Comet Branding - Branding | PR | Social Media

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX???

Every once and a while I catch myself thinking about the first time I experienced certain things or “where was I when” moments. When I was reading the most recent issue of Fast Company magazine I had another one.

The authors of the book “Made to Stick,” Dan Heath and Chip Heath, who have a regular section in the magazine, wrote an article titled “Get Back in the Box – how constraints can free your team’s thinking.”

When I read this, I started to think about when I heard about “thinking out outside of a box” for the first time and how many times I’ve heard someone talk about it since. I think it might have been while working at Hill & Knowlton in Chicago in 2000, but I’m not sure and it probably doesn’t matter.

The brothers Heath proposed that “…it’s about time someone spoke up for the box. Because, paradoxically, thinking inside the box can spark creativity, not squelch it.” At the time, I thought this was a nice concept and wondered how it could be applied. A couple weeks later, Mike from Mindspike Design (brilliant design show by the way) and I found out firsthand.

Shortly after launching Comet Branding, I was meeting with Mike and he got an email from a potential client asking for some name ideas for a restaurant rebranding by the next morning. We both raised our eyebrows and thought that it might be a pretty tough task, considering the timeframe. However, our contact Al Balda, told us his boss really liked the word “moto” and said we should try to incorporate it somehow.

Long story, made short, I dropped the word “moto” into a Japanese to English translation site (the restaurant is Asian Fusion) just to see if it meant anything. Presto! It turns out, moto means, “source, origin or base.” Then I got to thinking that it would be cool if this new restaurant brand could mean “the source of good flavor,” or something along those lines. After a little while, we learned that the Japanese word, uamami, means “deliciousness.” How about UMAMI MOTO? Bingo!

After some additional research, it was determined that
there is a huge back story behind umami that has now been parlayed into some great branding and a strong story (it’s the fifth element of taste and it was discovered by a Japanese chemist in 1907, beyond sour, sweet, bitter, salty and has only recently been officially name a taste). Lots of great stories to tell.

From our perspective, if Al Balda would have told us to come up with a restaurant brand and handed us a blank sheet of paper – it would have been exponentially more difficult for us to come up with a rock star solution.

Moto was our box and because of it we were able to be strategically creative, instead of just grabbing at straws. So, here’s to you Dan and Chip. You hit the nail on the head.

by: al krueger, president | brander
source: comet branding, Fast Company

Tags: Brand Development, creative thinking, Fast Company, Storytelling, umami moto