A dad taste in my mouth – How I came up with the DadMan name and brand
After making the decision to write a dad blog, the next choice to be made was what to call it. Although the first thing that came to mind – BlogyMcBlogface – was probably a winner, I thought I better explore a few options.
My day job is in marketing, so branding is right up my alley. The first step I take involves a massive brain dump. I thought I’d let you see behind the curtain on said dump. That sounds way more suspicious than what I was intending. Anyway, here’s a rundown of how I came up with the DadMan name and brand.
To begin with I opened a Google Doc (better than on paper or a Word doc as you can open it on other devices) and started spewing out ideas. I’m a big fan of wordplay so always have the thesaurus open and a site about idioms (very rock n roll, I know).
So I wrote down the word ‘father’ and then checked out a bunch of synonyms:
male parent, begetter, patriarch, paterfamilias, dad, daddy, pop, poppa, pa, old boy, old man.
male parent, begetter, patriarch, paterfamilias, dad, daddy, pop, poppa, pa, old boy, old man.
From there I started to think of common phrases and idioms for a number of these:
Father:
How’s your father
Founding father
Father figure
A twinkle in one’s father’s eye
Like father, like son
Dad:
Deadbeat dad
Dad bod
Dad fetch my buttons
Daddy needs a new pair of shoes
Big daddy
All shit. Next. I then started to drill down further and look into terms about raising a child.
Raise:
bring up, rear, nurture, look after, care for, take care of, provide for, mother, parent, tend, protect, cherish; educate, train, foster.
Raise a laugh
Raise the roof
Raise the devil
Rear its ugly head
These all seemed a little harsh, I couldn’t consciously call it “raisethedevil.com”, although some days…
So I continued the search. I then took mum/mother idioms and reversed them to be about dad:
Keeping dad
Dad’s the word
Father hen
Father nature
Daddy’s boy
Father of pearl
Who’s he – the cat’s Father?
A face that only a father could love
Pretty average. I decided that I wanted Dad in the title so started exploring words that rhymed with, or were similar to Dad.
Sad:
A dad state of affairs
Dad sack
"BETTER, BUT I IMAGINE DADSACK.COM ISN’T SOMETHING MOST PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO TYPE INTO THEIR COMPUTERS."
Mad:
Stark raving dad
As dad as a snake
Don’t get dad, get even
Hopping dad
Dad men
Dad cow disease
Barking dad (reminds me of this crazy ol’ dude)
Pad:
Dad and pen
Bad:
Good news and dad news
A dad patch
Dad news
Dad hair day
From dad to worse
Dad to the bone
Dad medicine
the good, the dad, and the ugly
breaking dad
A dad taste in my mouth
Definitely some potential options there. Once again, dadtasteinmymouth.com may have slightly dodgy connotations.
Dead:
Dad man walking
As dad as a dodo
Dad giveaway
Over my dad body
The quick and the dad
Dad in the water
Drop dad gorgeous
As dad as a doornail
Another few viable options, but I didn’t feel like I had hit the nail on the head so kept brainstorming and came up with a few more:
The Daduate
Dadical
The old dadage
Dadvice
Dado
DadMan
In the end I cut it down to a list of five:
1. Breaking dad (a spoof on Breaking Bad)
2. Dad’s the word (changing up Mum’s the word)
3. Dad and pen (changing up pad and pen)
4. DadMan (a bungling superhero)
5. The good, the dad, and the ugly (changing up the film The good, the bad, and the ugly)
I then researched and found out that Breaking Dad is a TV series in the UK, so that was out. Dad’s the word was taken because dadstheword.com is a support website for new Fathers. The good, the dad, and the ugly is a podcast. Out.
That left Dad and pen, and DadMan.
I then used the Namechk site to search whether dadman.com and dadandpen.com were available, along with the associated social media channels.
dadandpen.com was available (…and still is if anyone wants a dad blog address. You’re welcome), but dadman.com wasn’t.
Upon reflection, I really thought I could build a better brand and tone of voice around DadMan so started searching for other similar domains that might work including:
lookitsdadman.com
heydadman.com
heyitsdadman
iamdadman.com
dadmanantics.com
dadmantics.com
dadmanblog.com
dadmantales.com
dadmannz.com
dadman.co.nz
A number of domain names were already taken but dadmanblog.com was still available so I purchased it through Go Daddy.
The next steps were to:
Buy hosting. I use Blue Host.
Create the site. I used WordPress.org and purchased a theme.
Secured all of the social media domains.
That’s a pretty broad overview, if you have any questions about how I set the website up, or if you are looking for a new website yourself then feel free to check out my portfolio and contact me.
Nothing like a bit of shameless self promotion. DadMan gotta eat.
