category: Uncategorized
Can you tell which aliens are good and which are evil, the
Smoothheads or the
Bumpyheads, based on whether they are called "leebish" or "grecious"? If so, you're a good candidate for testing at Carnegie Mellon, where researchers have shown that naming things with labels creates mental categories, helping people learn faster. So reports today's New York Times, in the article,
When Language Can Hold the Answer:
The finding may not seem surprising, but it is fodder for one side in a traditional debate about language and perception, including the thinking that creates and names groups.
In stark form, the debate was: Does language shape what we perceive, a position associated with the late Benjamin Lee Whorf, or are our perceptions pure sensory impressions, immune to the arbitrary ways that language carves up the world?
The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking. But it can trip us up, too.
The gist is that language "greases the wheels of perception." However, after that initial greasing, it can then get in the way:
In another experiment, Dr. Lupyan showed subjects a series of chairs and tables using pictures from the Ikea catalog. Some subjects were asked to press a button indicating that the picture was of a table or a chair. Other subjects pressed a button to make a nonverbal judgment about the pictures, for example, to indicate whether they liked them or not. Dr. Lupyan found that the subjects who used words to label the objects had more trouble remembering whether they’d seen a specific chair before than subjects who had only pressed a button in a nonverbal task.
Language helps us learn novel categories, and it licenses our unusual ability to operate on an abstract plane, Dr. Lupyan said. The problem is that after a category has been learned, it can distort the memory of specific objects, getting between us and the rest of the nonabstract world.
Buzzing around the blogosphere, there’s an interesting post about the evolution of tech companies’ logos that caught our attention with this story about the Nokia logo.
In 1865, Knut Fredrik Idestam established a wood-pulp mill in Tampere, south-western Finland. It took on the name Nokia after moving the mill to the banks of the Nokianvirta river in the town of Nokia. The word “Nokia” in Finnish, by the way, means a dark, furry animal we now call the Pine Marten weasel.
The modern company we know as the Nokia Corporation was actually a merger between Finnish Rubber Works (which also used a Nokia brand), the Nokia Wood Mill, and the Finnish Cable Works in 1967.
Before focusing on telecommunications and cell phones, Nokia produced paper products, bicycle and car tires, shoes, television, electricity generators, and so on.
Source: about-nokia.com
Recently, Nokia evolved its naming and branding strategy, as well, with evocative product names, such as Luna, Arte, and Evolve.
That's Brian Christmas in the background...I think you get the picture.
According to
Ancestry.com:
The surname Christmas originated in Wales, sometimes given to people born on Christmas Day.
There are 89 people named Mary Christmas in the U.S. [no mention Wales or elsewhere on this one].
Other Christmas-related names on U.S. Public Records include: Jack Frost, Santa Claus, Santa Helper, Carol Christmas, On Christmas and Christmas House.
Other names found in the U.S. Public Records include: Xmas Alley, Past Xmas, Eve Xmas, Kris Kringle, Snow Ball, Snow Flakes, Saint Nicholas, Rudolph Reindeer and Ginger Bread [I think I knew a stripper named Snowball].
There is no Frosty the Snowman, but 1,700 individuals show up with the surname Snowman in the census records [1700 Snowmen and not a Frosty among them? ...wimps].
Christmas is also a popular first name, according to census records. These include Christmas Joy, Christmas Day, Christmas Week, Christmas Coal, Christmas Cane, Merry Christmas Kellogg and Christmas December.
That's it for Christmas - Happy Seasonal Tides and Greetings!
Have you seen this blog by the brand strategy consultants named Whisper?
Attorney Marty Schwimmer reports on The Trademark Blog that an application has been filed to register the word mark VAJAYJAY for Goods and Services beauty, hair care and personal care products.
“I think vajayjay is a nice word, don’t you?” asked Oprah, when she used the neologism on her show as a euphemism for vagina, according to an article in the New York Times discussing the popularity of vajayjay.
The swift adoption of vajayjay is not simply about pop culture’s ability to embrace new slang. Neologisms are always percolating. What this really demonstrates, say some linguists, is that there was a vacuum in popular discourse, a need for a word for female genitalia that is not clinical, crude, coy, misogynistic or descriptive of a vagina from a man’s point of view.
“There was a need for a pet name,” said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the chairman of the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary, “a name that women can use in a familiar way among themselves.”
As Marty says, “This will be interesting.”
Sometimes things are perfect.
you’ve come to the right blog. “Lipsmacking”is the process of talking trash about brands, services, or goods, usually with a digital trail.
Other buzzwords and buzz-phrases predicted for 2008 by Pete Blackshaw, author of the soon-to-be-published book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000″, include this insightful observation about branding:
“Converstations”: Brands now have multiple entry points for meaningful dialogues or conversations with consumers. These are essentially converstations. Brands fully immersed in CGM or social media may have dozens of conversations, from the consumer affairs interfaces and toll-free numbers to the corporate blog. They all matter, and every brand manager should know his or her converstations.
Well said.
The first, “Plastic Surgeon” comes to us by way of Gizmodo:
The Plastic Surgeon, a cutting tool to open those plastic blister packs that dominate retail packaging. It’s shaped sort of like an old-school can opener (the non-turning kind), and is designed to rip the tip off of clamshell packs by slicing all the way around.
This is a perfect consumer product name, it is descriptive AND evocative at the same time AND it is a play on words, giving it multiple associations AND it is a well known phrase, making it instantly memorable and viral. For comparison, a competitors product is named “OpenX”. It’s no contest.
The second is FUBAR, a demolition crowbar from Stanley. Again this one is descriptive in that it contains the word “bar”. It is evocative in that FUBAR has a secondary meaning AND that secondary meaning also maps to the desired result of using the FUBAR.
“In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.” ~Hubert H. Humphrey, US politician (1911 - 1978)
This is almost a good article on company and product names, except Igor is interviewed. Via yesterday’s Sacramento Bee.
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