Would You Wear a Perfume Called "Fat Electrician"? (How to Hotwire Your Brand So People Actually Feel Something)

Pop quiz! 💭 "FAT ELECTRICIAN" is the name of what? a) A craft beer; b) A marketing agency; c) A perfume; d) Your stepdad. (See below👇)

It's official. Yesterday I was chatting on LinkedIn about how fun it would be if a fragrance company had the creative vision to name their products less like "notes of bergamot" and more like "RACE CAR DRIVER'S GIRLFRIEND."

And the good folks there hooked me up with a few companies that were! Which of course sent me down a rabbit hole of research. Turns out? Several subversive brands are doing this well:

Imaginary Authors with perfume names like:

• "The Abandoned Mansion"
• "Memoirs of a Trespasser"
• "How to Say Bicycle in French"

Etat Libre d'Orange with:

• "Fat Electrician"
• "I Am Trash"
• "She Was an Anomaly"

D.S. & DURGA with:

• Resurrected Corpse Flower
• Burning Barbershop

Phlur with:

• Father Figure
• Missing Person
• Not Your Baby

Demeter Fragrance Library with:

• Funeral Home
• Clean Windows
• Play-Doh
• Laundromat

Snif with:

• Naughty Nonna
• Breakfast of Champions
• Dead Dinosaur

Huge fan. 👏👏👏 I bet "How to say Bicycle in French" is a best-seller. We immediately picture ourselves, in another life (maybe the one we regret not pursuing), learning French in the mornings at an old baker's table in a stone cottage from the 1600s before biking through a lavender field with a warm baguette and a bottle of Grand Cru St. Emilion—and somehow, we are more alive, more carefree, and the fullest expression of ourselves.

It's literally a form of alteriphoria: “other” plus “euphoria" = the high of imagining your alternate life.

And, it's that imagery that gives your copy an ~emotional charge~.

I call this hotwiring your brand: jumpstarting desire. The copy skips the rational pitch and turns the engine over like VROOM. 🧨 🧨 🧨

Most product names/descriptions carry zero emotional charge. 💤 Filled with features and specs and dimensions and shipping speeds. Like a cold, damp sponge. (The worst when you pick one up like that in the sink!)

But, in the era of AI?

One of the last things you still have, and will always have, is the ability to be outrageously creative, to challenge your industry's conventions, to make people smile, to create things that make the world more delightful (or at least bearable, lol), and to do the kind of work that nobody can ignore.

Not even a fat electrician.