At our advertising agency, we have a new service positioning called “Plays Well With Others.” It's NOT a reference to our elementary school report card but rather a new business model we've been perfecting.
Plays Well With Others is about us being the lead brand agency and working with our clients' partners and vendors to oversee and coordinate everything they do that impacts the brand. We work with our clients' PR firms, their media buying companies, architects, mobile apps programmers, etc. to make sure that the brand is always well presented in a compelling and coordinated way.
While we were thinking about how we can increase the revenue streams for our Plays Well With Others service, I started thinking about similar businesses where we could pick up some best practice ideas. And somehow I flashed on the most ubiquitous partner of all — the letter D.
The letter D gives new meaning to Plays Well With Others because it is the only letter to partner with every other letter in the alphabet. As far as I can tell, D is the most paired up letter there is.
Let me show you what I mean:
AD. After death
BD. The Internet suffix for “Bangladesh”
CD. Compact Disc
DD. Daredevil's logo
ED. Erectile Dysfunction
FD. Fire Department
GD. General (Equivalency) Diploma
HD. High Definition
ID. Identification
JD. Juris Doctor
kd. lang
LD. Learning Disabled
MD. Medical Doctor
ND. North Dakota
OD. Overdose
PD. Police Department
QD. “Once a day” on a prescription
RD. Research & Development
SD. South Dakota
TD. Touchdown
UD. Urban Dictionary
VD. The gift that goes on giving
WD. (40)
XD. Extreme Definition (Television)
YD. Abbreviation for “yard”
ZD. Ziff Davis
Now how much would you pay? But wait, there's more. The letter D is such an overachiever that it even works with numbers. There's:
1D. One dimensional
2D. Two dimensional
3D. Three dimensional, and
4D. Fourth dimension
You see, D is the letter that goes great with everything. It's the accommodating partner we're all looking for. The letter D is the perfect party guest, and a great lesson for all of us that just when we think we've done enough, there's always another idea to consider, another book to read, another solution to try.
So the next time you're feeling stuck — or feeling self-satisfied — think of the letter D and see if there's a way you can BeD. Because the new idea you come up with might just be a BFD.