Friday's Finest: The Importance of Action Verbs

When we think about great phone numbers, memorable brand names or a single word usually spring to mind first. But if your brand is a common name and just one word doesn't feel like enough, creative marketers and business owners turn to action verbs! Our favorite finest number this week is a perfect (and patriotic) example of that, and includes some extr marketing angles to explore for good measure: 1-800-GO-GUARD. Obviously the action verb here is "Go," and it works on a couple of levels. First of all it's a positive sounding word, evoking forward motion and a sense of doing something worthwhile. Combined with the "Guard" - shorthand for National Guard - it forms the perfect phrase to make a good vanity number with a great call to action! Without the action verb it would still be a solid vanity number to remember, but would lack some of the urgency that helps the call to action in this case: dial now, join up, Go Guard! Another aspect of this vanity number that we like is the integration with a website address. If you type 1800goguard.com into your browser, it will take you to the National Guard website. The smartest part of this is that the main domain for their organization is the more standard nationalguard.com, which makes more sense for a web address that people might try to guess or Google, but the 1800 version redirects to the . This is exactly what we had in mind when covering blending your brand assets earlier this week, and it's great to see those strategies in action. Thank you to all who serve our great nation (including the marketing arm of the National Guard, in this case!)