Banana Florist Blog

I've been reading Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This.  The author reminds me of Seth Godin, in that both guys have a gift for presenting questions and solutions that seem excruciatingly simple once I've read them, but that I'd never think of on my own.  To wit:

• "Find the central truth about your product."  (Cameras don't take photos; they freeze moments in time.  Banana Florist isn't a flower shop; we're a happiness brokerage.)
• "Brand = adjective."  (Volvo = safe; Banana Florist = ?)

It's pretty embarrassing to admit, but we're not sure what single adjective we want people to associate with BF.  I started scribbling down my own questions, some of them discussed in Whipple, if not explictly addressed.  These questions are familiar ones, as I ask them whenever a client or project lead presents me with a writing job:

• Who do you want to talk to? 
  
• What do you want to say?

It's doubly embarrassing to admit that I can't definitively answer either of those in regard to BF.  Marketer, heal thyself.  The original concept of BF blew me away, and impressed enough folks to get us considerable burn in blogs, from Godin posting on us the day after we launched to Toby mentioning us yesterday on her Diva Marketing Blog.  But, as I mentioned last week, high-flown concepts are no excuse for skimp on basic discipline, and we're still mulling over the elementary.