What's In a Name?

Branding Evolution

I’ve got two stories about branding I’d like to share, but before that, here's a quick note:

I’m re-introducing paid subscriptions. In addition to my Wednesday free post and Bent But Not Broken excerpts (which finish on March 13), I will introduce a Sunday post just for paid subscribers. It’s going to be flash fiction, short stories, song lyrics (and maybe even music to go with them, provided I can figure out the guitar), excerpts from existing books, excerpts from work in progress (largely unedited, so be gentle), screenplays (or excerpts from), sneak peeks at upcoming books, contests, giveaways, one-on-one chats or video calls, writing tips and tricks, and whatever else I can come up with.

Consider upgrading your subscription, but if that’s something you can’t swing (or aren’t interested in), tell your friends about this little corner of the internet.

On March 24, 2010, I decided to start a blog. I’d just begun writing and thought that a blog would be a good way to get in some words and practice the craft. The problem I was having was what to name it. The domain andrewbutters.com was taken (more on that below the paywall), and I hadn’t yet written a book, so andrewbuttersauthor.com or authorandrewbutters.com seemed presumptuous. I considered andrewbutterswriter.com or writerandrewbutters.com, but at the time, I didn’t even consider myself a writer (even though as long as I kept writing posts, I most certainly would be.)

Then, I thought of Chuck Wendig. At that time, he was a known quantity but not well known. He’d written a few things and had myriad books on how to write books, but he wasn’t exactly a “household name.” I loved his writing and was (and still am) a regular reader of his blog, terribleminds.com. I decided to come up with something unique to call my own. While that was a decision, I still had the same problem of what to call it. I decided to head to the store for some snacks.

Wandering through the grocery store, I felt this overwhelming desire to buy potato chips. Sea salt and malt vinegar, to be precise. There’s one particular brand of these chips that I immensely enjoy. As I passed them in the aisle, I tossed two bags into my basket, not considering the impulsiveness of the future purchase, let alone the cost. A few more steps down the gleaming sort-of-white grocery store floor, and on the left, was a collection of little yellow signs obnoxiously proclaiming “4 for $5” right below a whole shelf of blue chip bags of the usual variety of flavors: Regular, BBQ, and Salt & Vinegar. Sea salt and malt vinegar!

I stopped dead in my tracks, which seems dramatic now that I’ve written it down, but it’s also precisely what happened. I looked down at my basket. Confused. Not that I had any real reason to be confused; they were just chips, and the particular brand I had come to enjoy had always been a fine choice in the past. But I looked back to my right and checked the price of these well-known salt and vinegary crunchy treats. Let’s round down by $0.09 to simplify the math and say they were $3.50 a bag. In a split second (or two), the calculations were complete. At this moment, the chips in my possession were almost three times the cost of these mysterious blue discount chips.

Three times!

It was right then that I had a revelation (minimally, it was a nifty bit of insight considering I was standing in a grocery store somewhere between the chips and pretzels.) I was ready to spend almost three times as much for chips that, in all likelihood, were not three times as satisfying as the competing brand. For a potato chip to be three times better than another, it would have to be a superb potato chip. It’s a potato chip; for heaven’s sake, we’re not discussing HD TV or the Mars Rover.

In itself, this revelation is not that startling, but what occurred to me was that there was likely a whole host of things out there, bigger things, essential things, for which I was unnecessarily paying considerably more (either in monetary costs or other less tangible forms.) Further, I was confident that I was not alone in this regard. People EVERYWHERE were (figuratively, and in some cases literally) buying chips three times as expensive as they needed to be ALL THE TIME.

For some reason, this seemed utterly unacceptable. Something had to be done. But what? For starters, I returned my usual brand of chips and bought four bags of discount chips. Two bags of salt & vinegar and one bag each of “regular” and BBQ. Before I left the parking lot, I had already cracked open a bag of the bargain S&V, and you know what?

They sucked.

In the chip maker’s defense, they were more than 1/3 as good as the other brand, but not quite half. My regular brand was priced at $3.59; I was convinced this was an inflated number. This was just an arbitrarily assigned cost the chip company came up with (actually, it was probably based on a lot of market research in an attempt to find out just how much they could charge and still have loads of people buy the damn chips.) So, I arbitrarily assigned a bag value of $1.74 to the chips I purchased for $1.25 each.

By my math, I thought I had just received a deal. Not much of one, but a deal nonetheless. I paid $0.49 less for my chips than I thought they were worth. The only problem was they still sucked. So, I didn’t get a deal at all. I just paid $5.00 for two bags of chips I didn’t like and two bags I didn’t want when I could have spent only $2.18 more for two bags of chips I would have enjoyed. I drove home very disappointed with my trip to the grocery store and was mildly depressed that I would now have to eat all these shitty/unwanted chips (crappy or not, it would seem wasteful.)

The moral of the story? Something about getting what you pay for, or at the very least appreciating the value in the things you already know you enjoy. That, or I just proved bus stop advertising works. Either way, when I parked my butt on the couch later that evening, I had the name of my new website along with its tagline.

https://authorandrewbutters.com

Any blogging I do is happening here on Substack now, but I occasionally crosspost over there. I’ll sometimes scoop a post from there to put over here. It’s free to you either way, but I’d prefer you come here for blog posts and newsletter stuff.

As for the story behind andrewbutters.com, you’ll have to become a paid subscriber to read that one.

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• Known Order Girls (a young woman speaks truth to power and subverts authority)

• Near Death By A Thousand Cuts: A Humorous Memoir of Misfortune (laughs)

• Bent But Not Broken: One Family’s Scoliosis Journey (all royalties go to charity)

• Retribution: The Mogul (if you hate Donald Trump, you’ll love this book)

• Losing Vern (short story, only 99¢)

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