The branding consultant Martin Roll says that Danish companies can use their “Danishness” to their advantage. In an interview with the Danish business newspaper Børsen, he advises Danish companies to stand up for their Danish values.
Denmark has many great values that can be relevant to people outside of Denmark. The challenge as I see it is communicating them in a way that the rest of the world can understand.
It’s not about imposing these values on others, but more about putting them in the context of what is important. Companies are experiencing that, yes, they can use Danish values - but they just shouldn’t call them “Danish values”. Instead, these Danish values need to be described specifically and in context using clear, concise language. This is the big challenge facing many Danish companies.
According to a recent article in Markedsføring, tourists are turning their backs on Denmark. And Denmark’s marketeers are blaming the porcelain-obsessed marketing that pushes Denmark as a fairytale land. Instead, the marketeers would like to see greater focus on Christiania, the gay scene and Denmark’s free-mindedness. This seems like a good idea to me.
Look at one of Denmark’s neighbours and biggest tourist competitors, Norway. Even Norway has a porcelain factory that pumps out exquisite, and expensive, porcelain. And while fairytales may be good for kids, Norway has fjords, mountains and polar bears (not in the streets!).
So the key would be to find Denmark’s unique selling points (USPs) and push these to the hilt. So what are they? As the marketeers say, Christiania is a good one - and regularly comes high on lists of Denmark’s top tourist attractions. But it’s been watered down in recent years.
So what else is there? While Denmark’s gay scene and free-mindedness may not be unique, they certainly appeal to the country’s closest neighbours. And they could be harnessed until Denmark becomes known as Northern Europe’s most open-minded nation. That would have some appeal to certain tourist profiles.
Whatever happens, as the marketeers point out, it has to overcome Denmark’s recent bad international publicity. Take a look at CCN’s Danish section and you’ll see why. It’s all Salmonella and Islamic ire. But according to CNN, Denmark still ranks highest as the happiest place on Earth. Perhaps it’s about time people outside Denmark began to see why - and when they did, they might also discover Denmark’s USP.
At Eye for Image, we see spelling mistakes every day. Some make us cringe, others make us laugh. We cringed and laughed when we saw the job title “Pubic Sector Analyst.” Ooops. Even spellcheck wouldn’t help with that one.
But can you just imagine you are a Public Sector Analyst? You’re at a meeting. You’ve just given out your business cards to each of the 10 people at the table. Then you notice the missing letter ‘l’ in your job title. How on earth do you recover from that one???
Spelling. For some, it’s a cinch. For others, it’s a minefield. It’s one of the very first things we begin to learn at school, and we keep on learning as long as we are reading and writing. Oh, how spellcheck programs have simplified our lives! But those pesky misspellings show up anyway.
Our recent WordSpin article on misspellings in English lists 16 common ones. Check it out and see if you learn something new.
Got a memorable spelling mistake yourself? Post a comment on this blog entry and let us know what it was. We promise to laugh with you, not at you!
Looking for a competent sales director? Wouldn’t you rather have an experienced one? Or successful? Or even well-qualified? Or is just about good enough good enough for you?
Looking for a competent page turner
Danish companies love the word competent. Problem is, it isn’t quite the heavy-weight champion of job ads that it might appear to be – and though it can mean ‘qualified for the job’ in certain contexts, it certainly doesn’t carry the weight of Danish ‘kompetent’.
Look up ‘competent’ in an English dictionary. The issues jump out at you straight away. It has two related, but conflicting, meanings. Dictionary.com shows:
Having suitable or sufficient skill, knowledge or experience for some purpose
2. Adequate, but not exceptional.
So, competent means ‘suitable’ – a skills-set that’s a good fit. Nice. That sounds like just what I’m looking for in my sales director. But ‘sufficient’? Just about good enough to get by? Mmm, not so good…
The second definition, though, really starts to get to the heart of the problem. Adequate. Not very inspiring, is it? I wouldn’t recommend anyone build their job interview strategy on how adequate they are. Kicking off with, “I can guarantee adequate results” in a job interview for any managerial position would be as effective as breaking wind.
Saying “I’m competent,” isn’t quite as bad as saying “I’m adequate”, but it’s not much better. It sounds like you haven’t finished your sentence. And the interviewer would finish it for you: “…but nothing special/not very good/a bit slow on the uptake”. There’s no escaping it, to most people on the street, competent means ‘just about good enough’.
But there’s more.
The negative form of competent – incompetent – is used much more often than ‘competent’ in everyday speech. It’s commonly used to make complaints, especially about people’s work. Calling someone ‘competent’ conjures the shadow of its more popular, darker sibling. And never quite shakes it off.
How do you use ‘competent’? Do you think it’s appealing enough to use in a job ad, or a job interview? Let us know what you think: write a comment.
There’s nothing like a heatwave to draw people outside - and head en masse to the beach. Or, if you’re in Copenhagen, cruise Strandvejen.
So after a none-too-cool day in the office on Monday, I decided to bike home via the scenic route, up Strandvejen. As I crossed over onto Strandvejen I thought I’d hit the Friday rush hour, but as I got further north the traffic got heavier and heavier instead of thinning out. It was all black and metallic silver, bumper to bumper on both sides of the road.
An ideal opportunity for all those stuck to their hot seats to do a bit of windowshopping of course, and for those lacking a shopping gene, some serious people-watching. Once the shop fronts disappear, then what else is there to do?
That’s the only way I could reason the three-car smash further up the road. When you’re only going 5 km/h, what other reason is there? A sweaty footsole slipped off the pedal?
There’s nothing like car queues, in-car heat, and ever-so-cool-looking pedestrians eating gigantic waffle icecreams to cause a bit of distraction. And its a sure sign that summer has finally arrived on Strandvejen.
For more Strandvejen-like driving distractions and some retro summer music, put your earphones on a take a look at this:
“Do you want your caffe latte with taste?”
“Can I get it without taste?”
“Of course, but for only five kroner extra, you have it with taste.”
That was a snippet of a rather bizarre conversation I had recently in an Oslo cafe. I was rather puzzled by what a tasteless cafe latte may be: with a swirly straw perhaps. Maybe with a colourful umbrella. But after some further interrogation, I realised that the word the waitress was looking for was flavour. A small difference in word, but a huge difference in meaning. She was referring too flavoured sirups, but even with the correct word, the question still needs a little polishing to get the actual meaning right.
This wasn’t some out of the way cafe in the suburbs that wasn’t used to foreigners. It was on the main drag, two minutes walk from where the tourist boats dock - and with a clear view of the royal castle. Which made me think - perhaps special English courses designed just for waiting staff would be a good idea. If you know of any, let me know and I’ll pass the details onto the cafe in question.
In Denmark, “You are welcome to send an unsolicited application” is used quite a bit – but few feel comfortable with it. Quite often, our clients ask us: Is unsolicited application the right term to use? Will people understand it? What can we say instead?
For reasons that only the Norwegian state can explain, I’m not allowed a mobile phone subscription until I’ve lived in the country for three years. The solution offered by Chess, my mobile provider, was simple. Get the subscription in my wife’s name.
So on my wife’s birthday, I recevied an SMS from Chess wishing me (her) a happy birthday. But what is the point? I don’t for a minute believe that someone at Chess said to themselves, “Oh, it’s Klara’s birthday, I’ll just send her an SMS to give her my best wishes.” It’s so obvious that this is an automated function. And instead of making me feel like a valued customer, it made me feel like a tiny cog in a very large impersonal, automated money-making machine.
One great advantage of these systems is that they remind you of information like this. But the key is to turn this information into tailored, personal messages - if you do this, you can make your customers feel valued.
Blue Angel. Fuchsia. Ireland. Apple. Pilot Inspektor. Poppy Honey. Moxie CrimeFighter. Princess.
What’s your guess? PlayStation game characters? FBI operation code names?
Nice try, but no. They’re a selection of bizarre celebrity baby names. In their quest for originality and headline space, celebrities seem to be putting their kids’ future sanity on the line. But it’s not just A-listers who are picking words off cerial boxes and Kabbalah literature and putting them on birth certificates. Ordinary folks are doing it too. There’s Ish. And Jeehee. And Nattapong.
In Denmark, a country that embraces rules with the same gusto that Italy defies them, choosing a first and last name for a child is a serious, multitiered affair, governed by law and subject to the approval of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and the Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs…
About 1,100 names are reviewed every year, and 15 percent to 20 percent are rejected, mostly for odd spellings.
At first, I thought this rule was completely crazy. But then I realized it prevents people like George from Seinfeld from naming their kid Seven, and I thought - OK. With 7540 approved boy names and 9869 approved girl names, the good and not-too-weird names should be covered.
Right?
Wrong. My name, Anastasya, is not on the list. Anastasia is. Anastasiya is. But not my spelling. So I end up right up there with Camera and Pilot Inspektor, and I honestly don’t know how to feel about that.
To check if you name is on the list, visit the Approved Names Search page - and then let me know what you think about this naming business.
