SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of Screw the Commute, Tom Antion discusses the concept of "fish branding," which refers to renaming products or companies to make them more appealing to consumers. He starts with humorous anecdotes, including a case of stolen eggs and a hijacked donut truck, before diving into why branding can make or break a business.
Tom critiques traditional branding, arguing that many entrepreneurs waste money on logos and color schemes that don't necessarily translate into sales. He illustrates his point with real-life examples of fish that were renamed to boost their appeal, such as:
• Dolphin fish ? Mahi Mahi
• Slimehead ? Orange Roughy
• Patagonian Toothfish ? Chilean Sea Bass
He warns against poor branding choices, like a businessperson who branded himself as IP Money, which unintentionally sounded humorous. Tom also mentions classic branding blunders, such as Chevrolet's Nova failing in Spanish-speaking markets because “No va” means "won't go."
The key takeaway: Business owners should carefully consider how their brand names are perceived by the public, ensuring they are clear, appealing, and not unintentionally off-putting.
Tom wraps up by promoting episode 961 (about a Beatles-themed musical) and his internet marketing training program.

===

Episode 962 – Fish Branding
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 962 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about fish branding. What the heck is fish branding? Well, I'm going to tell you in a minute. Hope you didn't miss episode 961. Hey, if you like the Beatles. Wow. My buddy Mike Stewart has got a gold record from the 80s. I think it was. And he is producing a show called Four Lads from Liverpool. You can go to fourladsfromliverpool.com. It's kind of like a Hamilton show. So he's got a Kickstarter campaign. You can get all kinds of cool freebies from it. So, check that out. Episode 961. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, the episode number. That was 961. And hey, we just completed our YouTube Quick Tips series starting at episode 944 to 960, so you don't want to miss that. And also pick up a copy of my automation book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:37] Alright, let's get into branding, right? Like what the heck is fish branding? Well, you'll understand that in a second. Uh oh, and by the way, I just got, uh, noticed that, uh, somebody stole 100,000 organic eggs. And, I mean, any kind of theft, and that's that's grand theft, you know, you hear Grand theft auto, grand theft Eggs.

[00:02:07] I never heard of such a thing. But, you know, this one person told me that eggs can be as much as 20 bucks a dozen down in Miami. And I'm trying to think, where are they going to move 100,000 eggs? Are they going to are these eggs going to start showing up at, you know, sleazy pawn shops or what? What the heck? Anyway, uh, I don't know why I told you that, but it just just struck me as funny. It was almost, almost as funny as the the donut truck that got hijacked. And there was a bunch of police cars following it. Now, think about that, that visual. All right, all right. Well, anyway, uh, I've never been a big fan of branding. I mean, most people brand themselves into the poor house. And I always give the example, you know, I get these people say, well, I want my website colors to look exactly like my brochure. And, and I say, go down to Best Buy Spy and open up ten different laptops and pull your computer up, or pull your website up and see what it looks like. It's different on all of them, so total waste of time and money. Some people are spending five, ten, $15,000 on a logo. They haven't sold one thing. And you know, it's crazy. So anyway, fish branding, right? What is it? Well, I was having a discussion at breakfast and about how some companies have such bad reviews they just rename themselves.

[00:03:44] I had seen a couple examples of that the day before or something. And so they just rename themselves. Now this is fraudulent. All right. It's the same company with the same crappy service and product and just trying to hoodwink the public. So that's not you know, it's no, no good. But the point is, is they rename themselves. And so I was I was thinking About food because it reminded me of this. I heard about this on the news where some fish was renamed because the original name was so unpalatable that nobody would buy it or eat it. Right? And and I couldn't remember what fish it was, so I googled it. And apparently there's loads of fish in that category, so. So they're rebranding their fish is what they're doing to sell them. So the one that I was thinking of that I had forgotten about was dolphin fish. Now this came about apparently nobody wanted to eat anything with regard to dolphin. And by the way, the fish has nothing to do with dolphin meat. But flipper was a big show and everybody loved flipper, so nobody's going to eat dolphin meat. It's like eating dog in the United States, right? So they renamed it Mahi Mahi. Now, how they came up with that, I don't know, I didn't go that deep. But now that sells like crazy.

[00:05:25] And so they had a whole list of of them. I'm going to read them off here for you. And then we'll make the point of how you have to think about what you call yourself. So another one, hogfish was was renamed to king mackerel. This next one, stump knocker. That was the name of a fish now is called spotted sunfish. Oh, that's so pretty. Wait, do you hear this one? Every everybody out there has heard of orange roughy, right? Orange roughy. Oh, it's a great fish. Right, right. Well, its original name. Its original name was Slimehead. I can imagine Imagine. Oh, gee. Slimehead or mahi mahi? Which one will I pick? Another one was called Which Fish and they called. They changed that to Torbay sole or Torbay sole. Chilean sea bass was a Patagonian toothfish and and the last one I saw was rat red was changed to redfish. So you got to be careful what you name stuff because it really affects the public. So when you're thinking about naming a new product or naming your company, you know, people get these wild ideas of things that mean something to them but make no sense to the public and could actually hurt you in the public. And a good example of this is I was speaking at an event one time, and some other guy I knew he was a fairly substantial, you know, business person, and he came up to me And he said, hey, Tom, you know, let me know what you think about my new branding here.

[00:07:24] And I started laughing. I thought it was a joke. And he got all offended. I'm laughing at this because he was into intellectual property and and making money with your intellectual property, which is, you know, a fancy way to say we're selling ebooks and courses and everything else, right? All right. But anyway, he had for intellectual property is commonly known as IP, I period, P period. Intellectual property is abbreviation right. So he had branded himself IP money. And like I said I thought he was joking with me. You know because it is funny. But he was totally serious. But the thing is, is, you know, he's going to be, you know, that brand is going to be seen as a laughing stock. I mean, he either has to now if he spent a lot of lot of money on it, get behind it and pretend it was a joke from the beginning. So people say, oh, he has a sense of humor, but blah blah, blah. All right. But but he was totally serious. Got all offended IP money. All right. So so the point of this whole thing is you got to pay attention to what you. I mean, another example was that Nova would, uh, Chevrolet car which wouldn't sell in Mexico because nova means won't go, right?

[00:08:54] So, there's loads of examples like that of even major companies making stupid mistakes like that. So I don't want you to make that because it can be very costly, especially if you had, you know, collateral materials and websites and color schemes and signage and things like that made up with something that either is offensive or weird or unintelligible. So pay a lot of attention to this. There's plenty of resources online to help you with picking names, but I but I want you to think about that side of it. Check it with lots of people. To see what their impression is. To see if this makes sense, if this is stupid. If it's funny, if you want to be funny, that's great. All right. Be funny. But don't pretend, don't, don't, don't, don't pee money all over the place. All right. So so anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Make sure you check out that Beatles thing at episode 961. Screwthecommute.com/961 and my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com also includes a scholarship to the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country. Probably the world where you can get a scholarship that you can gift to someone else or use it for extra training. So check it out at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later!