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In Edgehill Village, Nashville Tennessee there’s a coffee shop where everybody knows your name: Edgehill Studios Cafe.

Edgehill Studios constantly crop up on my Twitter alerts (even more often than the Groove Armada song!) with people going down for a coffee or to see some live music. One such alert popped up this morning so
thanks to the wonders of YouTube and Spanish-language television you can see what it’s like to watch a gig at Edgehill Studios Cafe:

It seems Edgehill have the opposite problem to the University as former employee, Mark Kelly Hall explains:

I worked at a cafe just off Music Row called Edgehill Studios Cafe for a couple of years, getting the word out about the place and its events through music listings, printed calendars, flyers, radio spots and the ever-changing PowerPoint presentation running on the flatscreen TV behind the counter.

It was an ongoing effort (and often a losing battle) to get people to say the name, the whole name, and nothing but the name of the cafe. Especially one of the original owners (a big-idea guy). Sure, as long as we all knew what we were talking about, fine, but effective branding is essential, as any marketing novice or Disney employee will tell you, so name consistency kind of, uh, matters.

One day we heard from someone who had tried to find us by calling information and they were told we weren’t listed. Then I noticed we were listed in the phone book as Edge Hill (2 words) Studios Cafe. Which explains the EH logo (which, I was told, was given about a day’s worth of design consideration–not enough, people). I couldn’t help but think that if I’d only been there at the beginning, I could’ve prevented some confusion. My strong recommendation would have been to drop the “studios” altogether; even though it supported the cool concept of a multifaceted creative space…it also no doubt confused people, given our aforementioned location off Music Row (where there are a remarkable number of recording “studios”). And we got one inquiry from someone looking for living space (another kind of “studio”). Or maybe they would’ve ignored me altogether, I don’t know.