Your Brand Flavour

How do you attract a loyal customer base who are more than happy to sing your praises to anyone who will listen? The perfect place to start is to create your own brand flavour or theme.

Previously, we reviewed Alexandra Watkins’ fabulous little book, Hello My Name is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick. One of the things that stick in my mind from reading her book are the examples she offers about how the right brand name can flavour your entire business. Or as Alexandra puts it: “Find a theme that can be stretched like Carnival Taffy.”

And, this is precisely the point of Ideas Marketing – to have a big idea that you can build an entire world (business) around.

Today I want to share a couple of Watkins’ examples and one of my own to inspire you to create your own brand world to entice customers from near and far.

Eat my words

Alexandra Watkins runs EatMyWords.com – a brand-naming agency. Here are some elements of her brand theme:

• Blog: The Kitchen Sink
• Email: hungry@eatmywords.com
• Service Packages: Snack, the Whole Enchilada or Just the Meat
• Client parking sign: “Eat my words client parking only – Violators will be eaten.”
• Business card: pink retro refrigerator (like the one in the office)
• Wireless network name: Candyland
• Meeting materials: toast coasters, pens that look like licorice, ‘Food for thought’ notepads
• Corporate workshops: Spilling the beans

[Tweet “How to add flavour to your brand via @eatmywords”]

Firetalker PR

Watkins also shares the example of public relations expert Lynette Hoy who renamed her business Firetalker PR. And, added these themes to her brand:

• Tagline: Hot on the presses
• Official Title: Fire Chief
• Home name: The Firehouse
• Service Packages: Inferno, Controlled Burn and Matchbox
• Phone Ringtone: R&B funk song “Fire” by the Ohio Players. Lynette plays this very loudly during her speaking engagements.

My Obsession with Ideas

Whilst not quite having the fun factor of the previous two examples, here’s how I’m presenting my ideas obsession as a suite of services:

• Ideas Architect – my personal identity and soon to become my experts media business name employing others
• Ideas Marketing – my framework or philosophy for designing, building and selling your ideas
• Ideas Hour – my entry-level service and initial consult
• Ideas Lunch – a monthly event that I’ve run in the past and thinking of re-launching featuring a presentation, networking and lunch.

Create Your Brand Theme

How can you apply a similar theme to your business to give it a personality boost? Here are some questions to consider:

• Current: What personality does your brand already have?
• Others: What do your customers/clients think?
• Already: What sort of theme does your brand name already prompt?
• Leverage: Remember, your brand name and product names can be different. How can you leverage this?
• Services: How can you add a spicy sauce to the name of the services that you provide?

Comment: Can you think of any other examples that create a flavourable brand?