Nice!

Nice!

Gavin- What is your business name?

Carpet Care Cleaners or Carpet Cleaning Bellingham?

I just looked at your site and the name does seem confusing.

Carpet Cleaning Bellingham? I'm not sure about that one? Not something that speaks or reads smoothly. Carpet Care Cleaners........Smoother and has 3 C's you could play with.

I wonder if I changed my name to "Steamer Stanley" it would help?    Or Dry Chem?    How long have you been "Carpet Cleaning Bellingham" and how long has Grant been "Bellingham Carpet Cleaners"  ?

I was wondering the same thing Andy. I know Grants name has been around since 2006? I would be PISSED if Joel (who lives five miles away from me) changed his name to BrightChem all in an attempt to draw business away from me on the net or whatever else may come around.

I dont see your phone # on the van.

I think I agree with Mike above quite a bit. I always thought the name of your company (carpet care cleaners) and that  ccc logo was pretty catchy.   Seems like you might lose as many or more past customers than you will gain through any google optimization your new name gives you through confusion or seeing the new name and/or logo and not recognizing it. 

There may be a small amount of confusion generated by this between our companies but I hope not a lot.  Though I'm not "pissed" as chembright mentions above it might generate a small amount of confusion.  But I think most of my past customers know how to find me.  And I certainly think Gavin has/had the right to do this.   

Back when I started I knew absolutely nothing about websites, search engines, or anything else.  I went to dinner with a couple of friends and had about 10 possible names sketched out on a piece of paper and I tossed them around with them at dinner, Bellingham Carpet & Floor Cleaners was the name chosen. Bellingham Carpet Cleaners is also a registered trade name of mine though I don't use it too much.  The next day I went to look for a domain name.  The first one that I thought of seemed pretty obvious to me, bellinghamcarpet.com.  And it was available so I bought it.  It wasn't until a couple months later that I ever saw your website, and that one of your domains was bellinghamcarpetcare.com.  So I'm sorry about that, but I wasn't aware of the similarity back when I bought the domain. 

Gavin and I have referred customers to each other when we've gone on vacations and such in the past and have always been cordial to each other. 

I was looking in the action pages today, and the bellinghamcarpet.com and bellinghamcarpetcare.com on ads right next to each other seemed kind of funny. I was hoping that carpetcleaningbellingham.com would help us look more different.  I like the ccc logo, but I wanted something that will stick out a little more and grab some attention. so ccc is still my "logo" but I will start posting this little carpet cleaning guy up on all of my ads too.

I never realized how much a simple graphic will sway people in their decision making process. my action pages ad with the turtle has gotten me several jobs with people who own turtles. nothing wrong with that, but there must be much more people I can connect to with something like my new guy.

I almost went with a dog because there are so many dog owners here. If I would have found a cute enough carpet cleaning dog, he would have been on my van right now instead. but my wife found this guy, and all of her friends said it was cute. cute is good! 

One should realize though that there is more to branding than just adding a visual element. The idea of "branding" should be to create an emotion or feeling when someone thinks about your company. Even if the business name does not evoke such imagery, the the other elements of the brand such as the logo or tagline should create a feeling in the mind of a consumer. It's all about perception.

good idea, but i think others would be able to take it anyways. I bought it from Istockphoto so it is fair game, any one can buy and use it if they want. If I saw someone using it I might want to check to make sure they purchased it as well though. and if not, inform istockphoto.

good idea.

I was almost hesitant to even put it on that van because it might be on it's last leg with the trany. I'm using it as a test canvas. my new van will be ready at the end of summer and I want to make sure I can apply the stickers good. I think the graphics will look much more fitting on my big white van.