When I had the idea to start an organic baby food company, I struggled with coming up with the perfect name for the brand. I settled on Happy Baby (which later evolved into Happy Family) because, honestly, my first choice – Fresh Start – was taken. Also, let’s face it, everyone wants to be happy and perhaps more importantly, everyone wants their children to be happy. Happiness is a powerful emotion, but how do you conjure up that emotion through a brand?

Ultimately, it’s all about authenticity. You can’t just come up with a cute logo and call it a day - although, I must say, we did a really good job with our logo. I mean, a smiling baby sunshine face. What’s happier? You have to go below the surface and create a product that people are happy not only to purchase, but to share with their friends. In our case, we do this by creating the best organic products that make parents feel good about their everyday food choices for the youngest members of the family. The mom-to-mom network is strong. Moms love our products and they share them with other mom friends on the playground, via social media outlets, and in other various ways. The buzz about Happy Family indicates that our products speak for themselves, which has made me proud to build such an authentic brand.

But that’s just phase one. People who currently use our products are already filled with happiness. What about those who don’t? Begin phase two. One of the most fun challenges I’ve had as CEO of Happy Family is determining how to make consumers of all brands actually feel the emotion of happiness when they encounter Happy Family. But how do you associate happiness with a brand you’ve neither heard of nor tasted?

Well, last month, we launched Stories from the Bright Side, our first ever campaign that encourages people to feel “the happy,” even if you haven’t tasted “the happy.” Our team got together and thought about what actually conveys happiness, and the answer was simple: laughter. We then got seven awesome parent bloggers to tell us a story about feeding time with their children, and paired that with a troupe of improv actors to act out each story. The results are a hilarious collection of funny feeding stories (including one by yours truly) that live on our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/happyfam). Check them out! Oh, and to make that even happier, you can upload your own story for a chance to win $20,000 toward a college education.