Branding a product: how a 5-minute blurb turns into 3 days

November 27, 2007

Ok. As you’ve possibly already read, we have a new product out for the holidays called the Facemod Self-Centerpiece, which we developed to promote our new 3d-printing capabilities. As anyone who has ever written a resume knows, it’s 10 times more difficult to market your own stuff than someone else’s. And that is why it has taken 3 days to decide upon 2 simple words in our marketing blurb: candlestick and bisque.

What is a “Candlestick?”: this word actually means “thing that holds a candle.” The dictionary, Wikipedia and lots of candle sites all agree—but we couldn’t. I mean, the only part that looks like a stick is the actual candle, right? We went through tons of names. “Candle Holder” sounds clunky. “Single Candelabrum” sounds hoity toity. So, after all the research is over, we are sticking with “Candlestick” but using “Candle Holder” at least once in the description.

What’s another name for “off-white?” We went through the Sherwin Williams swatch fan as well as their super cool online color visualizer, took informal surveys around the office, and even found a list of color names on eBay (who knew?)! There are a lot of names for off-white: French Vanilla, Alabaster, Antique White, Winter White, Shell, Oyster, Ecru and Bone, to name a few. Seems there are lots of preconceived notions with each color. “Bone” seemed to be one of the best descriptors, but we’re talking about faces already…adding “bone” to the description seems a little creepy. Anyway, we went with Bisque because it relates to pottery (and because it has a Q in it - YEA), but in the process, we also learned that Bisque, the soup, is not necessarily white-ish. In fact, it’s often red-ish, with the word having more to do with being smooth or pureed than color. But by the time we learned that, we had all grown to like the word, so to hell with it. It’s Bisque (until further notice).