Susan Su

Jacob’s Wonderbar Brew. Anesthesia To The Upside. Dancing Water…

…Canopy of Heaven.

These poetic words could be the titles of music, or novels.

Actually, they’re the lovingly crafted names of the coffee blends at Philz Coffee, a popular Bay Area gourmet coffee chain.

I was transfixed one morning while grinding some coffee and reading the package, whispering each melodic syllable under my breath. I hadn’t realized I was talking to myself, and I ended up over-grinding my coffee.

Whatever. I was too busy thinking, “Mmm, that one sounds good… ooh, so does that one. Whoa, ‘Silken Splendor’… that must be good,” to worry about one batch of coffee-turned-dust.

I also felt a sudden, scarily powerful craving for more Philz Coffee… and different kinds than what I had on my counter.

What’s in a name?

For Philz customers’ — pent-up desire, sleepy imaginations, and willingness to purchase.

Here’s why naming makes Philz a smart business, and the perfect coffee brand for the SF Bay Area:

They get their customers. They know that San Francisco people are a bunch of yuppie-foodie-creatives - even (and sometimes especially) the ones who work in corporate skyscrapers - who like stuff to be special (just like them!).

Maybe Philz wouldn’t fly in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, but why should they care? Who’s more likely to pay $3.50 for a cup of coffee (not even a latte, mind you) and $15/lb for Swiss Water Decaf beans?

San Franciscans, that’s who.

Before anyone scoffs, let me say that the line at my neighborhood Philz is SO obnoxious every morning, and throughout most of the day, that I actually go buy coffee at 7 pm, right as they’re closing. I also heard that they recently installed a custom Philz machine at the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto. They’ve sealed the deal on the yuppie-foodie-creative market.

Philz Coffee has named their products for their audience - those yuppie-foodie-creative customers with a high appreciation of unusual, melodic product names and an even higher willingness to purchase.

Dark roast coffees: Tantalizing Turkish, Jacob’s Wonderbar Brew, Aromatic Arabic, Ether (my favorite name), Julie’s Ultimate, Mocha Tesora

Medium roasts: Tesora, Philharmonic, Ambrosia Coffee of God, It’z the Best, Philtered Soul, Silken Splendor, Anesthesia To The Upside (my favorite name), Dancing Water, New Manhattan

Light roasts: Greater Alarm, Canopy of Heaven, Sooooo Good

When I asked the people at the Castro Philz which were their best sellers in each category, here’s what they told me:

Dark Roast - Jacob’s Wonderbar Brew

Medium Roast - Tesora

Light Roast - Greater Alarm

“Jacob’s Wonderbar Brew” has great alliteration and a personal connection to Phil’s son (co-owner of the business). “Tesora” implies something superlative, and alludes to Spanish romance. “Greater Alarm” sells this high-caf light roast to the sleep zombies.

The Philz people probably didn’t think about these names as much as I have. They’ll just tell you the coffee sells because it’s good. But, they come from their own audience - they are your typical SF creatives - and I’m pretty sure that has something to do with how well they’ve connected their business and marketing to their customer base.

Also, the coffee’s really good. I swear. At least, it sounds good…

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Week of June 22, 2009–

English is one of the hardest languages in the world to master.

It doesn’t make the standard Top Ten Most Difficult lists (which include the usual suspects Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian) because of its relative accessibility for first-time learners. It’s near impossible, however, to master.

This is because:

• – We have tons of grammatical exceptions.

• – At least in the U.S., we don’t really care about perfection.

To me, English language mastery means:

• – In speaking: being able to tell jokes based on homonyms

• – In writing: getting it right with contractions

Now, who cares about getting it right with contractions and other minor spelling and grammar stuff? If people get what you’re trying to say, why does it matter if you know the difference between [its] and [it's]?

Yesterday, I received a postcard advertising a luxury Alaskan cruise in the mail. Everything about it said “fancy!” - from the photo montage of gourmet dinners, spa rooms, and majestic glaciers, to the award logos printed all over it. I’m not a cruise person, but it nonetheless got me thinking about the possibility of an Alaskan vacation, until…

“Amazing Alaska, few places anywhere in the world can match it’s splendor.”

FYI, postcard people -

[it's] is a contraction of the two words [it] and [is]

[its] is the possessive form of the pronoun [it] that you’re looking for

Here’s why contractions are so important to converting those discerning customers:

• It’s rarely a typo when you use [you're] instead of [your] or [it's] instead of [its]. You just don’t know the language rules
• Since it’s not a typo, it doesn’t so much show carelessness as it reveals ineptitude
• I’m not going to trust a company with my vacation, my safety, and thousands of my dollars that can’t get the basics right

Note to self:

If I’m ever in a position to spend tens of thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns targeting customers’ mailboxes, inboxes, and Facebook profiles, make sure to edit for ineptitude.

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Monkeys need tools. Humans need… inspiration, initiative, and ok, maybe some very basic tools.

The other day I was talking to my friend Chris, a video person and aspiring filmmaker who spends his days working a state admin job, about how much he hates his job and finds it deadening to his creativity, etc.

I suggested that maybe he could start doing small, iterative video experiments - on the side - and post them on YouTube or on his own website to give his creative portfolio a more current, ‘bloggy’ component.

It sounds obvious and basic - a creative person using the Internet to showcase their work, get in some practice, and maybe get noticed - but most people never get around to doing any such thing.

“But, I don’t have…

• enough time
• the right equipment
• the right situation
• the right connections!”

Chris started off with these standard protestations. Now, I happen to find this kind of talk extremely annoying and disempowering, even for ME the listener, so I suggested that he make a few little videos of all the ideas he supposedly has all day long, and actually show them to some people.

A couple of days later, he surprised me and actually did it.

Here’s how Chris turned his boring administrative work into a simple creative experiment in 30 minutes:

Made with:

• 9 minutes of filming with an old MacBook Pro built-in iSight camera
• 20 minutes of editing
• a lot of his own inspiration and initiative

working with the aoc from Chris Whitmore on Vimeo.

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A humble list.

On Facebook, I think it’s better if you DO NOT:

1. Change your relationship status from ‘Single’ to ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Single’ to ‘It’s complicated’ to ‘Single’ in a span of 5 days. Facebook recognizes your lovelife humiliation as extra juicy news, so it says sticky in the “Highlights” bar of all your friends’ and network members’ homepages.
2. Post personal health information: “Weird juices flowing out, Vicodin finally kicking in.”
3. Name names. Unless it’s a lovingly funny joke.
4. Broadcast the expensive new toys you buy yourself: “Love driving around my BRAND NEW Mercedes” - BARF.
5. Do numerous poorly written and highly predictable quizzes every day. People will mute you from their news feed.

All else is fair game!

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Every American writer likes to throw in some Fancy French now and then.

Who can blame them? It makes your otherwise tedious vocabularly a little more spicy, a little less midwestern, and just a touch ‘escargot.’

Today’s Fancy French Frase is coup de grâce, a term that I now realized I’ve been misusing for many years.

Coup de in French is something like blow, strike, clap, sudden change. When combined with other words into a compound phrase, it can mean anything from ‘feeling drained all of a sudden’ to ’sunburn’ to ‘a push in the right direction.’ The main focus is on the suddenness of something. For example, a military coup is a change in governance that happens suddenly.

Grâce in French mostly means what it sounds like, grace, thanks, or mercy.

Coup de grâce is a compound phrase that originated in wartime - it was the final blow that put some severely injured soldier out of his misery, a merciful blow sending him to his maker with grace.

So, a coup de grâce is a sudden, merciful ending to a period of suffering.

“The national recession was the ailing company’s final coup de grâce.”

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Whole Foods does an amazing job in marketing on many different levels - from the ‘we buy local’ propaganda placards, to the ‘whole kids’ line of white label, kids-focused products, to the store layouts emphasizing pricier items like bakery, deli and hot foods. They’re basically rocking.

But, the tactics they’re using in their stores, while highly effective at making me want their products, aren’t SO different than the traditional, in-store marketing strategies used (less successfully) by other chains. They’ve taken some of the basics - put your high-margin, high-appeal baked goods and prepared foods up front, do eye-level product placement and samples to promote best-sellers on the shelves, make those little “Shopper In Training” carts to occupy kids and get them addicted early on - and tweaked them to out-market all the other supermarkets.

Their online marketing, though, is where they really sparkle and innovate.

Whole Story is the cute name of their company blog, where they publish interesting and valuable stuff in addition to promotional content. In stark contrast with other, less savvy companies, they share information that’s actually useful to their readership: topical coverage on nutrition, agribusiness, and all other areas where they want to establish their expertise AS WELL AS tactical stuff on recipes, how to deal with leftovers, how to spot deals and fakes.

Contrast that with a company I knew of whose blog consisted entirely of repackaged press releases. Everything sounded fake (because all ‘news’ had already been euphemized by a PR agency and WAS more or less fake), and of course no one read the blog except a few bored employees when they had it emailed to them.

This company kept marketing themselves like this - selfishly tooting its own horn while pushing out a continuous stream of useless, untrustworthy information to its audience - and failed miserably. Their biggest mistake was convincing themselves that their audience was their mother - someone who’s obsessed enough with you and your specialness that she’ll read your 4th grade “Why I’m the Best” essay over and over again.

Before we go judging this company for being arrogant novices at social marketing, let’s consider the fact that MOST companies are this way. In fact, MOST humans are this way - and writers (and other ‘communicators’) are especially susceptible to selfishness. It’s stage one of communications, self-expression. It’s the “me, me, me!” of marketing and brand management. The catch is that to connect with customers, audience, and users in a way that’s meaningful to them and valuable to you, communications have to mature past the infant stage. The motto should actually be “you, you, you, us, me!”

I’m addicted to the Whole Foods blog because they get this. Ok, sure there’s some promotional content on there. But, it’s mostly information that’s useful enough for me to bookmark, share with others, and hold on to, first and foremost for my own benefit.

This recipe post about making natural, healthy rice crispy treats was a great example of mature brand communication.

Its successes include:

• * linked to the recipe (driving traffic and attention to their main site)
• * explained the thinking behind the healthy substitutions (promoting the Whole Foods ‘way of thinking’ and making it educational and worthy of sharing w/ others)
• * involves users b/c it was written in response to a user request (inspiring me to write in and get my recipe request resolved next time)
• * promotes products that Whole Foods sells in its stores

It makes me feel good about the brand that I’m supporting, and makes me want to spend my hard-earned dollas on expensive almond butter to make these treats.

It’s so legitimately useful that, even after all the analysis, I’ll happily become a Whole Foods Zombie any day.

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