Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Thank you guys for your responses.

@AA/Swap: Manufacturing and marketing will be done in the US.

@Moriarty: I'd pass on ZooShampoo just because I'm not fond of a zoo theme though I do like 'tender' and 'menagerie' in the tag line. I'd pass on Bathtime as well because I think it captures more of the bath time products than hair products. I like Green Duck the most because you're using 'green' to indicate something earthly and organic while referring to a common childhood symbol (duckie). It's clear and concise and needs very little explanation. Thank you so much and please read my other response below.

@ Jay Hamilton-Roth : Thank you for asking these questions. It really forces me to get my thoughts in alignment with reality. Ideally, I'd like to start off targeting children (hair and body) and then branch out and target adults (hair and body). In my head, I think a platform name would be a great way to start that way I can grow into it rather than outgrowing it and then have to rename/rebrand. Is this a business savvy way of thinking? Should I just focus all my energy with the children's line and forget about expanding my target market?

Thank you guys once again and I look forward to your feedback.

And I forgot to add....

The reason why I'm steering clear of using 'organic', 'botanicals', etc., is because I think those words are worn out now and I think I'd just blend right in with everyone. I think it would be even harder to prove why my products are worth checking out over the next 'Botanical' line.

As far as standing out, some of the things I plan on doing are using ingredients that are somewhat uncommon in this industry; ingredients that will be more appealing than your everyday shea butter and coconut oil...not just by name but by benefit. Aside from ingredients, I plan on establishing a great rapport with my costumers while offering excellent costumer service. My costumers will never be bombarded with a zillion products to choose from and will never be clueless as to how to use the products (hair products, in particular) either because I will offer detailed video tutorials. In addition, not being a faceless company will hopefully keep my head above the water.

I think that you'd best be served by picking a product line that's clearly in alignment with your first target audience (little kids with highly textured hair). If your next product line will be similar, then you can play off the first name. Otherwise, you'd be better advised picking a name that's on-target for this new audience.

Do you have a company name yet? If not, perhaps start there and add a product line name that someone connects with it.

Having an "organic" certification is non-trivial. I interviewed a local company that does make organic hair & body products, and it's expensive (they used organic fruit juices instead of water to increase the organic % of product, and used a juice blend to add product synergy). It will also appeal to a certain group of people, which may (or may not) be your intended audience. By the way, what are names of your competitors - and what do you like (or not)?

@Steve Byrne: Thanks for responding. Your outline definitely paints the picture well. Once I figure out the parent brand name then everything else will flow just as you have shown.

@ Jay Hamilton-Roth: I haven't yet chosen a company name and that's where I'm stuck. I know it'll be much easier for me to reel off names for product lines. Perhaps trying so hard to differentiate myself from the very thing I think will make me blend in is what's keeping me in the quick sand. I just might have to open up to using 'Organics' or something similar. Thanks for your feedback!

Looking at what you've said, you're on the right lines to have a steady business. Quite how big a business is another question - that need not bother us right now as there are always ways around things like this.

is it possible for you to share one or two of your secret/special ingredients - as this seems to be the thing that defines you. Or are these part of your allure, your mystique? My point is that you could use them in your business name - even if they're not your trademarked (ie brand) names. It would at least be an anchor point that you could then swing away from in your other pursuits be they baby or adolescent.

You're working with these things - and no doubt you use them yourself. What does it feel like when you've used them? What does it smell like? What does your hair and skin feel like?

My own shampoos and so-on are all organic and made locally. I get enough poisons in my hair from the nearby A12 motorway without deliberately adding to it!


Rainforest haircare
Greenwood haircare
GreenTree
Primordial
Blue Vine

(the "haircare" could be practically anything you like - shampoo, lotion you name it)

Do you like any of these?

@ Moriarty: Thanks for your feedback! You raise some good points. Right now, I'm tweaking my key ingredients so when that's finished, I will be able to look into that for inspiration. From the names you've mentioned, Blue Vine resonates the most!

Thanks to everyone who has given their feedback. Lots of food for thought. I appreciate it!

Blue Vine - With ingredients from an uncommon jungle (thanks, Kathleen!)
Blue Vine - untangling jungles of hair carefully
carefully untangling jungles
carefully untangling jungles of hair

Of course you could just throw the lot up in the air and see what comes out. It worked for the surrealist poets, it might just work here too. If it doesn't at least you'll know what you don't like ;-)

@KSA: Thanks for your input. Funny, I am a music lover :)

@ Moriarty: The frustrating thing is I DO have a way with words! I'm normally very creative with my words and their arrangements. Had I been naming a blog, book or anything that would give me more of a creative freedom so to speak, I'd have no problem. Maybe I can, after all, be a little poet-esque!

@ designerdawnnie: I wish I were alive and kickin' in the 70's! ;)

You've got the "perspective" problem! It's not uncommon, in fact most people haven't ever encountered it.

It's like the tribal chief of Papua-New-Guineans who on seeing their photograph said "Who's that man in the middle, I don't know him". For not having any mirrors he had never seen himself. He simply did not recognize himself in a photograph.

Well of course we do because we see ourselves in the mirror each morning. Yet what we never see is how others see us! The tribe who lacked the ability to see themselves because they had no mirrors is what we lack because we have no "social" mirrors. If you get my drift.

You can't come up with a tagline because you can't see what you look like to someone else. I've just come out the other side of this process - and I'm in my fifties - the thing that's galling is that the things I saw of myself were things I knew about all the time, only never considered very important! Yet to others they stand out.

Grrr!

By the way, I grew up in the 70s and it's no different from now. Just less built up and the railways still had black engines that hissed and there weren't any motorways. Oh, and people painted their trucks with wonderful pictures - something they don't do today.

Now: naming. Naming is for your customers, after all, they're buying not you. They're the ones with kids whose hair is more bramble thicket than soft silk. Try some of the ideas with a small display network campaign (you can find it in Google Adwords, it's their "cost per thousand" biz). Split test and see which comes out tops. Try three that you like and one that you do not like - just to make sure your instincts are running true on this one.

You can use the name when posting on blogs - my own business name came from someone calling me names. It stuck. It is how someone else saw me, and that was good enough ;-)

Aside to Kathleen - did you know that Google wasn't a made-up name? The guys at Stanford got his name wrong - they named it after the Russian mathematician Googol, famous for his super-abstract notion of the power number 10^100 (ten with one hundred zeroes). It was to them the infinity of the internet - after all they'd tried downloading its entire contents onto Stanford's computers and crashed the lot!

I find the concept of a Googol rather artificial. My personal favourite is Graham's number which is truly infinite. The last ten digits of Graham's number are ...2464195387. It's so big it can't be written down. Infinities are strange beasts indeed.