Category Archives: Marketing

San Francisco’s Punniest Laundromat Names, Ranked—Plus Two that Are Just Plain Fun to Say!



As noted in my recent post on idiom-based laundromat names, I also found quite a few laundromats that use pun-based names to attract attention.

This is a risky strategy because some people just hate puns, period. Even those of us who delight in them are more likely to groan than laugh at puns. But a punny business name has a way of sticking in your head—just ask any of the owners of Vietnamese restaurants who choose . Pho-king pho-nomenal!

The punning possibilities of pho are hard to beat, but laundromats manage to give pho shops a run for their punny. (Sorry, but I truly could not help myself.)

As proof, here’s a ranking of the best pun-based laundromat names in San Francisco:

6. Greenwich Clean Time

5. Clothes Encounters

4. The Washing Well

3. Laundropalooza

2. Haight to Wash

1. Get the Funk Out

Bonus: Two Fun Non-Pun Names

These laundromat names aren’t puns, but they’re too delightful to leave off the list.

1. Coiniop Washidry

2. Spwash

San Francisco’s Idiom-Based Laundromat Names, Ranked



Note: This post contains some salty language. Sensitive readers should go watch this video of . Eager readers should skip right to the ranked list. Curious readers should just continue reading.

Want to make your business name memorable? Make it a play on words. Puns are one option, and I’ll talk about those next time, but today I want to focus on idioms.

An idiom is “an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically … or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements,” according to Webster’s.

If you’re a native English speaker, you use idioms all the time without even noticing. If English isn’t your first language, you probably find many idioms incomprehensible. A dust bunny? A horse of a different color? Crocodile tears? The words are all familiar, but the meaning is mystifying.

Still, idioms are such an integral part of language that they have built-in “stickiness,” a term popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller The Tipping Point. As he explains, “We tend to spend a lot of time thinking about how to make messages more contagious—how to reach as many people as possible with our products or ideas. But the hard part of communication is often figuring out how to make sure a message doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Stickiness means that a message makes an impact.”

People often take advantage of the stickiness of idioms by recontextualizing them as a memorable business name. The name of my business, for example, is Let’s Just Be Clear. In conversation, this phrase conveys something like, “I want to cut the bullshit and get straight to the point.” And that’s part of what I mean, but I’m also implying, “You and I should work together to create online content that’s succinct and straightforward.”

Ever since I chose an idiomatic business name, I’ve been on the lookout for others, and I’ve noticed that laundromats around town are particularly clever with using idioms in a new context. Here’s my selection of the best laundromat names based on idioms in San Francisco, ranked:

9. A Clean Slate

8. Soap Box

7. Spin City

6. All Washed Up

5. Dirty Little Secret

Note: Yelp says this laundromat is named Dirty Little Secret, but it has no sign, so I can’t confirm this. It did look fairly dirty and little, though, and its name is a secret, so the moniker seems apt.

4. Brain Wash

3. Wishy Washy

2. Rub-A-Dub-Dub

1. Sit and Spin

How to Write an Effective Press Release



I just contributed a guest post about to Searching for the Happiness, a blog about writing. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Press releases (also called news releases) can be a great way to get news about your business to the media, your current customers, and potential new customers. Unlike direct advertisements, press releases are written in the objective third-person voice, just like newspaper articles.

Press releases used to land in the newsroom, where the story would live or die on an editorial whim. But nowadays, numerous online services will post your release and send it to hundreds of news organizations, building strong links to your website in the process. The good news is that you can easily get your message out there. The bad news is that everyone else can, too, including your competitors.

So how do you make your press release stand out from the crowd? Just follow these six steps. …

And if you’d like to have a professional review your press release to make sure it’s as effective as possible, .