It’s all cutesy when picking up a coffee: We Brew It For You, Espress Yourself, The Daily Grind, etc. Same thing if you need your hair done: Shear Delight, A Cut Above, Combing Attractions…you get the idea. So very “punny,” apparently by rule. I won’t even start with pre-school names, or that Comic Sans font they feel so compelled to use.
The business type drives the naming convention: “Firms,” such as for legal and accounting services, want to drop names formally, using the surname approach, such as Smith, Wolcott, Griffin, and Associates, whereas auto repair shops have a penchant for the first name ownership: Ray’s Garage, Joe’s Auto Repair. Meanwhile, big chain grocery and department stores just go the short and unremarkable route: Walmart, Winco, Bi-Mart, Costco, Target.
I’m no marketing guy, but I wonder if maybe an operation could stand out a little better by bucking the trends. Perhaps a person would be more likely to pull the trigger on that lawsuit if Litigation Station showed up on the Google search (“Your Litigateway to Cash!”). Or it might seem like less of a drawn-out process to drive through Susan’s Sue-those-Suckas Shoppe and have her get right on the task.
Coffee is important. It doesn’t have to be cute. Why not meet up to hammer out that buyout paperwork over mochas at Abrams and Associates Roasting? You know they take their craft seriously, and your client’s trust in you is sure to be bolstered by your choice of venue. At The Human Bean, you’ll not be able to elaborate on the exquisite woody notes in the brew like you would at the Hawthorne, Albrecht, Penstemon, and Other Distinguished Persons Coffee Group.
Cars are valuable. Auto shop mechanics with the first name sew-on patch coveralls are selling themselves short. Although we need their physical intuition and willingness to wear grime, the automobiles of today are highly engineered microprocessor-driven craft. We need to trust that these workers don’t think of “coding” as something that happens at the dive bar after too many shots and a blow to the head. In their diagnoses, we would prefer to hear something like “controller,” “calibration,” or “electronic” rather than “it’s something with the ‘lectrics.”
So maybe Ray could keep the coveralls, but instead of the oval patch he should pin on a metal name plate and sew fancy accomplishment stripes on the sleeves, military style. And to complete the transformation, the cracked paint of RAY’S GARAGE could be revamped in trendy lit-up 3D lettering with a fabricated single-word techy name. Preferably with a European feel. One that makes us comfortable leaving our machine there—heck, even buying into some stock shares at their receptionist-kiosk: Autech, Mota, Unitrans, maybe Neukraft.
[App notification the next day in futuristic female German voice:]
“Conglatulashun! Your vassel off tlasnport has bin optimized by specialist [pause] RAY [pause]. Choos Über pick-up or vassel deleevery option ven makingk payment. Dank—I mean Thank You.”
Copyright © 2022 Richard Berndt – All Rights Reserved.
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