it to legal. It is now our trademarked name for our happy hour events!

I searched websites on Harry Potter charms, spells, characters etc for nonsense words for inspiration. I found online name generating tools that combined prefixes and random groups of letters to form nonsense words. I even found an English to Klingon translator tool. Did you know that hoSDo means ‘energy beings’ in Klingon?

Finally in October we had real samples of the product in near final formulation! We could taste it and see it. Our SVP of sales started thinking about the color of the product and thought to himself that this stuff is pure gold! This turned into 24K. Then he asked his dad (aka our Chief Science Officer who also formulated the product) how many active ingredients were in the product…thank you Dr. Carl! 24 active ingredients and four months later we had a name!