It’s amazing the amount of faith that Vinit and Paul had in me. Looking back at some of the things I said, I don’t know if I would have hired me to be The Dad’s Executive Editor.
The business case for The Dad was basically to create a lifestyle brand with a majority male demographic following, to accompany Scary Mommy.
For whatever reason, I was adamant that it’d be nearly impossible to get a majority male following if the brand we created was hyper focused on parenting. I guess this is because the major players at the time, even though they were named as dad brands, had a clear majority mom following: Life of Dad, How To Be A Dad, Fatherly.
And even The Glad Stork! Except that many people thought I was a mom. Someone once said “The Glad Stork is the funniest mom on Instagram.” No big deal. 💅
I went so far as to say “I worry a brand name that explicitly says dad, father, or (even more so) daddy will come off as cheesy with young fathers.“
I actually said that in an email thread with Some Spider leadership.
(LAUGHING NERVOUSLY) “WTF?”
Step 1: 100% chance of brainstorming
I wrote about this process for Channel 3. Let’s go over it again in case this is helpful for anything you’re working on.
For me, the first thing I do when naming something is drop every single thing that pops into my head. (“Pops” is foreshadowing.)
Even then, in May of 2017, a core of the eventual The Dad team was “in place,” so the name brainstorming was done collaboratively by me, Ally Probst (eventual Deputy Editor), Morgan Music (eventual Editor), Jordan Stratton (eventual Editor), and more…
I sent Vinit my first list of frontrunners:
Papa Culture
Man Part Two
Sizzle Pop
Papa Wheelie
Pop Strong
Crawdad
Wise Pop
Mr. Dad
Male Parent
Yikes. 😬
Could you imagine if The Dad was Papa Wheelie????
(I was also a fan of Mr Internet or Papafella.)
But that wasn’t the end of the email. I proceeded to send Vinit ALLLLL of my notes. WHAT WAS I THINKING?
There were a few in there that could have potential if refined:
The 73 percent (based on some stat about fathers)
Coach dad
Dad cave
Papasaurus Rex
But I included our ENTIRE humorist-brainstormed list, which included us just riffing on manly-type words.
These were actually included in a list sent to a serious business mastermind:
Power tool pinecones
Truck nuts
Liquid Metal Feelings
Camping... Just camping
dirt steak
Insane in the MEN BRAIN
FruitOfMyLoin
Deck tales (awoo-oo)
Prostate Of The Union
I feel like I keep coming back to DIRT STEAK
Dirt Steak became an inside joke with the team and still is to this day!
Liquid Metal Feelings could have a pretty cool logo.
Little practical advice: don’t send a list like this. Spend some time refining it. Haha. Although I did get quite a good laugh looking through this again.
Vinit’s response: “Love the brainstorming! I like some of these. Naming properties might be harder than naming babies!“
What a good guy.
Step 2: Logo brainstorming
Just like for Channel 3, I fired up PowerPoint and brainstormed by making quick little logos. That helped make it real for me and helped me decide if it was a brand I could SEE.
Here are some I sent…
(Fatherington was going to be ironically serious and pretentious, in a hipster sort of way. “It has personality,” I imagined… 😬)
Step 3: Okay, but seriously…
Closer to naming crunch time, Vinit pulled together an email chain with several Some Spider leaders, myself, and Nick Fabiano and Ben Stumpf.
New character(s) alert!
(I am the only weirdo in red. Ally and Morgan, who we’ve met, on the right. Others to be introduced later.)
I met Nick and Ben on this very email chain. They are also founders of The Dad, and absolutely integral to the story. They led up The Dad video studio.
They are video creation veterans. Previously they worked at The Pet Collective and BuzzFeed and were responsible for countless hit videos. You may have seen this 30M view smash hit…
Unlike me, Nick and Ben were already full-time Some Spider employees. Nick was a creative director, leading up a studio for branded videos for Scary Mommy and Cafe, and Ben was a lead writer/director.
And I’m happy they were brought in on this thread, otherwise we may be talking about “Pops Culture” right now. (Even happier they were part of The Dad, because of our friendship but also because the world would not have AphukenbrakE.)
Back to the email thread… lots of talk about “pop” and “papa” being antiquated. There was even someone, I won’t name names, who realllllly wanted the brand to be called DADDIO!
And then, Nick says…
“I also like the idea of something like TheDad.com It's avail....“
Historic.
More back and forth. And Nick again:
“Anyone have feelings on TheDad.com?
I think once the tone is set with the site from the get-go it won't come off like parenting site. Just a site for dad humor, stories, and beer.
Feels close to "the Dude, ..man!" And flows well with Scary Mommy.
"Scary Mommy and TheDad"
Also feels like a destination “
Someone else, for emphasis:
“i usually don't like "THE" (e.g., the facebook), but here, DAD would have been way too earnest. the "THE" can add some humor, personality, etc”
I agree with that.
The domain actually wasn’t available. It was parked by a broker. The team was worried it’d cost north of $20k-$40k. Domains are expensive.
I took on the task of calling and negotiating. I was able to acquire the dad dot com for…. $10,000.
And the rest is history.
It’s not real until there’s a logo
I fired up PowerPoint and created the first version of what would become the “iconic D.”
The next thing ya know, I’m in Manhattan, waiting nervously outside a sushi restaurant to meet Vinit and Paul in person for the first time, for an actual job interview.
I lost it at Truck nuts and the only thing that brought me back was Deck tales (awoo-oo). Deck tales could still be a series within The Dad, its a good one.
I hope no one was floating Scary Daddy.