Ok, here’s a dirty little secret. We hate our name.
It’s not that Blumenfeld is a horrible name Blumenfeld means flower field. And even though I got called Bloomie and Blumenbutt in grade school, I’m used to it. Compared to Blumenfeld, Fleming’s practically innocuous. It’s a fine, Scottish, American sounding name. (Ok – it does sound like something that gets stuck in your throat.) So what’s the problem? Well, there are a few.
First of all, not everyone remembers the name Blumenfeld. They hear Blumenthal. or Bloomingdales. In the old days – if someone actually remembered your name began with a B – that was all they needed to find you, because they could look in the phone book. When’s the last time you used the phone book? Uh huh, you Google everything like I do, don’t you. So if you Google Bloomingdales I assure you, you’ll never find our marketing, advertising and design firm.
What’s worse, it’s not creative. It’s old fashioned? We sound like an ad firm circa 1950 or worse, a law firm, or an accounting firm- deadly boring. We know, and we’re sorry. We got our first client before we knew we were starting a business, we made a few business cards, made a few ad campaigns, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we’d won 14 BOLI (best of Long Island awards) and suddenly Newsday and the New York Times wrote about us.
Then our business doubled. And our name seemed far less important than the cool ad campaigns, logos, and websites our clients were hiring us to create. We still hated our name. We made jokes about new names (Jew & Fleming , big fish, ) but business got busier, and like the shoemaker’s kids we didn’t have time to rethink our identity.
Then we won some international and national awards. Now even more people had heard of us. And we’re stuck. Or are we? It’s our job to name new businesses and help them build their images. It’s our job to design logos and develop identities that build brands and develop relationships with consumers and businesses that last for years. Doing it for you – that’s our passion. Doing it for ourselves? A nightmare. It sounds something like this:
“What about Big Fish?” My partner says. “We are big fish out here. ”
I say, “It’s taken. Besides, we’re small fish compared to the big Madison Avenue names we used to work with.
“Uh huh, and we don’t want to say we’re big – because they’ll think we’re porkers.”
”What about Sirens,” I suggest.
“You mean like getting caught by the police. Or even worse, horrible females that draw sailors to their deaths.”
We usually have these little chats while taking beach walks. We come back, check our messages and get to go back to work. In 2008 we didn’t even send a holiday card out, because we had too much new business. Lame. We have been thinking of shortening our name, to make it easier to remember. What do you think of blueflem?
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