Are you clearly communicating your value proposition to your customer base? If your elevator speech feels D.O.A., if you’re seeking to brand or reposition yourself, or if you want to discover just how compelling your value proposition is, try crafting a “Dumbwaiter Pitch”.

Umair Haque, Director of Havis Media Lab often asks clients to come up with a “Dumbwaiter Pitch”— to describe their businesses in just one word. In his experience, there are three common reactions: silence, an imaginary benefit that is not supported by company practice, or a raw product, a “useless commodity”.

You can create a powerful value proposition and craft a compelling case for your business by beginning with just one word. Some Dumbwaiter Pitches that Haque believes are successful examples are: Lego – creativity; Google – search; Apple – beauty; Twitter – alerts.

Coming up with one concrete word that sums up your business can be a good place to begin when creating your tag line, building your value statement, crafting an elevator pitch, or writing copy for your marketing endeavors. That first single word could be the seed that grows into a stronger vision of your company and the root of all your communications, including your elevator pitch!