Friday, January 30, 2015

What's In a Name?

It is with a heavy heart that I send Plain Jane to her trademark grave. Nuts About Granola, a company in Pennsylvania, has a Plain Jane variety, and I for one have had enough trademark issues to last ten lifetimes. Can anyone say "Inn at Brunswick Station"?

And so, I have become a crazy woman. I think of nothing else but potential new names. I mutter and talk to myself. I am distracted. I am preoccupied. I asked everyone I talked to until my cousin suggested Bearded Dragon Granola. Now I don't ask anymore. I simply lie awake at night, playing with rhymes and alliteration and have even started in on foreign languages. Petite Helene Granola?  And speaking of Helen, I didn't spend this much time choosing names for my children.

I am an inch away from being licensed to wholesale. My nutritional label is done. And, most importantly, more and more people want more and more Plain Jane every day. They need it to go, they need 10 bags, they need it wrapped and they need it shipped. My movie star friend Bill Fichtner is eating his in Prague. We are growing and yet we are having a major identity crisis. How do you settle on a name when the importance of it can't be overstated? How can we find a name that's catchy and memorable, that taps into the idea that this granola is The Way Granola Should Be, kind of like Maine is "The Way Life Should Be"?  Anyone who answers satisfactorily wins a lifetime supply of this delicious stuff. Until then, I will pace and mutter and lie awake, and then, if this works like so much of the other stuff in my life, it will hit me like a ton of bricks when I least expect it, and I will wonder why I didn't see it sooner. What a relief it will be.