‘Blackberry’ doesn’t say ‘babies clothes’ to me

One young entrepreneur was asking for advice on her babies’ clothes business on a women’s business forum. She had decided to call it ‘Blackberry Babes’ and wondered if it was a good name or not. This is my response:

I’m still a little confused why you need to use ‘blackberry’ – is there some underlying reason for this? I immediately thought of the hand-held electronic system. I certainly agree that ‘babies’ is better than ‘babes’.

I should take a good luck at the USP of your product. What is special about it? What does it have that your competitors haven’t? Does it use special fabrics, are the colours significant, does it cater for specific kinds of babies’ requirements, or what?

Then I would think about how it change the lives of the babies, or their mothers. Concentrate on that phenomenon when you do your marketing. For example, an ironing service shouldn’t talk about what they do, ie your ironing, but what their customers can do if their ironing is done by the company, ie free time with the family, weekends free from household chores, no more ironing piles towering on your washingmachine! You should be describing ‘what’s in it for them’, not your product, because customers couldn’t care a tinker’s toot about you or your business, they only care about how it affects themselves.

What is so special about your babies clothes that marks it out as different from all the others, has a special element that makes the recipients lives better, and offers excellent value? Take these facts, work out your ‘keywords’ and create a name using them. For example, a courier service called ‘Fetch it now!’ – says exactly what’s on the tin.

Why this and not ‘blackberry’? ‘Blackberry’ doesn’t suggest to me baby clothing, it suggests to me more of food, or blackberry stains on sticky babies. If you are going to have a website for your company (hopefully an e-commerce one where mothers can buy on-line) by having a keyword rich name will not only make it easier for the search engine spiders to find your company, but easier for search engine users who type in those ‘keywords’ in their searches for baby clothes, not to mention the mothers who will understand exactly what you can do for them.

The result may be a little more boring than ‘Blackberry babes’ but if you want to survive on the internet, being cute and pretty won’t cut the chase.

How fancy design became impractical

Travelling home from London to Brighton on Saturday in the dark, my natural desire was to look out of the window when stopped at a station to see which one it was.

Instinctively I looked for the station name. Now it wasn’t during the Earth Hour so all the lights were on, but I couldn’t find the name plate. Oh, there it was – but it was so illegible I couldn’t read it.

Why? Because the person who designed these signs decided it would look really good if the background was that nice green that is so fashionable with a slim white font for the name on it.

Hmmm. That may look really dandy during the day, but I bet the designer hasn’t travelled by night to see how this stands up in the dark. The dark green became black, and the slim words melted into it so they could hardly been seen. Totally impractical for passengers who are unable to recognise the shape of the station buildings to know where they are.

Why, oh why, is there this trend to reverse design around? Books have black words on white paper for a reason. Any website I see that has a black background immediately has me gone – I don’t even bother to try to read it. Can’t people see that a dark text on a pale background is better because it is so much more practical?

It’s all in the name

Just a quick post to say how important it is to value your customers special details, such as their names. In America it is an insult to either spell or pronounce someone’s name incorrectly, yet in Britain people just do not care. If you don’t take care with your customers’ personal details, why should they care about you?

Both my maiden and married names are regularly spelt wrong. When I was first married our joint account’s new cheque book had a different spelling than that of my husband’s. That, I consider, is just sloppy. My daughter’s new cash card didn’t even have the end of her surname because it ‘had fallen off the end’. When I asked for this to be corrected, they wanted to adjust her first name to an initial, yet keep her middle name intact, so there would enough room for her surname. Apparently the system didn’t allow for her first name in full, middle initial and surname – how stupid is that?

Renaming your Business with a Focus

At BNI this morning I spoke to one member who was undergoing the process of renaming his business. The quick advice I was able to give him in the five minutes we had was to brainstorm all the keywords he and his partners could think of that referred to his business, write them down in a huge list, compare them at a meeting and thrash out some ideas.

Gather ideas from on-line such as Wordtracker and off-line such as friends, family and colleagues, also when you’re driving around or thinking about a case/situation/meeting/email response – even if they sound stupid, unlikely or unsuitable – anything could finally trigger that fantastic answer you’ve been looking for.

And take your time to make your decision – it may come easily to you, or after weeks of sole-searching you may even go for the original one you first thought of! Never rush into a renaming job too quickly – it’s too much hassle and time-consuming to change it later.