You should get yourself to Rehab

A few months ago we got a call from entrepreneur Veeno Suchdeve of West Babylon, New York. He was opening a self-serve frozen yogurt store at the mall and wanted a more provocative name than Spoon Me, which is quite possibly the best name ever created by Eat My Words. Veeno asked us to create a name he could monetize with branded merchandise that would appeal to teenage mallrats and bring in cold, hard cash. This was a hard order to fill, but we were up for the challenge. I immediately thought of the name Self Gratification, but Veeno thought it was a little too edgy. Then, inspired by my longtime addiction to frozen yogurt, aversion to alcohol, and fascination with Lindsey Lohan, I came up with the name Rehab. It was fun, fresh and scored 100% on the SMILE & SCRATCH test. (Rena created the equally fun tagline, “Get your fix.”) And our 12-stepper friends assured us that they didn’t find the name or tagline offensive or mean-spirited. We absolutely love the playful identity design, which was created by our talented go-to designer, John Luckett. By turning the R into an Rx symbol with a spoon, the logo instantly communicates that Rehab is related to food. (Hopefully no one interprets it as a coke, crack, or smack spoon.) If the name Rehab makes you smile, please show them some love and “like” them on their new Facebook page.

Debbie Does More Than Dallas…

If you’ve ever been stuck in voicemail hell, it may have been the voice of Debbie Irwin who told you to “Press 9 for customer service.” The voice of the Statue of Liberty, Debbie is one of most interesting people I’ve ever met. A former NYC stockbroker, she left Wall Street for Sesame Street when she started to have kids. After they were grown, she took a class in voiceovers and was not only hooked, she was hired. You can hear her voice on countless commercials, corporate videos, audio books, webspots, eLearning programs and more. Debbie Irwin the person is highly memorable. Unfortunately her business name, Debbie Irwin Voiceovers, was kinda forgettable. It didn’t shout out among her competitors or evoke her playful sense of humor. By rebranding her as Debbie Does Voiceovers, we gave her an instantly likable, loud, and unforgettable name that her clients love and love to talk about.

A painfully funny name: Briss

Our main man Mik discovered this baby… Briss is a (snore) cross-platform open-source Java application that (aha!) trims PDFs so they fit better and are easier to read on your eReader. Fun! We love this reaction… “This is outrageous. PDF mutilation is inherently wrong! At least let him wait until he’s old enough to decide his own file size!!”

Do they use coat hangers to groom them?

“Doggie Dearest,” Manhattan a dog and cat grooming parlor, has a name that might appear innocent to some, but insiders (like our name spotter, Gary Castille), are in on the joke. Inspired by the campy cult classic film,”Mommy Dearest,” (a 1981 biographical drama about actress Joan Crawford),  Doggie Dearest is a nod to this infamous scene, as described on Wikipedia, “After Joan, cross-eyed and slathered in cold cream, stalks into Christina’s bedroom in the middle of the night and discovers one of the child’s dresses hanging on a wire hanger, she launches into a tirade, screaming at the girl, ‘I told you! No wire hangers, ever!’ She tears apart her closet and hits the girl with the hanger.”

Introducing Hand Job, a cheeky new nail salon in the Castro

Introducing Hand Job, a cheeky new nail salon that’s smack in the heart of San Francisco’s gay mecca, the Castro. Like our other “risque” brand name, Spoon Me frozen yogurt, Hand Job has tremendous potential to be monetized through the sale of lotions, potions, polish, t-shirts, totes, and anything else you can slap the logo on and ring up at the register. The jaw-dropping tourists on Castro Street are scooping it up. (Trust me, they do not sell Hand Job tea towels at the Mall of America.) Special thanks to John Luckett for designing a logo that’s playful yet sophisticated and lets the name speak for itself. We love the bold red color, which will make for sleek and sexy holiday and Valentine gifts.

50 Funny Store Names (with photos)!

Best Week Ever scoured the internet and pulled together these 50 store names that have fun with puns. Enjoy!

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46 More Pun Stores (Seriously) After the cut.

And they’re pretty much all brilliant.

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We wrote the book on naming books.

Imagine our surprise when we looked on Amazon a few weeks ago and saw that the book we titled Solemate was ranked #29 on their best seller list and #1 under books on “Depression.” (Nothing depressing about that!) Author Lauren Mackler came to Eat My Words at the eleventh hour, needing an arresting book title for her new book about “mastering the art of aloneness.” Our team tackled the assignment, submitting catchy titles including, Dancing With Myself, Table For One, and Good Enough for Garbo. The winning title, “Solemate” says it all. And readers clearly love it. Babs on Amazon gave it five stars and said, “…who can resist that clever title.”

What do you call "Yelp for pet owners?:

Doggone it, “Yelp” would be the perfect name, but it was taken. So we came up with Breed Trust (and got www.breedtrust.com on GoDaddy for $9.95). When you see the Breed Trust decal in a window of a pet service provider or on their website, you know that it is a business you can trust because, as our taglines says, it’s Owner Recommended. Pet Approved. In addition to user ratings and reviews of local pet businesses, the Breed Trust website will include info on dog and cat breeds, pet travel, and the “Gossip Hound News Browser,” featuring pet news (yes, you can lap up more about Bo!), user reviews of pet-themed books, movies, and TV shows (e.g. I Love Lassie), pet care advice, and of course an online pet store, because pets don’t drive. We’ll yap about it when it launches, but if you want to be the first to know, sign up here.

Announcing a fresh new name for Second Chance Coffee: I HAVE A BEAN

When some people thought the name Second Chance Coffee implied that the beans were recycled, the founders knew it was time for a name change. The name Second Chance stemmed from the mission of the company – to help ex-offenders help themselves by providing gainful post-prison employment, job training and a community of acceptance. The company positively impacts the spiritual, social and economic condition of their employees, their families and the communities in which they live. All that and they make what many people say is the smoothest cup of coffee they have ever tasted. (It’s so smooth, most of their customers drink it black.) Second Chance wanted us to create a memorable name that they could monetize, like we had done for frozen yogurt franchise Spoon Me and the chain of laundromats we named Stuff a Sock in It. After reviewing dozens of names, the top contenders were narrowed down to Happy Joe Lucky, I Dream of Coffee, Thank God It’s Coffee, and I Have a Bean. We felt that I Have a Bean made the biggest emotional connection and had the strongest potential to make our client rich through the sale of t-shirts, mugs and coffee canisters. The client agreed. The tagline we created, “Inspired Coffee” helps set the tone that the company is inspiring people to live better lives. We are thrilled with the package design, which was created by Carrie Dufour and her talented team at Sloat Design. We snatched up www.ihaveabean.com for $9.95 and the site and brand officially launch on June 1st. Until then, follow them on Twitter, at I Have a Bean.

OpenTable Dishes Up Appetizing Conference Room Names

Kudos to restaurant reservation company OpenTable (my favorite free service) for having a contest to name their conference rooms.

Out of 51 entries, the winning theme was “fictitious restaurants or cafes from TV shows.” Congrats to Julie Hall, the clever employee whose prize is a slick new TV. (How fitting!) Now people can say, “Let’s meet in…

Central Perk (Friends)
Cafe Nervosa (Frasier)
The Peach Pit (90210)
Cheers (Cheers)
Arnold’s Drive-In (Happy Days)
Monk’s Café (Seinfeld)
The Regal Beagle (Three’s Company)
Phil’s (Murphy Brown)
Riff’s (Mad About You)
McClaren’s (How I Met Your Mother)
Moe’s (The Simpsons)

A foodie friend of mine works at OpenTable and was kind enough to let me collaborate with him on some names. These were our submissions:

BREAKFAST CEREAL CONFERENCE ROOMS
Cap’n Crunch
Count Chocula
Franken Berry
Shredded Wheat
Special K
Wheat Chex
Boo Berry
Malt-O-Meal
Froot Loops

KITCHENWARE CONFERENCE ROOMS
Spatula
Wooden Spoon
Cutting Board (great name for a board room!)
Pressure Cooker (another killer name!)
Corkscrew
Rolling Pin
Egg Beater
Garlic Press
Waffle Iron

We wish more companies would get creative with their conference room names – it’s a fun way to add personality to any business.