Something is only memorable if you have a good reason to remember it.

Likoma Island /lee-koh-ma/ is a small island in Lake Malawi in East Africa, not too far off the coast of Mozambique.

“No running water, no electricity, no mosquitoes, no malaria. Take the boat on Tuesday nights.”

That about covered the advertising campaign for the island–scribbled on a slip of paper thumb-tacked to a guesthouse message board in the village of Nkhata Bay. It was Monday, we left the next night. My then-girlfriend-now-wife spent either ten days or ten years on the island, it’s difficult to measure. It’s where our lives together began.

Somehow, it’s where I’m from. Maybe it’s just where I belong.

So that’s me. What about you?

What does this have to do with branding and marketing and websites and mailing lists? Nothing and everything. What’s in a name? A story. What’s your story? Are you getting it across? What’s the story behind the story? What’s the meta story? That’s what people remember. Let’s get that across and see how things go.

At the end of the day, searches for “Likoma” come to my branding business faster than they get to the island. That’s marketing the brand.

Wanna learn more? Stick around.