This is the way the founders of Café Gratitude (a SF Bay area restaurant which offers raw, vegan, organic fare) might hope your interaction with the server goes:
Server: How are you feeling today?
You: I am Sensational and Beautiful!

What could happen:
Server: We’re all out of Sensational, could I offer you Dazzling instead? Perhaps some Heroic on the side?
You: Well, how about I am Eternally Blessed.

Here in the world of brand naming we are constantly looking for names that evoke a certain feeling and that are fun to say. Café Gratitude has taken this ideal to the extreme form – where ordering lunch becomes an exercise in self-affirmations. What’s more, mantras for personal manifestation are offered by the wait staff. An excerpt from their menu includes:
I am insightful (spring rolls $10)
I am elated (enchilada special $15)
I am bright-eyed (pecan porridge $8.50)

It can be a struggle to keep a straight face when ordering. The idea is that ordering something like, ”I am lusciously awake” will manifest itself as a more awake state of mind simply through your verbalization and consumption of food product. Yet this sort of strategic brand naming is not unheard of – or even uncommon. We buy a lot of things based on the appeal of their associations, and for the promise of how they might change us. I know I’m hoping to be little more like J.Lo when I buy her fashion and who’s to say there’s not the promise of greater sex appeal when you pick up a copy of Allure?

There is a lot of messaging going on in Café Gratitude, but what the restaurant doesn’t exude is its skillful product and food branding. The pivotal gimmick, although shrouded in New Age-speak, comes down to the marketing and a well-executed naming architecture - “I am insightful” indeed.

Tags: Brand Naming, Branding, Food Branding, food naming
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I am happily addicted to caffeine – until I skip my normal morning dose. There follows an inevitable sluggishness and an afternoon headache. As this is immediately cured by a cup of coffee I haven’t seen much reason in the last few years to quit. Scientific findings oscillate between praise for coffee’s health benefits and the risks or detrimental effects on the body. I usually stick to reading the good findings, but this recent article in the NY Times provides a nice synopsis.

Product branding is starting to pick up on the “good for you” aspects of coffee that attempt to shift the beverage from an indulgent vice into the medicinal cure-all. Some relatively new products highlight coffee that incorporates supplements or that is specially roasted for unique health benefits. The product branding of Caffe Botanica communicates the health of the harvest and is infused with calcium while GanoDerma draws on the Latin name of the Reishi mushrooms that are included in its special recipe (and perhaps unintentionally, that it is good for the skin). Caffe Sanora gets the roots of its name in “sano” which means healthy in Spanish. This Boulder, Colorado roasting company, claims its roasting process keeps anti-oxidants in beans that will help keep you young while getting what you need to get through the day.

For now I’m happy to take my coffee with milk and no mushrooms, but you never know which new branding gimmick is going to catch on next.

Tags: Brand Naming, Branding, Company Naming, Food Branding, In-the-News, product branding
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Not long ago, it would have been far-fetched to consider a Safeway brand synonymous with “certified organic.” But the last few years have seen a mainstreaming of organic products across the board, and in-store brands are finally getting a little panache – right down to brand name creation.

Two of Safeway’s store brands, O Organics and Eating Right, found immediate success from their debut. These product brands speak to people who are looking for healthier foods that are still good deal. (And who isn’t these days?) O Organics sales reached $150 million when it launched in 2005 and increased to $400 million in 2008 while Eating Right is expected to bring in $200 million this year. In a highly unusual move, these brands soon will be showing up in competitive supermarkets, as well, in the hopes that Safeway can further expand revenues.

In-store brands are generally cheaper than outside food brands, because of lower marketing overhead. But in this case, a little added branding focus has gone a long way. O Organics, for example, is an excellent product brand name. The O, like the numeral for zero, is a transparent communication of purity, telegraphing natural, unprocessed food. Eating Right is also effective in its straightforwardness. We all know that we’re supposed to be “eating right” and the name for this line of products communicates an easy way to follow this common advice.

It will be interesting to see if other grocery stores follow in Safeway’s footsteps — increasing their naming and branding efforts, more effectively competing against national brands, and then broadening their sales scope to include other grocery chains.

Tags: Advertising, Brand Naming, Food Branding, naming
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Tea for what ails you. Tea to help you fall in love (no promises here, at least not in that potential-lawsuit false advertising way). Tea for relaxing in the evening and getting wired in the morning. Tea that makes you (seem) spiritual. Product branding has converged with poetry in the exploding tea market, and I’ve been noticing names that fall far beyond what the creators of “Constant Comment” ever dreamed. Specialty teas are making sure to separate themselves from the fray with names that stray far from simple descriptive naming. Care for some “Iron Goddess of Mercy” or Temple of Heaven”?

The Bay Area’s own Numi Tea can offer you an evocative cup of “Moonlight Spice” (White Orange Spice) and maybe later you’ll meet the “Monkey King” (who tastes like Jasmine Green Tea). “Indian Night” is meant to transport you from your kitchen – under the power of a single teabag. These names speak to us in terms of interesting and exotic associations, but also of the quality of the product.

Celestial Seasonings is the classic cardboard box found in cupboards across America, a company name that is familiar and comforting. In an attempt to update its image new trademarked teas have been introduced with product names like “Morning Thunder”, “Fast Lane Black Tea” and “Chocolate Caramel Enchantment Chai”. These tea names get at an American sweet tooth and driving need for caffeine, but they are also catchy and evocative.

Unique company names are the first step in conveying that the product is much more than some plants you pour boiling water on. I’m a fan of Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, a company name that momentarily includes me in a romantic take on gypsy life. (They make “Love Tea” blended with tiny rose buds.) Mighty Leaf, another producer of fine teas, presents the juxtaposition of a diminutive tea “leaf” with the image of mighty muscles. This appealing and unexpected combination draws you in with the expectation that the tea will also be out of the ordinary and packs a punch that its competitors don’t.

Tags: Brand Naming, branding company naming, Food Branding, Product Naming
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Central coastal California is a heaven of fruits and vegetables in the summer. The Berkeley farmers’ markets showcase a kaleidoscope of luscious produce and a walk down the line will reveal some equally beautiful names. Many of the farm names have stories that are as organic as the vegetables, but they follow principles that are familiar to those of us at a professional naming firm.

Unique and memorable names for farms in California include: Full Belly Farm, Blossom Bluff Orchards, Gospel Flat Farm and Ella Bella Farm which all telegraph quality produce that is grown with great care. The recent local and organic movement has people thinking a lot more about where their food is grown and where it’s coming from. Distinct, creative farm names separate smaller farms from large-scale industrial agribusiness that probably doesn’t have a name in the supermarket. “People know us as the dirty girls – even Joe (the farmer) gets tagged as one although he bristles a little at that sometimes. They remember us,” says Sierra Schlesinger smiling easily while selling two pounds of shelling beans. The farm gets its name from the original owners; two women who tried to call it Fan Tan Farm in 1995. Local farmers nicknamed them the “dirty girls” and the name stuck.

Agriculture relies on brand naming just like any other business. Names make it easier to make a personal connection with the people who grow our food. Frog Hollow Farm’s yellow peaches are indescribably good in both texture and flavor. Flying Disc Ranch’s Aram will let you sample a few different varieties of fresh, soft dates that are more delectable than fine caramel. People remember company names and when the product is consistently good they develop fervent brand loyalty. Dirty Girl Produce’s Early Girl dry-farmed tomatoes have become legendary in the Bay Area and beyond. “Sometimes people don’t even bother to look at the signs,” says Dirty Girl worker Steve Wright, “but they know what they’re looking for and ask you: ‘Are these the Dirty Girl tomatoes?’”

(more…)

Tags: Food Branding
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In the fifties America was launching satellites into space and racing the Russians to the moon. High technology had come to the dinner table as well, and food branding took a cue from NASA. New food preservation technology inspired processed food products that were all about convenience and Swanson’s TV dinners were born. The sixties brought us the questionable appeal of Tang and other space-age foods (astronaut ice cream anyone?). Soon after we landed on the moon and it was common for food products to be marketed to kids as “fun”. But with an exponential increase in health problems due to poor diets, American food product branding has gone looking for its roots in the kitchen and at the farm.

In 2008 we’re still eating food with product branding from the future, but a shift in consciousness has brought about a remarkable difference in food naming and marketing. Farmers’ markets’ and fresh vegetables have come in to vogue in the San Francisco Bay Area. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods markets have multiplied. The idea that food is more appealing when its roots are in the earth rather than a laboratory has become much more popular. Food branding and marketing has consequently veered towards product names that evoke homemade goodness rather than high-tech chemical combinations.

Even frozen dinners have been re-invented. Swanson’s frozen TV dinners are now crowded by “all natural” and organic options like Amy’s Kitchen’s Garden Vegetable Lasagna. The idea is the same: instant, convenient meals. But the company names and product branding has dramatically changed. Rather than an emphasis on convenience frozen dinners are marketed as nutritious meals that just so happen to be easily prepared at the push of a button.

With lists of ingredients that often defy pronunciation, is it so weird that people these days want food product names to sound like something that’s good for you? Breakfast cereals are a prime example of this apparent shift in brand naming. Would you feel good about feeding your kids the now discontinued “Wackies”, “Freakies”, and “Chocolate Donutz”? Post Cereals’ Sugar Crisp has been re-launched as the subtler Golden Crisp. Kelloggs’ “Sugar Smacks” was reincarnated as “Smacks” now settling on the wholesome (but still sweet with 15 grams of sugar) “Honey Smacks”. “Sugar Frosted Flakes” evolved into “Frosted Flakes” to take the empasis off the sugar part much like Kentucky Fried Chicken’s famous conversion to KFC to avoid the stigma of fried food.

Getting back to the earth with the things we eat is an idea that’s gaining momentum across the board. Naming trends in food branding have taken note and are evolving to match. Personally, I’m not sad to leave astronaut ice cream and Tang behind.

Tags: Food Branding
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