The children’s film & television series “Barnyard”, made a strange branding choice when developing the appearance of their characters. The main characters are cows, both male and female.
Why do characters named Ben and Otis, voiced by Sam Elliot and Kevin James, sport udders??? In this film, cows of both genders do. The protagonist “Otis” is pictured here.
We can understand why they might not want to equip the bulls with their actual equipment, but why transgender them? Why not just do a Barbie and Ken-like omission on the bulls?
We don’t expect a kid’s film like this to be educational, just not bizarrely dis-informational.
ONE afternoon over the summer, eight people gathered in an office at the Corcoran Group to brainstorm names for a 29-unit condominium scheduled for completion in mid-2012.
To get the ball rolling, Stephen Glascock, the president of the project’s developer, Anbau Enterprises, reminded the assembled team of sales agents and marketing consultants that the building, soon to rise on West 23rd Street off the Avenue of the Americas, would be in a “a fun location” near Chelsea and the High Line.
“Nexus,” suggested one attendee. “Crossroads,” suggested another.
Not quite.
The building will be energy-efficient, Mr. Glascock continued. It will have fresh filtered air and insulation that dampens noise. His wrap-up: “It’s a good building. It’s a positive participant in the community.”
“It’s a good citizen,” piped up Amy Frankel, a managing partner of the branding agency IF Studio.
“Citizen?”
“Citizen!”
“We all looked at each other and said, ‘What a great name,’ ” Mr. Glascock recollected. “Let’s call the building Citizen.”
A landmark prewar facade or the latest in high-end amenities may be at the top of a buyer’s must-have list, but a stirring or lyrical name can be a powerful selling tool, too. A clunker, on the other hand, can be at best a puzzle, at worst a punch line.
“It’s Branding 101,” said Allen P. Adamson, a managing director of Landor, a corporate identity consultant. “A name tells a story, and a good name can tell a very strong story.”
We have always insisted that focus grouping names has a negative effect on the outcome. Our favorite Steve Jobs quote conveys the same idea in terms of product creation.
…it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why a lot of people at Apple get paid a lot of money, because they’re supposed to be on top of these things.
New Name, New Look, New Logo on Tap For DIRECTV’s Original Programming Network
Beginning June 1, DIRECTV’s The 101 Network will transform itself into the Audience Network and become the new home for DIRECTV’s exclusive programming, which includes some of the smartest, most daring entertainment on television. The Audience Network will be accessible in 19.4 million homes on channel number 239.
The newly-branded network will focus on maintaining DIRECTV’s growing commitment to providing subscribers with premium network programming that can’t be seen anywhere else…
…“We’ve spent the last six years building this network into something very special,” said Derek Chang, executive vice president of Content Strategy and Development at DIRECTV.
“DIRECTV is the only television operator who provides customers with a premium quality entertainment network for free and the new name perfectly captures who we are doing this for, specifically our demographic, the DIRECTV audience.
When we performed our competitive analysis, it became clear that all of the movie / original programing network names had names that were product-centric and they all contained common terms associated with performance and film: Showtime, Home Box Office, Cinemax, Starz, Bravo, Arts & Entertainment, etc. No one was naming and positioning themselves for the consumer – it was all one-note chest thumping – the names are all interchangeable. There was an opportunity to have a name that was different, a name that was about the audience rather than about the product.
Incredibly, though the word “Audience” appears in virtually every movie review and every article about a television network, it had never been used as a name in the TV / Film production industry or in the entertainment business. It had been hiding in plain sight, overlooked. “Audience”, the essential element of all entertainment.
Like me, I’m sure you’ve wondered why Chrysler broke with convention by retaining “LX” as the codename for its new-generation fullsize car platform.
A Chrysler insider recently spells it out for me.
“This vehicle should have been reclassified as LY,” he says of the ‘11 Chrysler 300, the disputed platform’s flagship. “The original vision was that it would gravitate to LY.”
So what happened?
“There was an emotional attachment to LX with our past management, which was Cerberus,” the insider explains. “They wanted to stay with LX.”
Understandable. Especially because LX earned widespread industry acclaim.
It was the foundation of the ‘05 300, a car that rejuvenated American design. Why not keep the original designation? What could happen?
“Frankly, it’s been wreaking havoc with us internally because all of our production-control systems and everything,” the insider says. “It’s been very difficult.”
Separating the old program from the new required “shadow systems and all sorts of crazy things,” he adds.
His disdain for Cerberus is glaring. Like a typo on resume.
But the private-equity firm wasn’t completely wrong to write off the time-honored naming protocol. So suggests California-based branding guru Steve Manning.
“‘X’ is associated with anything that’s experimental or extra,” says Manning, co-founder of Igor, a leading corporate-naming consultancy.
Not to mention sexy, “as in triple-X,” he adds.
“It’s a very uncommon letter in the alphabet so it tends to stand out and has a certain look and sound. Everybody uses ‘X.’ It has a certain cool factor.”
And ‘L’ often is associated with luxury, Manning reminds.
Nothing wrong with that. But what does ‘LY’ communicate?
“’LY is no good,” he says. “‘Y’ is just deadly. Combined with ‘L,’ it’s just something that you put at the end of a word. Like slowly. There’s nothing going on with ‘LY.’”
Forget that platform codes have no market value. Cerberus did at least one thing right.
At Igor we deal with intellectual property rights every week as we search thousands of trademarks while naming products for our clients. It’s not enough to have a good idea, you need one you can legally own.
Kevin Costner’s much publicized Ocean Therapy Solutions company developed a soon-to-be-implemented oil and water separation machine. BP has ordered 32 of them thus far to help deal with their latest environmental disaster.
ip.com (as in “intellectual property”) just launched a feature where you can add a Patent Search Box to your blog sidebar, so your visitors can search patents right from your site.
There has been much speculation and pontification on whence the name Xfinity came, but look no further than the looming Comcast-NBC merger. Whilst kicking the NBC tires, surely even a beast as slow-witted as Comcast fumbled across the NBC property ‘The Office”.
The Dunder Mifflin logo sports an infinity symbol
Xfinity is meant to signal Comcast’s foray into the future of high tech possibilities, while at Dunder Mifflin, “Infinity” is the name of the internal initiative to bring technology to the failing paper company.
Why would the comedy writers of “The Office” chose the name “Dunder Mifflin Infinity” for the high tech effort? Because it is silly, obvious, pitiful and ridiculous, in keeping with ambiance of the show.
In the second episode of the fourth season titled “Dunder Mifflin Infinity”, regional manager Michael Scott best summed up the idea of “Infinity” (or Xfinity, for that matter):
“Everyone always wants new things. Everybody likes new inventions, new technology. People will never be replaced by machines. In the end, life and business are about human connections. And computers are about trying to murder you in a lake. And to me, the choice is easy.”
If you thought a boogie board was a salt-water vessel that lets you skim the waves, think again. Improv Electronics’ Boogie Board is a pressure-sensitive tablet that uses a watch battery for power. It’s like a digital blackboard!
The Reflex LCD doesn’t need any power to keep the scribbles and drawings on the screen, with the watch battery only being put into use when the screen is erased. The watch battery will last for 50,000 erases, which makes the $29.97 board cost 15 times less for each erase than a normal sheet of paper. It’s ideal for kids, or perhaps artists who care about the long-term saving associated with the Boogie Board.
There is an old Indian saying, “When life hands you cows, make teapee”.
Via The Times:
India to launch cow urine as soft drink
Does your Pepsi lack pep? Is your Coke not the real thing? India’s Hindu nationalist movement apparently has the answer: a new soft drink made from cow urine.
The bovine brew is in the final stages of development by the Cow Protection Department of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s biggest and oldest Hindu nationalist group, according to the man who makes it.
Om Prakash, the head of the department, said the drink – called “gau jal”, or “cow water” – in Sanskrit was undergoing laboratory tests and would be launched “very soon, maybe by the end of this year”.
“Don’t worry, it won’t smell like urine and will be tasty too,” he told The Times from his headquarters in Hardwar, one of four holy cities on the River Ganges. “Its USP will be that it’s going to be very healthy. It won’t be like carbonated drinks and would be devoid of any toxins.”…
…He insisted, however, that it would be able to compete with the American cola brands, even with their enormous advertising budgets. “We’re going to give them good competition as our drink is good for mankind,” he said. “We may also think of exporting it.”
Ben & Jerry created “Yes Pecan!” ice cream flavor for Obama.
They then asked people to fill in the blank for the following:
For George W. they created “_________”.
Here are some of their favorite responses:
– Grape Depression
– Abu Grape
– Cluster Fudge
– Nut’n Accomplished
– Iraqi Road
– Chock ‘n Awe
– WireTapioca
– Impeach Cobbler
– Guantanmallow
– imPeachmint
– Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfucker… Swirl
– Heck of a Job, Brownie!
– Neocon Politan
– RockyRoad to Fascism
– The Reese’s-cession
– Cookie D’oh!
– The Housing Crunch
– Nougalar Proliferation
– Death by Chocolate… and Torture
– Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
– Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
– “You’re Shitting In My Mouth And Calling It A” Sundae
– Credit Crunch
– Mission Pecanplished
– Country Pumpkin
– Chunky Monkey in Chief
– George Bush Doesn’t Care About Dark Chocolate
– WMDelicious
– Chocolate Chimp
– Bloody Sundae
– Caramel Preemptive Stripe
– I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands…with nuts
But who is Dom Nozzi? If it is true that you can judge a man by the company he keeps, then Dom can be summed up by this list of his friends as of 1966.
Of course, you may just want to judge him based on the fact that he maintains a list of his friends from kindergarten.
Seagate claims that its all new family of hard drives offers the lowest power consumption and record-setting for any tier-two enterprise
applications.
The Constellation family, as it’s called, includes two models: the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch
Constellation ES. Both drives also include PowerChoice from Seagate, which decreases power
consumption by up to 54 percent, arguably the highest in the industry.
According to Seagate, the PowerChoice technology is designed to deliver the power-reduction savings
without sacri?cing performance and data integrity. In addition, the Constellation family features
enterprise-grade reliability and is rated at a full 1.2 million hours of mean time between failures.
The design themes of this clothing company are based on sensibilities from the nineteen sixties. However, “sixties” and “sixty” have very different meanings to their young female audience. What twenty something woman would flinch at the notion of being a “Miss Sixty”? Every single one of them.
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a longtime proponent of deregulation, acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down…
…Christopher Cox, the commission chairman, said he agreed that the oversight program was “fundamentally flawed from the beginning.”
“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work,” he said in a statement. The program “was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily. The fact that investment bank holding companies could withdraw from this voluntary supervision at their discretion diminished the perceived mandate” of the program, and “weakened its effectiveness,” he added.
What the hell, let’s give him the “Moronic Statement of the Decade” award while we are at it, for, one more time:
“The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work”.
The last six months??? How about the last fifty thousand years? Jackass.
Here’s an idea, you know that program whereby the I.R.S. may audit you? Let’s make that voluntary — you know, opt-in / opt-out, whatever works for you.
Or that annoying thingy where the cops pull you over for drunk driving? Same deal, you want out of that program? No sweat, we’ll give you a special decal for your windshield. You know, the “honor” system. Worth a try. Who knows, it could work.
“Who are these guys?” (thanks Paul, for everything)
Which is funnier? This parody (?) of a brand identity firm like Landor / Interbrand designing a traffic “Stop” sign:
Or the case study from Landor’s own website, which details the naming and logo work they did for the merger of Fedex and Kinkos. The name Landor landed on, was of course Fedex Kinkos. The rationale:
Guided by brand strategy and research insights, Landor developed a creative name and identity solution that leverages the equity of both brands. The new brand identity, informed by the historical strengths of both companies, powerfully redefines the future of the business services marketplace.
But the funinest bit is when Landor explains the very specifc meanings they believe common colors communicate:
The identity contains a colorful brand icon that represents the collection of FedEx services available at the new retail locations – orange for the time-definite global express shipping services, green for the day-definite ground shipping services, and blue for the retail business service centers. At the heart of the icon, where the three colors converge, is purple, which symbolizes the can-do spirit shared by all FedEx companies.
Formally called “Xosphere”, they came to us for a re-name. From the Whoop site:
Whoop makes it easy for every company, agency or individual to create, publish and share rich mobile content to almost every mobile device. Not just text, but pictures, videos and, well, everything imaginable for mobile entertainment, marketing, communications, commerce and social networking. With Whoop, you can share your stuff with more than 3.5 billion phones in every country on the planet.
Whoop. Everything mobile.
Did we mention we named Whoop? O.K., we are done here.
Why do characters named Ben and Otis, voiced by Sam Elliot and Kevin James, sport udders??? In this film, cows of both genders do. The protagonist “Otis” is pictured here.
