My partner, Josh, proposed this name to me for a joint venture branding company we might start.  This is the email I wisked off as I thought through the name.

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I hate the name. Scratch it up burn it and never mention it again.

Just kiddin. I don’t like it though. I just don’t. I don’t like psycho or beast and we’d have to be constantly explaining why that is our name. Maybe that is the point, but I imagine calling people up and saying hi this is RJ DeLong, PsychoBeast Marketing, and on the one hand it kind of gets me laughing, but on the other it just doesn’t sound… for real. I do like the idea it gives though. Some kind of animal charging around knocking things over and causing a ruckus.

I picture a warthog running through a house and smashing stuff up with his tusks. Bull in a china shop. Negative connotation although I guess they would think we are going to be out making a scene and working at a really frantic pace to get the word out, which is good I like that.

On the other hand “Proliferate” doesn’t do that at all. It is just some lame word with no real image. It’s only good because of the definition I found involves multiplying. If I were to call up a secretary with PsychoBeast Marketing I imagine that would pique her interest and make us seem like a couple of fun guys, as opposed to Proliferate which would just seem like any other business name. The more I talk about it and think about it, the more I really like it.

Could we really name our company that though?  Don’t you think people wouldn’t take us seriously?

What would the beast be like?

Ok I’m kind of liking this now. Seriously.

I imagine a TV commercial with our psychobeast, AFLAC has a duck, we have a warthog. He’s kind of like our mascot.  And he has a little sort of blanketish thing that covers him as clothing like they put over a horse you know when they get it all dressed up and ready for the knight to parade around so his legs are open but it ties around his neck and drapes over him and on it, it says PsychoBeast and he’s all superheroish with his cape. And its some dinner party at like a ritzy place with guys who look like the guys from Mad Men (which are old school marketers / advertisers by the way) and they are all around dressed in suits and ties sipping whiskey out of fancy glasses and their women are all dolled up in evening gowns and one guy is talking to a bunch of other old guys talking about his recent client acquisition from the country club – yes Jim and I have played golf together for years… blah blah blah and in charges PsychoBeast busting through the door with his cape and tears around the room and jumps up on the couch and everyone stops and looks at him. It’s all silent people are frozen holding their glasses suspended in mid motion. They don’t know what to do, and Psychobeast stands there and squares off to the old guy and stares at him. He just stands there and stares him down for a second, and then you see a close up of one of the women who from the viewers perspective is in between but in the background ever so slowly so as not to set off the beast again turn her head from the warthog to the old man looking at him in disbelief with her mouth open to check his reaction.

Cut to black.

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