This morning I attended One Million Cups, a great, thought-provoking meeting that features two entrepreneurs who pitch their business for 6 minutes and then take 20 minutes to respond to audience questions or suggestions.
One of the presenters was a woman who is launching a clothing line for women who experience hot flashes. The clothing uses advanced fabric technology developed by NASA that absorbs heat and sweat from the body through a stay-cool layer. She named her business “alvoru” which means “real” in the Icelandic language. “real” and “Ice”landic: real cool. Get it? I didn’t name this business, but I do like the approach she took to conceiving a unique name. Alvoru is pronounced all-vu-roo.
But she also went one step better. She reinforced the name with a complementary tagline that fleshes out what the product is and what it does. The tagline is “real women. real comfort. real cool.”
That tagline speaks to her intention to produce garments for women who are more likely to have figures other than those featured on the runways, on TV or in magazines. It also underscores the unique selling proposition of comfort and cool. I am sure that this will be quickly understood and will be effective with her target audience.
Here’s another example. I met a woman at the Inventors Center of Kansas Citywho has developed a clipped-to-the-waist exterior cellphone pocket for people with active lifestyles. The product is unique, in that the phone is accessible for viewing and texting without removal via a flip-out flap. The original name she conceived was Flip Flap. However her attorney discouraged her from using it. So, she started calling it CaddyFlap, even though she didn’t necessarily like that name as it seemed to be too golf-oriented.
In communicating with her, she shared that she was excited about a tagline that she was using that quickly explained her product. She said the tagline was “Insert Phone. Flip Out.”
Short, but not as sweet as it could be, I thought.
I replied, suggesting she change it to “Phone In. Flip Out.” Phonetically (no pun intended) it works better and it is more memorable as the “In” and “Out” are better aligned.
She loved it.
Next, I suggested that she could consider naming her product “Phone Flip.” It works with the tagline by using the first two words of the two-sentence tagline. It also says what it is for and what it does. I checked, and the http://www.Phone-Flip.com domain was available.
She love the name and reserved the URL. Now she is running it by her attorney. Some might say that she should have done that before reserving a URL. I disagree. $14.95 isn’t much money to put at risk. If you find a good URL that you think might work, reserve it ASAP.
If you’d like help with your business/product name and taglines, please get in touch with me. Eric 816-797-9946.