Reframing the Brand

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Recently I attended a Green Expo in San Francisco and it was interesting to see the number of booths dedicated to various different enterprises. Surprising to me was the number of independent organic chocolatiers. Seems that hand crafted chocolate is just as dynamic an entreprenuerial industry as hand crafted soap, toiletries and cosmetics.

Locally, we have several chocolatiers many of them quite large. San Francisco's Ghiradelli, of course, Berkeley's Sharfenberger, and then a bunch of others including a company you can find in between Pier One and Fisherman's Wharf, TCHO (pronounced Choh).

Let's talk about TCHO.

This American Life radio shows explains in episode #383: Origin Story how much we American's love a good entreprenuerial back story. That's why HP spent millions to recreate the garage that was used by Mr's Hewlette and Packard at the start of their company. And why Google, which started at Stanford University with lots of backing dollars, moved after two years into a garage, stayed their for six months then moved out. Just so they could have a garage back story.

Thco's brand story is complicated and involves many elements. The main one is the idea of chocolate gone high tech. This is based on the fact that the main chocolatier used to design systems for the space shuttle. Watch their TCHO is video and ask yourself, if you were to make a similar video of your company, what would it look like? What would it say about you?

Kaila Westerman
TKB Trading, LLC
www.tkbtrading.com

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