Hey, y’all!
We recently relocated to an area of South Carolina known as the Lowcountry. As such, we’ve been busy building tons of new relationships — reliable providers for home maintenance, cool places to shop and eat, and local business contacts for banking, networking, office support and other fun stuff.
It’s all frankly a bit overwhelming, and I’ve found myself struggling to remember who’s who. Which pest control company did we decide to use? What was the name of the architect we both liked?
Fun tip from Captain Obvious: Here’s where being memorable matters in your branding.
The days are long gone when being memorable meant being at the top of an alphabetical list in the phone book (the logic behind naming your business A1 Plumbing or AAA Ace Locksmiths for those of you who don’t know what a phone book is).
Every third business down here is Lowcountry XYZ or ABC of Hilton Head (even when they’re literally miles from the island, but that’s another rant). Using a geographic reference as a differentator is useless when pretty much every competitor is doing the same thing.
A few quick shout-outs to businesses that got it right:
The Arbor Barbers of the Lowcountry — Highly visual word play plus rhyming? Be still my heart. Notice how they snuck in the geographic reference but didn’t make it the focus.
Beachside Construction — Ho-hum, you say? Then you discover the owner’s name is Nick Beach. And his service area is a beach community. Extra kudos for his “pride of ownership” URL: builtbybeachside.com.
Dean Custom Air — The population of Bluffton, SC has nearly doubled in the past decade, with many newcomers (like us!) relocating from states with vastly different weather. That means we know jack about how the southern heat and humidity impacts our home’s cooling system. Dean’s radio spots get immediate attention because the lead off with, “New to the area? We’re not!” A simple, effective way to show you know your audience.
Low Country Shrimp and Knits — This sly connection to a ubiquitous southern dish nicely reflects the owner’s cheeky personality and upbeat brand voice. It’s also memorable enough to not be eclipsed by the inclusion of lowcountry in the name.
And two non-local bits of genius from the branding archives:
Jack of all Shades — He’s a painting contractor. His name is Jack. Enough said.
Lino Richie — UK flooring contractor Richard McKinlay really leans into the pun with his tagline: “Is it me you’re looking “floor”.
Massive respect to people who know branding. That’s why my 30-second introduction at networking meetings sounds like this:
“Hi, I’m Lisa Fahoury of Fahoury Ink, a content marketing agency. Clearly I’m not a branding expert, since I took the world’s hardest to spell, pronounce and remember name and I named the company after it. Trust me, NOBODY comes to us for branding. But they DO come to us for kickass copywriting.”
I like to think that makes us memorable.