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July 01, 2011
The Kitchen Sink blog has moved - www.eatmywords.com/blog
Please visit us at our new location:
http://eatmywords.com/blog/
August 11, 2009
50 Funny Store Names (with photos)!
Best Week Ever scoured the internet and pulled together these 50 store names that have fun with puns. Enjoy!
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46 More Pun Stores (Seriously) After the cut.
And they’re pretty much all brilliant.
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April 30, 2009
Announcing a fresh new name for Second Chance Coffee: I HAVE A BEAN
When some people thought the name Second Chance Coffee implied that the beans were recycled, the founders knew it was time for a name change. The name Second Chance stemmed from the mission of the company - to help ex-offenders help themselves by providing gainful post-prison employment, job training and a community of acceptance. The company positively impacts the spiritual, social and economic condition of their employees, their families and the communities in which they live. All that and they make what many people say is the smoothest cup of coffee they have ever tasted. (It's so smooth, most of their customers drink it black.) Second Chance wanted us to create a memorable name that they could monetize, like we had done for frozen yogurt franchise Spoon Me and the chain of laundromats we named Stuff a Sock in It. After reviewing dozens of names, the top contenders were narrowed down to Happy Joe Lucky, I Dream of Coffee, Thank God It's Coffee, and I Have a Bean. We felt that I Have a Bean made the biggest emotional connection and had the strongest potential to make our client rich through the sale of t-shirts, mugs and coffee canisters. The client agreed. The tagline we created, "Inspired Coffee" helps set the tone that the company is inspiring people to live better lives. We are thrilled with the package design, which was created by Carrie Dufour and her talented team at Sloat Design. We snatched up www.ihaveabean.com for $9.95 and the site and brand officially launch on June 1st. Until then, follow them on Twitter, at I Have a Bean.
We wrote the book on naming books.
A best-seller in the UK as well, Solemate is about mastering the art of aloneness. But it's not about being alone. It's a book for people who want to enhance the quality of their lives by improving their relationships with themselves and with others. Download an excerpt or order the book here.
February 23, 2009
OpenTable Dishes Up Appetizing Conference Room Names
Kudos to restaurant reservation company OpenTable
(my favorite free service) for having a contest to name their
conference rooms.
Out of 51 entries, the winning theme was "fictitious restaurants or cafes from TV shows." Congrats to Julie Hall, the clever employee whose prize is a slick new TV. (How fitting!) Now people can say, "Let's meet in...
Central Perk (Friends)
Cafe Nervosa (Frasier)
The Peach Pit (90210)
Cheers (Cheers)
Arnold's Drive-In (Happy Days)
Monk's Café (Seinfeld)
The Regal Beagle (Three's Company)
Phil's (Murphy Brown)
Riff's (Mad About You)
McClaren's (How I Met Your Mother)
Moe's (The Simpsons)
A
foodie friend of mine works at OpenTable and was kind enough to let me
collaborate with him on some names. These were our submissions:
BREAKFAST CEREAL CONFERENCE ROOMS
Cap'n Crunch
Count Chocula
Franken Berry
Shredded Wheat
Special K
Wheat Chex
Boo Berry
Malt-O-Meal
Froot Loops
KITCHENWARE CONFERENCE ROOMS
Spatula
Wooden Spoon
Cutting Board (great name for a board room!)
Pressure Cooker (another killer name!)
Corkscrew
Rolling Pin
Egg Beater
Garlic Press
Waffle Iron
We wish more companies would get creative with their conference room names - it's a fun way to add personality to any business.
October 16, 2008
What we all need is a Tightwad Bank. Take that WaMu!
We didn't name Tightwad Bank, but we kind of wish we did.
Especially these days, depositors might opt for a fiscally constipated bank. Granted it is one small branch at the moment, but what fun to brand it for the next stage. They are already selling shirts, hats and mugs. That's great, but we think they could make bank with branded Tightwad Visa cards.
This name hits all cylinders on our SMILE & SCRATCH Test.
SMILE - qualities of a powerful name
Simple – one easy-to-understand concept
Meaningful – your customers instantly "get it"
Imagery – visually evocative - creates a mental picture
Legs – carries the brand, lends itself to wordplay
Emotional – empowers, entertains, engages, enlightens
It also follows our EMW=ROI formula.
We believe that a name is an investment that should promise many happy returns for years to come by producing Return On Investment in the following ways:
- Generates buzz without spending advertising dollars
- PR magnet -- editors love our names (Hello, free PR!)
- Instantly likeable, creating affinity for your brand - people talk about our names
- Its evocative nature easily allows expansion into future brand extensions while retaining its original charm
- No time is wasted telling people how to spell it, pronounce it, or what it means
- Creates differentiation, which builds brand recognition and visibility– an EMW name gets noticed in a sea of sameness
- Emotionally connects with your target making an indelible imprint and inspiring loyalty
- Rich in wordplay for editorial coverage, marketing materials, tradeshow themes, launch ideas and more
- In essence, the name becomes a “product” that can be creatively monetized through merchandise and licensing further expanding exposure, with people paying you to advertise your brand
- Vivid imagery is ripe for eye-catching identity designStays fresh and vibrant and never becomes dated - an EMW name has an indefinite shelf life
- Makes your company and its products trendsetters, and makes you look like a rockstar
- Creates an improved image for your overall brand
- Lets you sleep at night knowing your EMW name is working around the clock
So, we were pleased when the TheStreet.com gets the Eat My Words way and reported on the strength of Tightwad Bank name in their words as a " media magnet and marketing engine, resulting in a flurry of new accounts".
We're opening our account tomorrow.
Here is the article in its entirety:
Small Business Center
Tightwad Bank: A Lesson in Branding
Entrepreneur.com
10/13/08 - 12:29 PM EDT
Elizabeth Wilson
of Entrepreneur.com 
Sometimes it's all in a name. Six-month-old Tightwad Bank in Tightwad, Mo., uses the double-take factor to drum up business without even trying. It hasn't spent a cent on advertising, yet it can rattle off personal and business accounts from California, New York and even Carrot River, Saskatchewan, Canada.
It's a bank without a Web site (although it plans to offer online banking by the end of 2008), and its 112 accounts already exceed the town's population of 63. Passing the town's name on to the bank was the draw for Don Higdon, the entrepreneur and chairman of the bank, when he purchased the then-shuttered building last year.
Indeed, the unusual name has acted as a media magnet and marketing engine, resulting in a flurry of new accounts. However, the last thing Higdon intends to do is open Tightwad Bank branches cheek by jowl across America.
Instead, he'll consider a few additional Tightwad branches while maintaining his current focus on leveraging the power of the name to encourage tightwads across the country to open accounts at the two branches he presently chairs.
"It's a difficult name to forget," Higdon says. "You typically have two reactions: One is 'What? What is your name?' You're not going to get that customer. And the other [is] there's a smile on their face and they're just dying to open an account. I think that's the kind of excitement from a name that a lot of companies want to have."
He says any reaction to a name, good or bad, can help a business.
"When you can get a measurable reaction simply from a name, your challenge of converting them to a customer is diminished substantially; then all you have to do is talk about price or size or location, and location just isn't an issue anymore."
Higdon, a career banker, his wife, and his business partner Jeff McCalmon decided to pour all of their collective personal assets into purchasing Reading State Bank in Kansas in 2000. They purchased Tightwad Bank as a second branch in 2007, and opened it six months ago. At the same time, they changed the name of Reading State Bank in Kansas to Tightwad Bank. Since Tightwad Bank opened, the bank's deposits have grown from $11 million to $13 million at both branches Higdon chairs. The newer Tightwad assets are worth $1.7 million.
"This bank in 2000 was in a lot of ways a start-up. It was a little country bank; the town had shrunk because of technological and societal changes and demographic changes. It was only $4 million in total assets in the beginning, prior to doing the Tightwad branch conversion," Higdon says, referring to the Reading, Kansas branch when they first opened it in 2000.
Name Recognition
He's well aware of the pros and cons of using an uncommon name in business."People see the name and a number of them say, "Is that a real bank, and you're FDIC insured?' We go 'yes, yes, yes' . . . so the unique name gives us opportunity that other banks don't have; the flip side of that is the credibility issue," Higdon says.
With a name like Tightwad, which has negative connotations like stinginess, Higdon says they're pushing positive interpretations of the word, letting consumers know this is a bank that's "going to deliver real goods and services in a cost-efficient manner that would be consistent with someone who's prudent and responsible with their finances."
"We're going to appeal to a fairly narrow scope of potential customers," Higdon says. "Some people just won't get it and will have no interest doing business with a bank of that name, and I would suggest to you that they're probably the more high-brow or snobby types. The others totally embrace it."
Rita McGrath is a professor at Columbia University's Business School, where she teaches MBA and executive MBA courses in strategy and innovation. She says using a different kind of name is a "strategy that's used by many firms to add an empathic or emotional appeal to their products that enhances the basic functionality of what they have to sell."
"A quirky name like this can often provide valuable differentiation for a company, particularly in a relatively commoditized (and, to be frank, boring) industry like banking," McGrath says.
She thinks it will be interesting to see whether the name becomes even more salient during these tough economic times, "when being a tightwad may well be seen as more honorable and intelligent than being a silly, credit-consuming spendthrift."
"I bet there are a lot of banks who wished more of their customers were proud to be tightwads today, for sure," McGrath says.
Tightwad isn't the only bank with a strange, name-brand appeal. There's also the Fifth Third Bank (FITB Quote - Cramer on FITB - Stock Picks), a Midwestern bank headquartered in Ohio. Higdon's heard of the bank. "It's kind of a weird name, but it sets them apart," he says. "You remember that name, unlike so many that are called first national bank or community bank and on down the list."
And there are plenty of strange town names to come by in the U.S. Many of them are geographically close to Tightwad: Wisdom and Peculiar in Missouri, and Fairplay, Colo. There are also Rough and Ready in California and Happyland, Okla.
One of Tightwad's customers is Henry Leonard, who was a career banker before deciding to take over Marthabelle's Printing and Mailing, the printing business his mother started in Kansas City, Mo. Leonard enjoys a bank with a lively name, and that sends a clear message about his "tightwadness" to his business's vendors.
"Too many [banks] are so dry anyway . . . and there is a bit of levity in sending someone a check that says 'Tightwad.' I think that part of it is fun. I tell people when they get ready to charge me, 'be easy on me 'cause I'm a poor kid,' so I hand them a check that says 'Tightwad,' and they hand it back like, 'riiight.'"
He uses the checks with vendors and for repair services to send a message that he's serious about not being overcharged. "Those are the guys who can really run you a lot of cost."
The checks are also a conversation starter. They get a reaction from his vendors and customers. "You send them a check and they're like, 'What is this doggarn thing?' and they're liable to call you up."
He even muses about incorporating the 'tightwad' theme into his business a bit more. For example, he's thought about creating a penny-pinching logo for his business. "Like a Monopoly guy running around with a bag of money. Guess I couldn't do that, though."
Tightwad Bank has great success with its own money bag logo. It sells items in the lobby after drawing anywhere from two to more than a dozen carloads of people who pull off the highway each day to snap pictures next to the large, white Tightwad sign. Available for purchase are $25 to $500 gift cards to "give to that stingy uncle," Higdon says, or a $14 ball cap, $30 polo shirt, $11 T-shirt, $9 mug or $7 cozy.
In the end, if business success isn't in the stars for Tightwad Bank, Higdon has a backup plan. Before he bought it, the building was a branch of UMB Bank, which closed in January 2007. Already equipped with the old signage, they'll call it United Missouri Beverage "and make it a drive-through liquor store," Higdon says.
While "Tightwad" on a check might not appeal to everybody, for those it does appeal to, it probably does so strongly, Columbia University's McGrath says.
"That will have second-order effects, such as making them more likely to be loyal, less willing to consider competing offers and more likely to spread word-of-mouth around about their bank."
nd more likely to spread word-of-mouth around about their bank."
September 11, 2008
Frigid, Mixin' Vixens Stuff a Sock In It
If you guessed that Frigid, Mixin' Vixens, and Stuff a Sock In It are all cool brand names created by Eat My Words, congratulations! Bonus points if you figured out that Frigid is the name of a gourmet ice cream store, Mixin' Vixens is an all-women bartender service, and Stuff a Sock In It is a laundromat. When you see or hear an "Eat My Words name," you'll never ask what it means, how to pronounce it, or "What were they smoking?!" Our super-likable names make powerful emotional connections, build instant brand affinity, and make our clients rich. Yes, rich. We are the only naming firm that monetizes names. For instance, we turned the name Frigid into cold hard cash for our client by creating a t-shirt for them that says, "Not tonight dear, I have an ice cream headache." Ca-ching! Our Stuff a Sock In It client will be slapping their new logo on laundry bags, t-shirts, and other merchandise geared at their college kid customers. Ca-ching!
Of course, the client who is monetizing the bejesus out of their Eat My Words name is Spoon Me, the frozen yogurt store that is one of the hottest franchises in the country. They are selling Spoon Me pajamas, booty shorts, underwear, baby clothes, stickers, buttons and of course t-shirts with slogans we created like "Shut Up and Spoon Me." Ca-ching! Ca-ching! Ca-ching!
Would someone buy a t-shirt with your company or product name on it and pay you to advertise your brand? To see if your name has potential, take the Eat My Words SMILE & SCRATCH Test, which was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal.
September 04, 2008
Have Your Cake and Invest It Too
Our 2007 "Client of the Year," Cake, is the subject of a gushing write up in today's TechCrunch. It also introduces us to the latest Cake name extension Cakedex.
If you get a chance, also stop by and take a nibble
at The Slice, Cake's weekly video market wrap-up.
It's kind of like a smarter, hipper financial Ren & Stimpy.
Here is the TechCrunch article in its entirety -or if you have really good eyesight, you can read it below:
July 08, 2008
Our name ideas for the McConaughey love child...
First of all, let me clarify that I was JOKING yesterday when I updated the status on my LinkedIn profile to say "Alexandra was paid a million dollars to name Nicole Kidman's new baby, Sunday." I wish! (I love the name Sunday. Very Tuesday Weld.)
And now, more baby news... Hunkster Matthew McConaughey has a new baby, whose name has not been released to the press. Matthew's family has a penchant for cool names - his older brother is named Rooster. Gotta love that!
Here are our name suggestions for Baby McConaughey:
Monet McConaughey
Macrame McConaughey
Chevrolet McConaughey
Attache McConaughey
Souffle McConaughey
and the winner...
Toupée Bidet McConaughey
Congratulations to baby daddy Matthew and baby mama Camila Alves.