What Does Nysnö Mean Anyway?

Having recently gone through it myself, I can honestly tell you that branding your own business is one of the hardest things for a new start up to do! From thinking of a name, a concept behind that name and deciding on a logo design…you name it, it’s not the creative and enjoyable process you may think it is – until you know in your heart of hearts you have got it right.

When I help others in branding their business, I enjoy it, happily pulling my sleeves up and get stuck in enjoying the opportunity to get creative!  When working on your own business though, it isn’t quite so joyous.  When creating my “new baby”, I managed to suck every enjoyment out of it by over thinking every detail. Before launching Nysnö, I’d begun taking my business down an entirely different path and to say the deliberation of it was painful is an understatement.

Now my second concept Nysnö Digital Marketing & Communications has finally made its entrance into the world, I am very glad to have made it through to the other side and I feel immensely proud of what I have achieved and created with the combined talents of Terry, my chosen graphic designer based deep in the Austrian Alps.

I have learnt a very important lesson from this entire process, a lesson that I am very surprised to have learnt as it goes against anything you will ever read in a standard business book and anything I have ever seen on The Apprentice!

I’ve learnt that as much as market research IS important, it is also important to trust your own instinct.  Feedback from market research has to be taken at times with a pinch of salt as firstly, everyone has an opinion with some not constructive at all, and secondly, not everyone is going to understand what you’re about and that’s ok.

Thirdly, gone are the days when your business name has to say what it is on the tin! In fact, one of the biggest branding trends for 2018 is to pack as much punch into one single word. Note, this does all depend on the type of business you are, but we’ll look at that in another blog, another time. 

 Finally, as weird as this sounds…branding your business is like naming your soon to be born baby, everyone has an opinion about your chosen name for the baby before it’s born and more often than not, you immediately ditch anything that makes someone’s nose wrinkle in response even though you love it and feel it’s right for you.  Once the baby is born and named, even the most obscurest of names is loved as much as the baby itself by all as for no reason, it just fits!  The same applies to your business.

Nysnö does indeed tick the box against this year’s marketing trend but this isn’t the main reason why I chose the name. Nysnö was in fact born from a long lasting childhood memory of mine that has never left me. I used to sleep walk a lot when living in Estonia and during one of those nights, I woke up standing in the middle of my garden surrounded by freshly fallen thick blanket of snow, a single toned sky in a mixture of mauve and orange and a deathly silence. It should have been a frightening experience but it was the most peaceful experience, feeling like I was the only one to be awake in the world and to see the first snow. 

Since then, I have always loved seeing the first snow and last year, weirdly or perhaps by fate, I came across a word to describe this – the Swedish word Nysnö meaning “the very first snow that falls and stays”.

That’s the beauty of different languages; if one language does not have a word for something then another language has a word for it as its part of their culture. Not only does this word resonate with me on a personal level but it also represents and translates an ethos for my business, which aims to help businesses welcome a bright new landscape, take on a new and strategic approach and be safe in knowledge that their business will be around for a long time yet.

So when it comes to branding your business, be bold, be brave and most importantly, stay true to yourself as people buy into you first as a person before they buy into your business and its services.  If your message is clear and you believe in it, others will too.