AIR FRYERS ARE THE REASON YOUR BRAND NAME MATTERS
Air fryers and your brand might have more in common than you think.
Let me get one thing straight, I am NOT an air fryer girly.
Between blenders, food processors, and milk frothers, do we REALLY need another kitchen appliance? Especially when that kitchen appliance already exists in your home… in the form of an oven. Air fryers are absurdly large, take up way too much space on the kitchen bench, and are an absolute eyesore. (Sorry to all the air fryer lovers reading this).
Now, this isn’t a piece about hating on air fryers. Quite the opposite actually. And I don’t have one single smidge of evidence to back this up — consider this an opinion piece. (But what’s a business owner without their fair share of hot takes anyway?)
Here it is:
The single reason air fryers have landed a spot on 90% of Australian kitchen benches, is because of their name.
I will bet you my yearly coffee supply, that if air fryers were called ‘Mini Oven’ instead, then they would be collecting dust in the aisles of Kmart and The Good Guys.
But give them a name like ‘Air Fryer’ and suddenly they’re flying off shelves. And that, is the power of a good name.
Let’s break it down…
“Air” - light, easy, effortless, and healthy. Combine this with “fryer” and it instantly sounds like the world’s healthiest, quickest, and easiest method of cooking.
But put them together, and “Air Fryer” is, well, technically a lie. It doesn’t ‘fry’ anything. But the name has convinced you that it does. The name makes you think you’re ‘frying’ something with literal air, when really it’s just a more compact and slightly faster version of the oven you already have. The name feels fast, modern and new, and makes you feel like you’re getting a hot and fresh 21st century kitchen appliance like all the cool kids have.
But if it had a name like ‘Mini Oven’, ‘Benchtop Oven’, ‘Compact Oven’, or ‘Oven’ paired with any other yawn-worthy descriptive term, then majority of us would probably still be using the built-in one that lives underneath our stove.
So why is all of this relevant to your brand?
Because, well, everything is branding.
And put most simply, branding is about guiding and shaping perceptions. Which makes this a perfect example of why brand naming is so important: because a name alone can shift the way we think about a product, service, or brand, before you’ve even seen a logo.
Which then of course also shifts the consumer’s likelihood of hitting ‘add to cart’.
It’s all because the perfect brand name doesn’t just label what you do, it makes people want to be part of your brand.
And that’s the difference between “Mini Oven” and “Air Fryer”. One sells a product, the other sells a feeling.
We put a LOT of pressure on logos and visual identities to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to shaping and guiding these perceptions, but we often forget just how much power a name alone can hold.
