In town for Spoon Me founder Ryan Combe's wedding over the weekend (see next post), thanks to the GPS in my rental car, I managed to hit two Spoon Me locations (and eat Spoon Me at the wedding) in less than 8 hours. Spoon Me is the name that Eat My Words is the most proud of creating. Ryan and his partners David and Wayne have built a cult brand that transcends frozen yogurt and has become one of the hottest franchises on the planet, with projections of 100 new stores within the next 18 months. Spoon Me is a stellar example of how a brand can take a name and run with it. (That's why we call them names with "legs".) From the best-selling "Shut Up and Spoon Me" t-shirts to the "No Spooning on Sundays" hours sign, to the Spoon Me movie quote graffiti ("You had me at Spoon Me") in the bathrooms, there are endless ways to extend the brand through wordplay. Here are photos from my afternoon visit to the original store in Salt Lake City and my late night visit to one of the new super mod locations in Sandy, Utah. Thanks to everyone at Spoon Me for treating me like a celebrity. Can't wait to come back!

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."