Posts from: May 2006
Descriptive product names are at their absolute worst when they mislead and confuse. A particularly sour example is Mocha Mix, a non-dairy creamer that is… not mocha (chocolate + coffee) flavored. Mocha Mix is plain non-dairy creamer, meant to taste like plain cream. It is a product that will dissapoint coffee lovers who thought they were buying a non-dairy mocha flavored cream substitute and will be passed over by those looking for a non-flavored non-dairy cream substitute.
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Yesterday’s NY Times summarized a study published this past weekend in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on company names, language and money:
A stock ticker symbol or company name that is easy to pronounce may be a significant factor in short-term increases in stock price, according to a report published online yesterday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Two researchers created a list of fictional stocks and then had a group of students rate them according to ease of pronunciation. “Ulymnius,” for example, was rated complex, while “Mayville” was not.
They then asked a second group to estimate the future performance of each of the stocks. As the researchers predicted, “fluently named” companies were estimated to outperform the hard-to-pronounce ones by a significant margin.
…People respond positively to easily processed information in other areas as well. For example, they are more likely to believe an aphorism that rhymes (”woes unite foes”) than one with an identical meaning that does not rhyme (”woes unite enemies”). Studies cited in the report demonstrate that people more often judge easily processed information to be true, likable, familiar and convincing than more complex data.
The Times fails to mention two other curious reports in Sunday’s PNAS, notably, “Polarized axonal surface expression of neuronal KCNQ channels is mediated by multiple signals in the KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 C-terminal domains” and “A hybrid two-component system protein of a prominent human gut symbiont couples glycan sensing in vivo to carbohydrate metabolism”, which are basically concise summaries of the Interbrand and Landor naming processes, respectively.
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Picking the best domain for your company is no simple task. But you can do your part to help a neighbor out. Which domain should this indecisive company choose, this domain or this domain?
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Batwoman hero returns as lesbian. “Comic book heroine Batwoman is to make a comeback as a ‘lipstick lesbian’ who moonlights as a crime fighter, a DC Comics spokesman has confirmed,” ledes the Beeb. The new character is “just one of a wave of ethnically and sexually diverse characters entering the DC Comics universe.”
The new comic book series, called 52, is set in a world — a parallel universe, as it were — in which established superheroes like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman no longer play a part. No word yet what Catwoman, or Robin, thinks about the other woman.
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Batwoman hero returns as lesbian. “Comic book heroine Batwoman is to make a comeback as a ‘lipstick lesbian’ who moonlights as a crime fighter, a DC Comics spokesman has confirmed,” ledes the Beeb. The new character is “just one of a wave of ethnically and sexually diverse characters entering the DC Comics universe.”
The new comic book series, called 52, is set in a world — a parallel universe, as it were — in which established superheroes like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman no longer play a part. No word yet what Catwoman, or Robin, thinks about the other woman.
There’s a special Memorial Day issue of Blawg Review, a carnival of law bloggers, that’s really worth reading today — even if you don’t really care for lawyers! Among the many interesting links collected for this special holiday edition of Blawg Review, there’s an interesting post about the West Point brand that is mentioned from The Trademark Blog by Marty Schwimmer.
And in this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists, the Downunder Edition, the host, Leah Maclean in Sydney, Australia, has nice things to say about us on her Working Solo blog:
The crew at Wordlab get a special mention this week – instead of just submitting their post with remarks that focused on their post they took the time to consider whether the post would fit with my approach as a female entrepreneur. Congratulations Wordlab on demonstrating the very successful business building technique of focusing on your reader/customer! In fact I do appreciate their post “33 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” as an example of great storytelling and its impact in creating brand loyalists.
If your Memorial Day involves a gathering of the family for a weekend BBQ get-together to remember loved ones, ancestors, and friends who died in conflicts and wars, it might be worth your while to check out the Carnival of Recipes at One Happy Dog Speaks.
Darren Barefoot’s project du jour is a website parody tour de force!
There are plenty of amusing Da Vinci Code satires out there (the latest I saw was the trailer for The Norman Rockwell Code). I haven’t seen the one that immediately occurred to me, so I thought I’d throw something together.
I give you iCryptex.com.
It’s only the one page, and is intended to be a light-hearted take on the incredible loyalty that Apple products inspire. As a guy who runs a PR and marketing firm for technology companies, I always admire the marketing force that are the Apple otaku.
And, if the lawyers at Apple don’t have a sense of humor, there’s An Army of Davids in the legal community who would probably defend this parody for the fun of it.
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So, you think you know names? Test your naming and branding knowledge by taking a fun test, or two, presented by Cerado on their corporate blog, The Social Customer Manifesto. Like their savvy tagline says, “There are no spectators anymore. Participate.”
How silly is the Web 2.0 hype getting? You tell us! Here’s a quick quiz…we looked in 30Boxes and analyzed 37Signals that led us to come up with the 43Things below. So without further ado, can you decide…
Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?
George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” So…with all of the Web 2.0 hype currently happening, let’s see what lessons we learned from the dot-com boom of the late 90′s. Below are the names of 25 companies that were dot-com darlings but are no longer with us. Can you tell if they were…
Acquired or Expired?
Clever. Who are these people at Cerado? Look in their Haystack. Hey, great name for a new way to connect with people you want to do business with — Haystack.
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How to name anything.
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Visitors to the Big Apple come away singing I love New York, a slogan by design with all the allurement of Virginia is for lovers. Virginia’s time-honored tourism slogan is often imitated, but seldom duplicated.
Maryland comes closest, with a successful parody. Maryland is for crabs can be found on all manner of T-shirts and souvenir items in the state.
And now, the city of Baltimore, Maryland has a new slogan of its own the city fathers hope will get a conversation going.
Okay, I’ll start. Where’s H.L. Mencken when you need him?
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Posted: May 31st, 2006 |
Category: Uncategorized