Is Your Brand Easy To Remember?

This week at IMPROV Inc. we’ve been reminded of being reminded. Yup: the memorability of a business, no less. How easily can people describe you or your business? It’s an attention economy, after all.

Should you be clearer? More whacky? Less try-hard? What does the calibration look like? Whichever route you go down, you should probably check that your ideal client will relate to your direction and messaging.

Something that rings true… 

Remember when you could recite a dozen friends’ home numbers and your own – backwards, blindfolded, and in French? My (Paul’s) childhood home phone was always answered with a cheery: “Hello, Whiteparish 649,” making us sound like we ran a spy network out of a sleepy Wiltshire village. I assumed we were the 649th household in town. Who was Whiteparish 001? I still want to know.

In the good old days of rotary dials in every home and red phone boxes on every other corner, that recall mattered. Back then, if you didn’t memorise numbers, you simply couldn’t call anyone. You’d be left standing in a phone box with a (big) 10p coin and a blank expression.

Fast-forward to today and I barely know my own phone number, let alone anyone else’s. My brain’s a revolving door of passwords, where I’ve left my specs, puppy habits and which streaming platform’s got the show I’ve forgotten I love. We’ve outsourced recall to the cloud. Yet I still remember Whiteparish 649.

In this attention economy, brand recall starts with what sticks — and what you’d walk to a red phone box in the rain to dial.

👆Thoren Bradley + a bison + Candy Shop by 50 Cent = viral content. Who knew?!

Something unhinged…

I (Vic) have this week discovered the unparalleled, unhinged TikTok account claiming to be Yellowstone National Park. It’s fooled everyone.

Since the USA’s parks were defunded, someone has begun tirelessly stitching thirst-trap influencer dudes like Thoren Bradley and Jonathan Kane with Yellowstone park footage, like a rushing waterfall, with a music bed of explicit or sassy such as Kelis’s: ‘My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard’.

Result? Spicy and hilarious TikToks that’ve gained so much attention that all the national parks are piling on. The comments sections are feral. The world is obsessed. Even Yellowstone Park Official is letting them cook and Bradley and Kane have since commented giving full approval and consent.

My point? That any brand can be fresh and unique if it finds the right way to talk about itself. This go-large-or-go-home marketing’s gaining global attention. Even if those viewers aren’t hikers, they’re raising nature awareness and paying for the park via clicks and comments. Win.

“Products are made in a factory but brands are created in the mind”  Walter Landor, US design consultant

Something mapped…

Back in the day, my (Paul’s) Whiteparish-to-Edinburgh university migration was a heroic odyssey in a beaten up canary yellow ‘81 Mini Metro: the A343 to The 303, hitch onto The 34, pass Silverstone, cling to the M1, Scotch Corner handshake, then onto the rollercoaster 68 and into Auld Reekie. All committed to memory via a dog-eared AA Road Atlas with a couple of coffee rings on the cover and questionable navigation notes in biro. Significantly, each quirky personal moniker had meaning and resonance.

I left Edinburgh years ago, but I can still summon its street names like Hogwarts spells: Clerk Street to Marchmont, Bruntsfield to Pilton. I can mentally walk you from Sneaky Pete’s to the Lord Russell Place chippy via three shortcuts, a cobbled close and the all-night bakery. A must, after a student night out.

And yet, after 20 years in my current town, I couldn’t name a road 300 yards away if my life depended on it. I now navigate locally by vague vibes: ‘left at the tree that looks like a man’; ‘past the angry cat house’.

It’s not just memory - it’s meaning. Edinburgh had narrative, identity and, thank the powers above, late-night chippies. Here, it’s just: where the bins go on Tuesday - or is it Wednesday?

Turns out, brand recall works the same: if the information is not etched in story, it fades into the fog of ‘somewhere near Aldi’.

#AppliedImprovisation #YesAnd #BusinessSkills #PersonalGrowth #agilityinbusiness #YellowstoneNationalPark #SmallBusiness #solopreneurs #positiveenergy #playfulsolutions #niching #IdealClient #AuldReekie