Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times issued a naming challenge today:
We need a name for this war. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” never rolled off the tongue, and “Iraq war” creates confusion with the 1991 war. So send in your entries by mail or e-mail. I’ll report the top five suggestions and give those writers Iraqi 250-dinar notes with Saddam’s portrait.
Never ones to shirk when a naming gauntlet is laid down or when an opportunity to cause people to re-evaluate what they wished for arises, we submitted these 425 military operation names, culled from the database of our sister site Wordlab.
You too can enter the NY Times contest by sending your suggestions to: nicholas@nytimes.com
It seems that since the success of JetBlue and Southwest, the low-cost airline niche is where the industry is pinning its hopes. First Delta created Song to compete in this arena, and now comes a surprisingly named new venture from bankrupt giant United: Ted. Says the Rocky Mountain News:
United executives said they picked Ted – “Yup, Ted,” as the ads say – as the name for their new low-fare carrier because it met two seemingly conflicting goals: to be familiar and different.
Ted is the last half of United, so it’s already part of the United brand, executives said. It’s also a nickname, making the new carrier seem approachable and friendly. And yet it’s an unusual name for an airline.
Yes, that’s for sure, and kudos to United for daring to be so different, though “explaining” that Ted is the last half of the name United is unnecessary and sort of a buzz kill.
“Our objective was to provide both a product and a brand that was comforting to United loyalists but also would surprise new consumers,” said John Tague, United’s executive vice president for customers.
United has been waging a guerrilla branding campaign in the Denver area in advance of the Ted announcement, because it is specifically targeting the Denver-based Frontier Airlines.
United and its ad agency, Fallon Worldwide, have used the Denver teaser campaign for Ted – including mysterious pizza giveaways and spectators at sporting events shouting “Go Ted!” – to make Ted seem chummy and alluring.
Clearly, United has realized that the cold, impersonal airline industry desperately needs a personality lift, and it’s taking its cue from names such as Fannie Mae, which split from the impersonal mortgage institution names to put a friendlier face on finance.
The teaser campaign is clever, and has been effective in getting the word out about Ted. What remains to be seen is whether Ted can deliver on its brand promise and be more than just a cheeky new member of the discount airline club. JetBlue is still the leader here, consistently shining when it comes to backing up its marketing with actions, while Song as been so-so in this regard.
If Ted is successful, look for a whole new trend of given names as company names: after flying with Ted, you could rent a car from Steve, check your bank account at Jane, and perhaps shop for apples at Bob.
It’s commentary like this that makes the whole naming and branding profession look bad. No, worse than bad: downright idiotic. This screed by “naming expert” Naseem Javed is appalling in the depth of its wrongness. At first we just threw up our hands (Where to begin?), but now we feel compelled, in the interest of our profession, to debunk this bunk point-by-point:
Ever heard, “Did you google today?” or, “Go try googling, and you will find it?” Watch out for this sort of lingo. To most people it may sound like free advertising for Google, but in reality it could be a nightmare for the corporation. When a company’s name brand lends itself to “verbing” — such as xeroxing, fedexing or rollerblading — a code-red alert strikes the boardroom.
The idea that Google is suffering through “name struggles” because “google” is being used as a verb is not only laughable, it’s just plain wrong. Google is the number one search engine, and it enjoys outstanding name recognition and name use throughout the culture. Quick, name a photocopier company. Quick, name a facial tissue manufacturer.
The idea that Xerox and Kleenex have been hurt by having their names incorporated into the language of daily life is absurd. On the contrary, becoming a verb is a holy grail of naming, because if you achieve this then you own the conversation in an entire industry. You become the leader, you set the agenda, you are the one that everybody talks about and that the competition has to address. Mr. Javed might think that InfoSeek or LookSmart are vastly superior search engine names than Google, but even though they were on the Net years before Google, where are they now?
As a result, finding great brand names has become a very scientific process and is no longer a creative exercise. Under the proper Laws of Naming, all issues are explored in advance so that a brand name will be engineered for durability. The days of accidental naming are over.
That’s just pure bullshit, no way to sugarcoat it. This is the kind of nonsense that so many consultants dump on unsuspecting people in the name of passing themselves off as “experts.” The only “science” involved with creating great names is perhaps having a little bit of the discipline of the scientific method, the discipline to find the best positioning for a brand and then to search for names that best support that positioning.
Anybody can become an “expert” at naming if they apply themselves to it and remain objective. Don’t be fooled by anyone who claims to have science on their side–in fact, run from the room screaming and call the authorities. There are no “Laws of Naming,” and you are much more likely to get a decent name from “accidental naming” than from Mr. Javed’s “science.”
Google has a big battle ahead of it, and the fights will take place on two fronts. Firstly, the company still has the best search engine to date and as a result acquired too much global attention too quickly. Secondly, as a borrowed word from the mathematical section of the English dictionary, the word “google” does have an alpha-structure that easily lends itself to cute verbalization. Right now, Sir Isaac Newton is simply googlified.
Let’s see if we can even follow the “logic” of this argument: 1) Google is in trouble because it became too successful too quickly; 2) Google is in trouble because people can verbalize it, and they enjoy doing so. Hmmm….not sure what to say in response, because it’s like being told that the sky is made of water and we’re all going to drown–i.e. the ravings of a madman.
Although it may be too late in the game for Google to change its name, other startups certainly can learn from the search company’s name struggles.
Did we miss a New York Times front-page story on this, or a Nightline special report about “Google’s name struggles”? Just how are they struggling again? (See number 3, above.)
When a corporate name is heavily diluted and shared by hundreds or thousands of others in all kinds of businesses, it simply gets lost in the crowd.
This is the first truthful statement in this whole foul exercise. Unfortunately, it’s really only lip service on Mr. Javed’s part, as we’ll prove now. Let’s play a game of “Pick Naseem Javed’s Company Name from Among these Jumbled Competitors”:
NameSale • Brandslinger • Absolute Brand • Brandscope • Naming Systems • Moore Names • Blueprint Brand Strategies • Brand-DNA(.com) • Brand-DNA(.net) • Nomen • Nomenon • Nomina • Nomino • Brand 2.0 • Brand Doctors • Name Sharks • Brand Equity • Namerazor • Brand Institute • Naming Workshop • Namelab • Brand Mechanics • Nametag • Brand Vista • BrandForward • Namexpress • Brandico • Nameit • BrandLadder • Name Development • BrandLink • NameQuest • BrandLogic • Wise Name • The Better Branding Company • Not Just Any Branding • BrandMaverick • BrandPeople • Brandjuice • BrandSolutions • The Name Works • The Naming Company • Namebase • ABC Namebank • Brandspark • Namix • Brandtrust • Nametrade • Building Brands • Namington • Core Brand • Futurebrand • Independent Branding • Interbrand • Real Branding • Spherical Branding • The Brand Consultancy • The Branding Iron • TradingBrands • Brighter Naming • Megalonamia • Brand Evolve • Namepharm • Medibrand • Namestormers • Brand Fidelit
Give up? That would be ABC Namebank, the “original generic” naming company name. So when Mr. Javed talks about names that “get lost in the crowd,” this is one area he is intimately acquainted with.
Sometimes a name crawls out of history, reflecting the great human toil of the founding fathers, but is somehow not suitable for present-day, technology-savvy culture.
Yes, companies now suffering with Biblical names, hopelessly left behind in today’s “technology-savvy culture,” include Apple and Virgin. Great names are often rich in history, stories, and layers of meaning–they are bigger than cultural trends or technological fads. Remember how just a few years ago companies that wanted instant tech-savvy cachet added a “.com” to their names? Well, most of those companies that managed to survive the bursting tech bubble have quietly amputated that ungainly appendage since then.
Pitfall #5: The corporation does not own a trademark on its name or have an identical dot-com domain.
Unless you are an Internet company, having an “identical dot-come domain” is NOT a necessity. You can survive quite nicely without it, as long as you position your company website to score highly on Google searches. But then, Google’s going through those pesky “name troubles” of its own, isn’t it….
What is in short supply are successful, proven methodologies and highly reputable professionals with successful track records….Indeed, a company would be wise to ask its ad agency if it can produce such a professional with a track record; otherwise, the agency will only be picking names out of a hat.
And we would like to know Mr. Javed’s “track record,” only it’s nowhere to be found among the bad naming advice on the ABC Namebank website.
Naming is a serious black-and-white exercise, and it should never be confused with color, design, logos and branding campaigns, which only become important after a name has been selected.
On the contrary, how a name looks, sounds, and feels out in the real world is extremely important, and the more creative contextual support a naming company can provide the client for names under consideration, the better the entire naming team is able to accurately judge whether a given name is successful at accomplishing the positioning goals of the brand.
A name is really a one or two word poem, and at best is a living, breathing participant of the culture, a vital part of the cultural life of society. It is NEVER a “black-and-white exercise,” “serious” or otherwise. The challenge with a name is to express as many nuances of meaning, story and emotion as possible. To forget this is to end up with a cold, generic name that nobody cares about and that nobody can remember. A name such as ABC Namebank, for instance.
Actually, Mr. Javed’s advice can be useful, if used correctly. Simply do the opposite of what he advises, and you should be just fine.
Not lovin’ it: Most companies are thrilled when their brand names become so well known that they are officially recognized as part of the popular lexicon. But sometimes, as the makers of Spam luncheon meat will tell you, it can get McUgly:
Not all publicity is good, though, and the company showed no love for Merriam-Webster. In its latest Collegiate Dictionary, it added the word “McJob” and defined it as “low-paying and dead-end work.” In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald’s Chief Executive Jim Cantalupo said the term is “an inaccurate description of restaurant employment” and “a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women” who work in the restaurant industry.
Cantalupo is a little late in his indignation. According to Dictionary.com, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, included the term with essentially the same definition in 2000.
Heed this warning, kids, and read your dictionaries regularly, so you won’t miss that thrilling moment when yesterday’s slang is canonized in the Church of English.
Besides being hobbled by a wannabe-cool name* and a logo that horrifyingly depicts something plummeting from the sky, Song Airlines has often been described as a JetBlue wannabe. In an apparent move to change that perception, they are now repositioning themselves as a Virgin Airlines wannabe.
Awkwardly mimicking Virgin’s marketing moves, Song has opened a retail store and is attempting to replicate Virgin’s “rock and roll” image. The New York Times reports:
Officials at Song insist, of course, that their airline is not simply a JetBlue knockoff. They have added an extra inch of legroom and will offer amenities like video games, MP3 playlists and pay-per-view movies. In an effort at one-upmanship, they will sell entrees like “rock and roll veggie sushi” and “shaved turkey on focaccia,” for about $8.
So, aside from the traditional billboards and print ads, how to communicate the message? Taking a page from Prada and Apple Computer, the airline is opening a store in SoHo for six weeks starting tomorrow.
Featuring sleek electronics and installation art, Song, whose biggest market is New York, with 35 daily flights, is clearly courting what they hope will be a glamorous following. “We want people to say, ‘An airline is doing that? I thought it was a clothing store’ or ‘I thought it was a gallery,’ ” said Stacy Geagan, Song’s communications director.
The airline is giving an invitation-only party at the store tonight, where, publicists promised, Grace Jones would serve as D.J. and Moby, Drew Barrymore and her boyfriend, Fabrizio Moretti of the Strokes, would drop by.
Coffee, tea, or Vanilla Ice? One of the reasons this will become an ugly mess is that Song is merely executing a quiver of tactics that some tin-eared mega branding consultancy has identified as “cool.” Or to put it more obtusely:
Michael Rock, a partner at 2×4, a firm that helped design the Prada store in SoHo, said Song was just following the current trend of using retail space to sell an image. “You don’t really change the function of the thing itself,” Mr. Rock said, “but you change the perception of the function of the thing and you differentiate the surface of it.”
Watch for Song’s financials to follow the same trajectory as its logo.
Spam is getting more interesting. A new type spam is completely unintelligible to humans and makes no sense even from a spammer’s one-in-a-million conversion rate philosophy, but it does do one thing quite well: it makes for great poetry. Well, poetry anyway.
The poem below comes from a new message that just came in; we stripped-out all the bogus faux html tags and added line breaks, leaving all creative misspellings intact; the only changes we made were to move a couple words around. Call it Spam Dada, or Spamdada, or Dadaspam, or Spadadam, or Daspamda, or something. Now you have a new arsenal to ace your graduate poetry seminars, just sitting there clogging your inbox:
beard kendall
illusive substitutionary femur
operant palatine dolce focussed decade
aquinas cauldron
architectonic tubule
butyl gardenia
bask diffident flutter
cacao petrifaction
midwestern bath aquarium
potable
insightful
uncouth floodlight history
inadequate moulton hecate gould compacter
cochlea aren’t winthrop
conflagrate mysterious disk motet
inadvisable agrarian pathogen citation
austenite bolivar toxicology
wilshire congressman viscometer
bergland wigmake
pontific dunkirk legacy
boswell winy countryman
rodney dialect contraception cant
warehouseman
highroad compound winters catharsis
cockcrow erato
handful debut stem
daffodil sacrilege sonant
alice dateline
knickerbocker combat
ginger qatar perfusion antipasto
animadversion rufous karen berth
allspice concocter
chartreuse durkee monaco
dyspeptic lemonade contagion
playoff cyprus
avoid buffalo heraclitus
cleveland audacious
effectual thrum debut
pericles standeth
carnegie dune
something antiphonal now
effectual dross
poughkeepsie parlay
oceanside paperwork
crucial skeptic mat voluntarism
alexandra arrogant
honda fete tram beast
configure irreparable cosine
please catlike bearberry
darius gleason
broken deportee between
olson slime system
powell buchenwald innuendo
sexual negro forbes
axiomatic ghoul
lithic coca
Would you like another chaw of lithic coca?
Posted: November 19th, 2003 |
Category: Uncategorized