Wordlab: June 2003: The Free Business Resource for Naming and Branding

Little red Corvette: Baby you're much too fast. Little red Corvette. You've got a brand that's gonna last. (Real laudio to Prince's Little Red Corvette)

It's the 50th anniversay of the Corvette. In true automotive marketing style, the party started a year ago. An official unveiling of the 2003 model Corvettes, along with the 50th Anniversary Corvette, are highlighted festivities of the Corvette Museum's year-long celebration.

The Corvette family plays together. Brent Dewar, marketing general manager for the Chevrolet division of General Motors, described the celebration as a family event. Many organizations focus on the community and family aspects of the cars, Dewar said. ''We support them, and we sponsor them.'' One is the National Council of Corvette Clubs Inc., which has created an organization within it called the Future Corvette Owners Association. That group sponsors essay contests and other events to involve kids in the Corvette family. ''To really have an American sports icon, you must capture the imagination of the kids,'' Dewar said.

What began as a show car in 1953 for Chevrolet to compete with European nameplates, such as Jaguar, ended up being a sports car icon for Americans. Fifty years later, thousands and thousands of Corvettes were registered to participate in a national caravan to celebrate what is definitely not a mid-life crisis for the brand.

If you've got the horsepower, check out this Quicktime Video of the original Little Red Corvette. Purists know that the first Corvettes were available only in white. This '53 original, perhaps the oldest vette on the planet, was factory modified by the GM Experimental Department, stuffed with a V8, and repainted the definitive brand color. Corvette has become the quintessential American automotive brand: a two-seater family value.

Posted by abnu on Monday, June 30, 2003 @ 12:14 AM [ + ]

I Want YOU: James Montgomery Flagg's memorable image of Uncle Sam became the most famous poster in the world after it was adapted for U.S. Army recruiting campaigns in WWI and WWII.

Did you ever wonder why that image of Uncle Sam has such a stern visage that seems so incongruous with an inducement to join the military? Perhaps, it has something to do with the fact that the poster had added its famous line, "I Want YOU For U.S. Army" in substitution for the original message. This portrait of Uncle Sam was commissioned for the cover of the July 6, 1916 issue of Leslie's Weekly with the title "What Are You Doing for Preparedness?"

In those days, the subtleties of matching the graphic imagery of the facial expression with the slogan were apparently lost on the military marketing machine. Perhaps nobody even noticed at the time. Would that kind of communication disconnect work, these days?

It's a brand new world in today's military. See it for what it really is™: a slick branding effort aimed not at the recruits, who are as gung-ho as ever, but at their influential parents, who are a much harder sell when it comes to career opportunities for their college-aged offspring.

Mullen, the Defense Department's branding agency, has crafted a very persuasive expression of the value of enlistment in the military. It's titled Qualities For Life. And it reads, in part, like this:

"Qualities for a successful life. They are the benefits that cannot be quantified in terms of paychecks or vacation days. These qualities cannot be taught in a classroom or learned in entry-level jobs. They are an innate character trait; the trick is providing an environment that allows those qualities to emerge, to be honed, and to be utilized in everyday life. The Military provides a unique environment that does just that. It fosters and encourages the development of these qualities in each and every young person in the services."

Uncle Sam's "Nearest Recruiting Station" is being repositioned by a very well designed branding campaign. That's the trick.

Editor’s Note: Adherence to impeccable grammar is not the rule around here. However, when one is making a thoughtful statement on behalf of the government elucidating what "cannot be taught in a classroom" it behooves the writer to be grammatically correct. The phrase, "They are an innate character trait;" ought to have been written, "They are innate character traits;" don't you think?

Posted by abnu on Friday, June 27, 2003 @ 11:10 PM [ + ]

I am a jelly donut: It was forty years ago, today, that President John F. Kennedy uttered these famous words, "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a citizen of Berlin"). It was a moment in history that became a matter of urban legends that these words translated as "I am a jelly doughnut." (A "Berliner" is, in fact, a type of jelly doughnut made in Berlin.)

This is truly The Gaffe That Never Was, despite reports to the contrary in venues as prestigious as the New York Times and Newsweek magazine. Experts say Kennedy's German grammar was flawless when he uttered those words near the Berlin Wall on June 26, 1963. It seems that the German language is simply not that trivial — it has subtleties that very few non-native speakers grasp. If President Kennedy had said "Ich bin Berliner," he would have sounded silly because, with his heavy New England accent, he couldn't possibly have come from Berlin. But by saying "Ich bin ein Berliner," he actually said, "I am one with the people of Berlin."

Forty years later, the more things change the more they remain the same, as people less adept at the intricacies of foreign policy and the subtleties of language misunderestimate the President when he says to the people of the world, "I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy."

Posted by abnu on Thursday, June 26, 2003 @ 10:48 PM [ + ]

Bullshit: Does your writing sound like gobbledygook? Are you the proverbial bullshit generator? You might need help. We've got a program for you. Actually, we don't. But Deloitte Consulting does and they are offering it absolutely free. They call their new software Bullfighter.

Why should you trust a management consulting firm to cut through the crap in your communications? Because they coined most of the buzzwords! A partner at Deloitte Consulting said the firm developed the Bullfighter software for their own use because "we've had it with repurposable, value-added knowledge capital and robust, leveragable mindshare". He's got a point.

If you've got a point that you'd like to make in plain English, get your own Bullfighter. If you don't, you might find your writing buzzwhacked.

Posted by abnu on Wednesday, June 25, 2003 @ 9:59 PM [ + ]

Sexsomnia: Cunning linguists and semanticists could not have invented a better word to describe the new parasomnia discovered, documented and just published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Essentially, it describes a condition in which people engage in sexual activities while asleep. According to this seminal report, "Sexsomnia has some distinct features that separate it from sleepwalking. The automatic arousal is more prominent, motor activities are relatively restricted and specific, and some form of dream mentation is often present."

I thought my wife would find the following excerpt from the newspaper most interesting:

Sexsomnia can affect both men and women. While the causes are unknown, researchers suspect stress, chronic sleepiness, or alcohol or drug abuse may play a role. Seizure disorders, an injury to the brain, or a history of physical or sexual abuse may also be triggers. In some cases, nocturnal sex may be considered "odd but still within present social norms," the authors write, "particularly if the partner is a willing participant." In fact, some sexsomniacs are apparently better lovers unconscious than they are awake.

She looked up nonchalantly from her paper and asked, "Is that what they call it when I fall asleep while you're having sex?"

Posted by abnu on Tuesday, June 24, 2003 @ 1:02 AM [ + ]

All's Well that's Orwell: Geoffrey Nunberg has a column in yesterday's New York Times about the use and abuse of the term "Orwellian."

By employing his trademark analysis of word and phrase appearance frequency in literature and the media, Nunberg has come to some interesting conclusions about this favorite (and over-used) term for describing cultural tyranny, that it's not the obviously "Orwellian" phrases that are "Orwellian," but rather words camouflaged as everyday language that often carry the most hidden agendas these days:

Today, the real damage isn't done by the euphemisms and circumlocutions that we're likely to describe as Orwellian. "Ethnic cleansing," "revenue enhancement," "voluntary regulation," "tree-density reduction," "faith-based initiatives," "extra affirmative action," "single-payer plans" -- these terms may be oblique, but at least they wear their obliquity on their sleeves.

Rather, the words that do the most political work are simple ones -- "jobs and growth," "family values" and "color-blind" not to mention "life" and "choice." But concrete words like these are the hardest ones to see through. They're opaque when you hold them up to the light.

Perhaps it's time to replace the tired old "Orwellian," and replace it with something the better reflects the contemporary trend to empty double speak, something oh, perhaps, more "Bushian."

Posted by Jay on Monday, June 23, 2003 @ 3:10 PM [ + ]

Do you Yahoo!? That's a good question. Apparently, most people Google. Some estimate that as much as 75% of traffic to websites from search engines comes from Google searches. So, things are pretty good for Google: perhaps, too good. What happens when nearly everyone in the world googles? I thought it was about time that we googled to find out.

Google has its language police out in force to ensure that dictionaries don't recognize google as a verb. Apparently, Google asked their word spies to track down anyone who says they can google. In the result, Word Spy was googled by the trademark lawyers, who discovered that google is listed there as a verb. The shit hit the fan.

Google's problem is not a new one. Many well known brands vociferously resist any attempt by linguists to use their trademarks to describe things generically. Some even threaten customers who use their precious brand names to verbalize the activities associated with the use of those very products. A kleenex is not just any tissue. A xerox is not a photocopy. Rollerblade is not something you can do on inline skates. In fact, you can't even call inline skates made by Rollerblade, rollerblades. And, even if it absolutely positively has to be there overnight, for gawdsake don't FedEx it! Perhaps, the greatest generic hijacking of a brand was experienced by Hormel, which still wants us to love spam.

Google is said to be a play on "googol" the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros, a reference to organizing the seemingly infinite Web. Imagine how different the world would be if founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had branded their search engine by its original nickname, BackRub. They surely would not be working in the Googleplex, which the head office of Google Inc. is actually called. Could it be that these trademark fanatics plagiarized that term? Googleplex is also used in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, in which one of Deep Thought's designers asks, "And are you not," said Fook, leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?" Today, the Googleplex is where Googlers work and play. So, I ask, "Do Googlers google?"

All's fair. If Google can have Googlers, we all can be googlers. That said, google is one of my favorite words. It has given rise to a rich lexicon of googlewords: googlewhack; googlewash; googlism; and, in a terrorism obsessed world, the googlebomb. The ultimate WMD or weapon of mass dyslexia is elgoog, which was developed so that people in the People's Republic of China can google even though their assholes of evil government tried to block Google. Even Google hasn't missed the opportunity to coin their own verbage, allowing the Googlers to speak a new e-commerce word... er, trademark. Froogle. It's all so googlicious, if you ask me.

Let's hope that the pettifoggers at Google don't have the last word on how we are permitted to speak English. It's just not cricket if we can't use words like googly. The intellectual property lawyers at Google should just take a valium.

Posted by abnu on Sunday, June 22, 2003 @ 9:49 PM [ + ]

Intelligent Insiders: c|net reports, via news.com and BusinessWeek, that chipmaker Intel is thinking of name branding a microprocessor for handheld computers: personal PCs powered by Microsoft Windows and personal digital assistants like Palm.

Intel has been very successful branding its products since its Intel Inside ® campaign made the company name a household brand, not just a high tech trade name. Intel's trademarks are a veritable lexicon of branding, including industry standard Pentium and Celeron processors for computers and Centrino chips for wireless notebooks.

Marketing experts anticipate that consumers will want to know the brand inside their more personal digital assistants, such as the new breed of smart phones and even smart wristwatches powered by Microsoft.

The next challenge for Intel might be to take on the current leader in sales to the portable device chip market, Motorola, in the race for the dominant brand of microprocessor for personal devices and household appliances. In the quest for top of mind and market share, once again, the holy grail may be branding. To date, Intel has only marketed these chips to portable device manufacturers and has not yet publicly committed to a campaign to gain consumer mindshare.

There are some indications that they're thinking seriously about a new product brand. It has been reported that Intel filed a trademark in mid 2002 for Iomir, noting that the name could be used with handheld computer and mobile telephone devices as well as a long list of other possible products. But, they're refusing to talk about their branding deliberations and preliminary consumer tests of possible names or to confirm any committment to a new product brand. I guess we'll all have to wait and see.

In the meantime, check out the Wordboard to see if the experts dip into our branding bowl for the best name for chips.

Posted by abnu on Thursday, June 19, 2003 @ 6:39 AM [ + ]

Stripperella: Pamela Anderson stars as Agent 0069, a crime-fighting stripper, in a made for tv morons cartoon series premiering Monday on Spike TV.

Note: The linked website at www.spiketv.com has been taken down because of a temporary restraining order against Viacom obtained by celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran on behalf of his client, Spike Lee.

Spike Lee is suing Viacom over the use of the name Spike TV, claiming that he owns the worldwide rights to Spike and alleging that he's vigilant about protecting his brand. At the time of this writing, Spike Jonze has not been added as a plaintiff or defendant in the lawsuit, although he might have a case based on the stripper's stage name, Erotica Jones. Tommy Lee, ex-husband of Pamela Anderson, claims that he is the real Erotica Jones and will be suing everyone's ass if the Stripperella cartoons are based upon stolen porn videos of Pamela Anderson and him, which have been free downloads on the Internet for years.

This lawsuit is bound to be a real dogfight. There is already some growling amongst legal beagles that the ASPCA may start bitching on behalf of all dogs named Spike. The ACLU says that the word spike is not a trademark but a free speech issue and is barking loudly that Spike TV should not be muzzled.

Kid Rock scored the original music for the Stripperella theme song, as well as the show's pornstar. Jason Stiff, director of post-production for Nickelodeon Animation Studios and Spike TV, is understandably proud after weeks of editing and enhancing pictures of Pamela Anderson.

Posted by abnu on Thursday, June 12, 2003 @ 12:25 AM [ + ]

Brand this: For those of you looking for naming and branding reference materials, the Open Directory has recently updated its branding page.

Posted by Jay on Wednesday, June 11, 2003 @ 7:37 AM [ + ]

Acme Brand Naming: I just updated the Igor Naming page, which besides the helpful advice, now contains even more generic-named naming and branding companies in the table for your amusement.

Posted by Jay on Tuesday, June 10, 2003 @ 4:49 PM [ + ]

Hello Mudder: Which do you think is the best name of the eleven Triple Crown winners? Sir Barton; Gallant Fox; Omaha; War Admiral; Whirlaway; Count Fleet; Assault; Citation; Secretariat; Seattle Slew; or Affirmed.

Missing his chance to win the Triple Crown today at Belmont in the rain, Funny Cide was clearly the brand favored to win. Not just because he had the coolest name at the post, but because he has brand character. Funny Cide is the underdog of horses, owned by buddies from high school who pooled their modest investments into a $75,000 nutless wonder. Among the blue bloods, corporate breeders and oil-rich sheiks who spend millions on prize horseflesh, these owners represent us. Funny Cide is everyman's chance to achieve horseracing immortality. Funny Cide is the people's champion.

Funny Cide is a racehorse with a wonderful brand identity. Not a burned in the ass FUN brand, but a memorable name that his owners, the Sackatoga Stable group, might have found here in the Wordlab. Our category of names for Racehorses currently has a stable of 2244 entries from which to pick a winner.

Sackatoga Stable was conceptualized Memorial Day Weekend, 1995 in Sackets Harbor, NY when six former high school buddies talked about putting in $5,000 each and taking a crack with thoroughbreds for fun. "Sackatoga" combines Sackets Harbor, where some of the owners went to school together, with Saratoga (Springs) where managing partner Jack Knowlton lives.

The owners of Funny Cide made their historic voyage to Belmont Park today in four yellow school busses rented to transport their entourage for the occasion, because they're cheaper than the luxury coaches most horse breeders own. This modest mode of transportation, reminiscent of the high school bonds of the owners, has become part of the Funny Cide brand imagery ever since they arrived in a yellow school bus at Churchill Downs to win the Kentucky Derby, the first leg of their journey to the Triple Crown. Missing the $5,000,000 Triple Crown bonus, finishing third behind Ten Most Wanted and the winner Empire Maker, it's a long bus ride back to the stable for Funny Cide. But, with or without the money, these guys are real winners.

As one writer put it, "Not since Seabiscuit in the late 1930s or the great Secretariat in 1973 has one horse had the potential to publicize his sport so much. Like Seabiscuit, Funny Cide comes from the wrong side of the barn surrounded by likable people. He's a blue-collar worker letting little guys buck the sport of kings." Empire Maker, owned by a Saudi Prince, was predicted to win by some, but Funny Cide was the universal favorite and his name is the brand we'll be remembering for years to come. Like Seabiscuit, Funny Cide will probably be a movie some day.

Hay, if we get together and pool our PayPal to buy a nag, we might become legends. We're already long shots. If Wordlab Stables were to buy a horse, what would we name our steed?

Posted by abnu on Saturday, June 07, 2003 @ 4:12 PM [ + ]

Bond ... James Bond. When Ian Fleming wrote Casino Royale in 1952 at his home in Jamaica, he needed a name for his fictitious spy.

Back in the day, before Wordlab and even before the Internet, writers naturally turned to books for inspiration. In his library, Fleming spotted a book by ornithologist James Bond and decided to "borrow" the bird nerd's name.

"I was determined that my secret agent should be as anonymous a personality as possible," said Fleming. "It struck me that his [Bond's] name, brief, unromantic and yet very masculine, was just what I needed."

James Bond's bird book is still in print and, despite being first published in 1936, is still the only definitive bird identification book covering all the birds of the West Indies.

Coincidentally, Agent OO7 turned out to be quite a bird watcher, himself. Check out Pussy Galore and a whole lot more at Snark Hunting where we're treated to a list of the wonderful names of the hottest Bond Girls and the world's most memorable villains from the imagination of Ian Fleming.

Posted by abnu on Sunday, June 01, 2003 @ 9:23 AM [ + ]

BLOGROLL