Daughters of Elaine Brand Story:
All groups need good names but all the good ones are taken. The essential task is to capture the brand story.
Elaine Surnamer is the mother of South Florida Family Life magazine’s publisher, Susan Rosser and her two sisters, Jaimee and Debbie.
Elaine, Jaimee and Susan are breast cancer survivors. Elaine died in 2019. Debbie tragically passed in 2020 of heart failure, at the age of 67. Susan father passed 2 years.
The vision statement, crafted by Ellen Crane before knowing much about Elaine wrote: To build a fan base of influential women who can help direct editorial content and support for South Florida families.
The SFFL brand is based on content authority. It delivers quality content to assist parents at all socio-economic levels. That content authority can be attributed to our time in the marketplace and the expertise of our team.
Our team includes partners in advertising, social media, public relations, writing, government, television, videography and more. Modern marketing businesses are highly integrated with specialists for almost everything.
But our SFFL content is about . . . mothering.
Just over 91% of our readers are women. An all female group of some kind makes sense. Elaine was an amazing mother. For those who know the show “The Marvelous Misses Mazel” – Elaine was Misses Mazel. Period.
She was an uptown New York Jewish women with affluent parents living in Manhattan raising 3 girls.
- She fought her father to attend the writer’s college in Iowa but lost. She wanted to be a radio comedy writer. She was told to take the normal route, go to college, find a husband, have children . . . and she did.
- Fun fact: She was a member of the Friar’s Club in NYC. One night she had the funniest encounter with Ed Sullivan, at the height of his fame.
- Elaine and Martin, her husband, were married 67 years. She died at age 88.
- On occasion, Susan, Debbie and Jaimee are referred to with the phrase “Daughter of Elaine.” Often one of them will say “After all, I am a daughter of Elaine.”
Point! Publishing is a family business.
Richard, not a female, liked the idea of including Elaine at the beginning of the creation of the club.
The first idea he pitched was “Mrs. Kossenfloffer’s Comfortable Sneaker Club,” a reference to a comic sketch that Elaine would perform while shampooing the hair of her daughters (combined with Susan’s almost fetish for sneakers and comfortable clothing.)
Susan has told so many people over the years the stories from her childhood and humorous characters that her mother invented. Elaine was an excellent mother and humor was her super power.
In addition to humor, she had a strong passion for reading. Elaine ran an all female book club for over 40 years. She kept all her hand-typed notes from all the books and all the outlines for the club discussions. Jaimee still has all of them, 100s
Elaine was committed to women being empowered and educated.
The women around her were avid readers.
She ran a group for the women she wanted to be surrounded by.
Names for businesses or groups can be successful with names that are short, long, vague, obvious, etc. – Starbucks?? Or Wendy’s – literally named after the founder’s daughter.
Daughters of Elaine – daughters says “all female” without saying all female.
Elaine – is really a substitute for all the best qualities in a mother . . . which allows us an open door to tell Elaine’s story about great parenting.
Daughters of Elaine – sounds like a club for women who think they are cool enough to be in a club called Daughters of Elaine.
The people who connect with this story, are our kind of people.