Moove on: the MooLatte naming flap

Slate coughs up a critical tactical error in the product naming arena in their Chatterbox gossip column, deriding the name of Dairy Queen’s latest product, the MooLatte:

A friend recently alerted Chatterbox that Dairy Queen is marketing a new frozen drink called the MooLatte. Isn’t that, he observed, er, kind of in poor taste? What he meant was that “MooLatte” sounds a lot like “mulatto,” which is a word, not in much use nowadays, that describes a person whose father is white and mother is black or (less common in bygone days) the other way around.

…Doesn’t Dairy Queen have any black employees? Or at least somebody who’s seen Show Boat? Why didn’t anyone point out the MooLatte-mulatto problem? It seems inconceivable that the resemblance would be deliberate, given corporate skittishness about generating controversy in the marketplace. In any event, a quick Web search shows that Chatterbox isn’t the first to notice, and to take offense (click here, here, here, and here). You say MooLatte, we say mulatto. Let’s call the whole thing off.

The tactical error is not Dairy Queen’s, it is Slate’s. Their literal, negative deconstruction of MooLatte has no basis in reality. It is just this kind of analysis that would knock a name like Starbucks off the table. Won’t people think Starbucks is a troupe of male strippers? Or a game show in which celebrities compete for cash?

Or what about a name like Crossfire, the sports car from Chrysler? Innocent women and children get killed in a crossfire, don’t they? Does that mean Crossfire is a bad name for a car? Of course not. But why not? Because the public accepts names in the spirit and context that companies provide. Consumers never engage in literal deconstruction — if they did there would be an endless line of protesters at the door of Banana Republic, because Banana Republic is a negative cultural slur aimed at Latin America. Except when it’s the name of a clothing store.