Let’s say you have a terrific natural liquid fertilizer, courtesy of healthy llamas and alpacas. It’s free of additives, preservatives and pesticides, and it’s available in virtually inexhaustible quantities. Green? You bet – in the gardening sense, and also in the way you’re selling it in reprocessed plastic bottles. Your product has Win written all over it.
Now all you need is a catchy name to hook the greenest green thumbs. How about…Llama Brew?
At first I wondered: is it just me that feels a shudder of horror? After all, I’m British, and “brew” is a word that we Brits have bonded with at the molecular level, as evidenced by our universally applicable panacea, “Fancy a brew?” We’re hardwired to associate it with drinking. So, just a personal bias? I did a little digging. Check out this eccentrically-phrased “review” of Llama Brew, and have a look at the Google Ads on the left. As I write this, they’re all selling coffee beans. So Google agrees with me. And if it’s not hot beverages, it’s the cold variety – as this DIY beer recipe demonstrates.
It’s agreed: something with “brew” on the side is probably meant to be drunk. (Just look at this headline. Case closed.) When you add the fact that Llama Brew is sold in plastic bottles and therefore looks like a darker variety of iced tea…well, you can imagine how wrong it can all go on a hot summer’s day. And yet it’s so easily remedied by adding, for example, the word “poop” in there somewhere. Poop is a word that it’s impossible to miss with even the most cursory glance. Llama Poop Brew. You’re safe.
This is a great product for gardeners – but of all the things that shouldn’t look like other things, surely fertilizer’s at the top of the list? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need a nice hot brew.
Image: law keven