WORDLAB

Free Naming and Branding Consultants and Resources


IM the new channel for Invasive Marketing:
I never know what I might find,
on any day I go online.
I used to get in quite a huff,
while wading through unwanted stuff.
But then I changed the man I am,
the day I answered all my spam.
Now, spam over instant messaging, or spim, as it is being called by Internet experts, is expected to become an even more insidious marketing tool. It's more invasive than spam, because spim advertisements appear instantly on instant messenger users' computers, as friendly messages from buddies. Most spimmers are pornographers and promoters of various get-rich-quick schemes, who are also spammers. It's still early days for spim, but according to reports, the problem is going to get worse before it gets better.
Dammit Janet: Janet Jackson got bleeped for saying "Jesus" on Late Night, the David Letterman show, when he wouldn't let up on his probing questions concerning her NFL halftime show "breastcapades." Thank god the sensitive listeners in the Letterman viewing audience weren't scandalized by the "J" word. At first, I thought that CBS had bleeped her for saying "F-off" to Dave, which would have been understandable, so it was a relief to see that morning newspapers were able to publish what she couldn't say on late night television.
NEW YORK (AP) - CBS finally got its shot at censoring Janet Jackson. But it was what she said - and not what she bared.

Jackson appeared on David Letterman's show Monday night, and the censors dropped her audio her for saying "Oh, Jesus" in apparent exasperation as Letterman asked her about her now-famous "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Janet Jackson, raised a Jehovah's Witness, should have said "Jumpin' Jehosaphat." Christian Broadcasting System censors would probably have thought that real phat.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Janet was on the Letterman show to promote her new album Damita Jo, which is titled after her middle name.
The Branding of America: The Library of Congress presents American Memory, "a gateway to rich primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the United States," including a wonderfully educational website called The Branding of America. Did you know these little-known facts about name brands?
Scramjet: It's an evocative name for the jet engine powering the NASA X-43A hypersonic research aircraft, which is designed to fly at speeds up to Mach 10.
"Mach Number" was named after the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach. Mach 1 is the speed of sound, which is approximately 760 miles per hour at sea level. An airplane flying less than Mach 1 is traveling at subsonic speeds, faster than Mach 1 would be supersonic speeds and Mach 2 would be twice the speed of sound at sea level.
In a test Saturday, the scramjet powered X-43A successfully flew at Mach 7, setting a new air speed record. The hydrogen-fueled aircraft has a wingspan of approximately 5 feet, measures 12 feet long and weighs about 2,800 pounds.
This NASA multi-year experimental hypersonic ground and flight test program, called Hyper-X is a high-risk, high pay-off research effort that will demonstrate "air-breathing" engine technologies that promise to increase payload capacity -- or reduce vehicle size for the same payload -- for future hypersonic aircraft and/or reusable space launch vehicles.
The name scramjet is acronymic for "supersonic combustion ramjet" and, actually, doesn't mean, "Get outa here, Jet."
Name My Baby Blog: Many parents struggle with naming a new baby. Others, like the parents of Beatrix Valentina, name their newborn baby with flair only to find the next challenge is to find a good domain name for her extraordinary blog, The Trixie Update.

Benjamin, who's two years old, has been blogging since he was a baby so he has a top level domain name, babyblog.org, which he will be sharing with a new baby sister. They're not the first siblings to share a babyblog.

These baby blogs are the modern equivalent of scrapbooks and journals that mothers and grandparents (and some obviously very proud fathers) have been keeping for years to record the earliest achievements of their children, for all the world to marvel at.

Does your dreambaby have a babyblog? Maybe we can help you find a title and domain name that's perfect for your special baby's blog.

Celebrity Babe Update: Because they've got yummy mommies, we've added this link to a hot blog dedicated exclusively to celebrity babes.
Autoerotic: A woman is on trial for manslaughter in the accidental death of a man, in what we can only imagine was a terrific car accident. Prosecutors allege she was driving the man's Mercedes when it veered off the road and hit several trees; she says it was a hummer.
To be perfectly honest: People are tired of clichés, according to a recent survey by the Plain English Campaign.
When readers or listeners come across these tired expressions, they start tuning out and completely miss the message - assuming there is one! Using these terms in daily business is about professional as wearing a novelty tie or having a wacky ringtone on your phone.
At the end of the day, people surveyed said these are the most irritating phrases in common use today.
We live in ironic times: "The Coca-Cola-sponsored Real Rover has discovered evidence that the surface of Mars was once partially covered by free-flowing Dasani, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Monday." That story is of real interest to us because it shows the new frontiers of naming and branding. We wrote about the Mars Rover and Dasani on this blog, although we failed to notice the branding tie-in. We're not too proud to admit that we were scooped by The Onion.

At Wordlab, we're concerned with naming and branding, and we love a good strapline. Some of our favorite news sources lead by example:
Bongo News - All The News That Fits, We Print
Ironic Times - Expect The Ironic
Scrappleface - News Fairly Unbalanced. We Report. You Decipher.
Broken Newz - When News Needs A Break, It Comes Here
The Blue Brick - All The News That's Made Up
As Good As News - The News Satire Magazine For People Who Can Read
The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Satire Wire - Because You Can Read, And We Have A Website
Others are sadly lacking in creativity. Andy Borowitz doesn't have a tagline at all.

We almost certainly live in ironic times. Same-sex marriage and on-air indecency are greater threats than terrorism, according to a recent report from unnamed sources inside the Pentagram.
Top 10 Threats:
1. Same-sex marriage
2. On-air indecency
3. Steroids
4. Illegal file sharing
5. Martian attack
6. Return of communism
7. Return of the living dead
8. Obesity
9. Global warming
10. Terrorism
(Statistics courtesy Department of Defense.)
According to media mongrel, Garlic News, Inc, "Bush says that parody news stinks." The president refers readers to the White House .org website for real good news stories.
Show Me The Money Shot: Paris Hilton was bucked by a horse while filming The Simple Life 2, according to a report in the Los Angeles Daily News. CNN didn't get footage of the horse kicking the leggy blonde, but did get a sound bite.
A spokesman for the TV studio, Chris Alexander, said Hilton was walking around after falling off the horse, "but to err on the absolute side of caution, we made a decision to medevac her" to a hospital.

"Whenever you're dealing with talent, you always want to be extra careful," he added.
Okay, I know what you're thinking--Jessica Simpson has talent, but what is Paris Hilton's talent? I suppose it depends on what you mean by the word "talent." Oh, that explains it. She's either a "sleeper" or a "party piece."
Namespaced: Yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine has and interesting, extensive article on naming by James Gleick: Get Out of My Namespace.
A City in Love: Yes Virginia, Toronto is for lovers. Lavalife, born in Toronto and now grown up to be an international star, has "married well" into a young Connecticut upstart's family some describe as "new money."
After 16 years of helping others find love, online matchmaker Lavalife.com is tying the knot with a single, financially independent marketer.

Stamford, Conn.-based MemberWorks Inc. has agreed to acquire Lavalife Inc. of Toronto for $152.5 million in cash. Under terms of the prenuptial, senior management at Lavalife will purchase $11.9 million shares of MemberWorks' common stock.
This was an arranged marriage, for money and family connections in the traditional sense, but the dowry of "cash for stock" in the family business gave the arrangement a modern touch, and seemed to bond the parents of Lavalife with the new family. The marriage took place in New England, as most of the family is in the States, although there are plans for Lavalife to keep in touch with friends and lovers in Canada and Australia.

This match, which people in the know describe as more like a corporate merger than the "love match" that the parents of Lavalife had dreamed of when she was a baby, bodes well for a new generation growing up in Toronto with sites on love and plans to marry money in the United States.

Flirtopolis, the most intriguing new debutante, (named here on the Wordboard by Blindweezy, a friend of the family) is getting ready for her coming-out party. A City in Love.
You're Fired: Donald Trump wants to trademark the catch phrase "You're Fired" for clothing, casino services, games and "playthings" (not sure if that refers to The Donald's bevy) according to documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office uncovered by The Smoking Gun:
Along with peddling overpriced apartments, Trump runs some spectacularly underperforming Atlantic City gambling joints. Trump's two trademark applications...were made after the January 8 debut of "The Apprentice," the NBC hit that has thrust Trump (and the alleged billionaire's swirling hairdo) back onto the front pages. We're waiting to see if Trump tries to patent the signature hand motion he uses to dispatch "Apprentice" contestants. On a related note, a check of trademark records shows that the firm (sic) "You're Outsourced" is still available for the taking.
You can read more about this story in the news. It should be really interesting when Trump tries to tell these folks, "You're Fired."
Priggish: Is "living high on the hog" or "living high off the hog" the proper idiom? Random House Dictionary's Word of the Day doesn't elucidate, but offers some clues from the origins of this expression.
Living high on the hog meant originally that you ate what were regarded as the superior cuts of meat, the ones on the higher parts of the animal (the cuts above?)--pork chops, hams, etc.--as against the belly, feet, knuckles, jowls, and the like. Someone who lives/eats high off/on the hog is therefore, in the extended sense, pretty well off. A 1966 citation is typical: "That had been a good year, a year of living high off the hog."
So, properly speaking, is it "on" or "off" the hog? Common sense would indicate that, based on the origins of the idiom, the correct version is high "on" the hog. The reference is not to living off the hog, but to living off the cuts high on the hog. You can see how unthinking folks might get confused. Still, most people use the correct formulation of the idiom. Google searches for the expression "high on the hog" show 18,200 results, while "high off the hog" shows a relatively insignificant 1,630 results.
Carpool tunnel syndrome: One of the funniest mispronunciations noted in an amusing list of the 100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English published by yourdictionary.com, together with their compilation of the 100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English.
Lucy Stoners: Women who choose not to use their husbands' surnames have been called "Lucy Stoners" ever since suffragette Lucy Stone accepted Henry Blackwell's proposal of marriage in 1855, writing,
"A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost."

Henry agreed with her. "I wish, as a husband, to renounce all the privileges which the law confers upon me, which are not strictly mutual. Surely such a marriage will not degrade you, dearest."
Upon their marriage, they signed and published this protest against laws of the time in which women lost their legal existence upon marriage (coverture), and declared that they would not voluntarily comply with such laws. Coincidentally, Lucy was a Massachusetts liberal, and the first woman of the State to earn a college degree. She had a mind of her own, as they say, which was apparently unusual for women back in those days.

In the last half of the twentieth century, the subject of "maiden names" has been at the forefront of women's rights and the feminist movement, but also in the background of American views of the "sanctity of marriage" (a relatively modern term in the history of marriage).

There's an interesting article in Slate, which raises some of the history of "maiden names" in American society. It is noted that,
...until the feminism of the 1970s brought a resurgence of interest to the issue, almost all women, including highly educated career women, changed their names to their husband's when they married. Of course, the majority of these women were married before they were 23. Now that women marry later, and live more of their adult life with their maiden names, it can feel unnatural to assume another name, even for women who do not consider themselves feminists. Once you have "made a name for yourself" in the world it becomes more complicated, and even professionally damaging, to change it.
Although the trend now is toward flexibility and, in fact, more women in America are freely choosing to use the surnames of their husbands, there remains an organized resistance. Morrison Bonpasse, of the Lucy Stone League, which advocates allowing women the right to choose, is quoted recently as saying,
"There's a direct effect between women changing their names to their husbands'. It leads men to view women as their property and that's why they get upset when their property doesn't act like their other property."
I wouldn't know about that, personally. I am married to a Lucy Stoner.
Always A Step Ahead: With evocative names, Rinspeed concept vehicles: Splash, Bedouin, Presto, Advantige R one, Tatooo, E-Go Rocket, Mono Ego, Yello Talbo, Cyan, Veleno, and Speed-Art are works of art and science. Each year, at the Geneva Motor Show, Rinspeed presents an exciting automotive creation, aptly named.
To celebrate their 10th concept vehicle the Rinspeed crew has created the Rinspeed "Splash". Under the ultra-light carbon-composite skin lies much more than just an agile and lively sports car. The Rinspeed "Splash" is the true incarnation of a really cool and fun sports toy. At the push of a button a cleverly thought-out hydraulic mechanism transforms the sports car into an amphibious vehicle. But that alone wasn't enough for Frank M. Rinderknecht (48), founder and boss of Rinspeed. A highly complex integrated hydrofoil system enables the "Splash" to 'fly' at an altitude of about 60 cm above the water.
For concept car lovers and naming and branding aficionados, a visit to the Rinspeed website is a trip worth taking.
Gum Blondes: Every once in a while, we spot a name that's just perfect for the concept. Have you seen these gum blondes?
Spongmonkeys: Weird, furry, singing rodent creatures. You might have gotten the original flash animation emailed to you by a fiend (sic). Rather Good stuff like that gets around the Internet pretty quickly. So it wasn't long before it landed in the inbox of an ad exec working for Quiznos, the submarine sandwich outfit known for its risky advertising campaigns. The adman saw that the spongmonkeys would be great characters for his fast food client. Apparently, Quiznos agreed.

Some hate the new ads; others think they're wonderful. One thing's for sure, the spongmonkey campaign is increasing awareness for Quiznos. The ad campaign is discussed at great length in Slate and other mainstream media; talk about free advertising. According to Trey Hall, the chief marketing officer for the upstart brand:
...Quiznos needs to be "dramatic" with the airtime it buys, because it's got a smaller ad budget than its competitors. It's a brand that's still in a growth stage, and its main goal right now is awareness—i.e., water-cooler talk. Mission accomplished, I'd say. By the way, this is an ongoing strategy for Quiznos and has met with some detractors in the past. Last fall, Ad Report Card critiqued a Quiznos spot in which a man suckles at the teat of a she-wolf.
Okay, the spongmonkeys are not everyone's taste-- but at least they don't suck.
Dasani on Tap: What does the name Dasani stand for? For the truth behind this mystery, we looked to the source: the official website of the premium priced water bottled by The Coca-Cola Company.
In naming DASANI, we wanted the word on the outside of our bottle to reflect the essence of the water inside. To arrive at the name DASANI, we asked people who love water what they thought. DASANI was their answer. DASANI is an original, collaborative creation suggesting relaxation, pureness and replenishment.
Notwithstanding the recent admission by Coca-Cola that the water inside the Dasani bottle is tap water, there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that the name is an abbreviation of DA SANITATION PLANT where it comes from.

In defense of the brand, spin doctors at Coca-Cola have made copious assurances that there is special filtration and secret ingredients that make their bottled tap water worth the premium price. For a look at the "secret ingredients" in Dasani, check out their website and hover your mouse over the pictures to see the words that appear. HINT: it's a whole campaign, with different pictures on each webpage of the site, and some ingredients are probably not what Dasani intended.

Update: Someone responsible for the Dasani website has deleted the questionable word that used to appear like this.

Update: March 19, 2004 LONDON/ATLANTA (Reuters) - The Coca-Cola Corporation said Friday it had recalled its entire Dasani bottled water line from the British market after levels of bromate were found to exceed U.K. legal standards.
Brand Babies: In recent years, it's been trendy to name babies after brand name products. This trend was the subject of an interesting article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"Picking unusual names is more popular than ever, because people are willing to choose from all sorts of sources, including brand names," says Cleveland Evans, a psychology professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska who discovered the surprising number of brand-name babies in a massive database of names registered with the Social Security Administration in 2000.
It's not unheard of these days for a kid to be named Lexus, Corvette, Acura, Camry, Celica, Infiniti, Armani, Dior or Halston. If a child's parents like a little tipple, they might name their kid after an alcohol brand like Johnnie Walker, Guinness, Courvoisier or Hennessy.

Undoubtedly, the first child's name to bear a remarkable resemblance to a brand was Diot Coke.
The Tale of the Tape: There's a great article about Magic Tape over at Snark Hunting that's worth checking out.

It reminded us of the story about how Scotch Tape got its name. Today, the Scotch brand is said to be an assurance of the quality of some 900 types of adhesive tape made by 3M, but the name "Scotch" originated as a bit of an ethnic slur at the expense of the Scots. We won't repeat the story here; but we'll link to it.

The company name, too, has a storied history. For many years, 3M was quite happy with its original name: Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company. The logofication of 3M is one of the great naming and branding stories of the twentieth century.
Making Fiends: Vendetta is always making fiends, while Charlotte makes friends. "Vendetta, that's a pretty name," says Charlotte. "Is it French?"
Martha Skewered Ribbing On The Media: "Celebrity captivates us," says Wolf Blitzer. This story is front page headline news, and the subject of countless television specials. We can't ignore it.

Martha Stewart, the person, was convicted today on all the charges against her in federal court. She still has the possibility of appeal. That's a legal question. But the branding question is, "Does she have appeal?"

James S. O'Rourke, a Notre Dame professor who specializes in corporate communications and public relations, describes the challenges for her brand, noting that it's all about her personal lifestyle.
"Martha Stewart is different, primarily because it's not about gowns, eye wear, neckties, or shoes. It's about a lifestyle. It's about emulating the style of a woman who -- at one time -- seemed to have it all. Once she's paid her debt to society, the safest thing for Martha to do is keep her head down, keep designing, and begin demonstrating a kinder, gentler side to her personality and her firm. Some charitable work and regular deposits in the community goodwill bank certainly wouldn't hurt."
What are the long-term implications for the brand called Martha Stewart? On that, the jury is still out, as they say. But most agree, it's not a good thing. Almost everyone, branding experts and pundits alike, expects the convictions to negatively affect the Martha Stewart brand.

Whatever the outcome, Martha Stewart is undoubtedly a case study in naming and branding. Hers shows the risks associated with personal brand naming for a major public company. In the near future, expect a name change for the company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., possibly to MSO, the company's stock trading symbol, although it might be better to further distance from the name by changing to Omni Media Inc. or Living Omnimedia. But that alone won't solve the retail branding problems. With the brand equity in a person's name, it's easier to survive death than ignominy.
Domo Arigato: There's a new "Mr. Roboto" planned for sale to consumers before the end of this year. His name is Nuvo.
Its developers said Nuvo's design was kept simple with mass-production in mind. While offerings from Sony and Honda resemble a child in their shape and movement, Nuvo has a more mechanical look because its head is lodged into its chest and its arms are steel rods with fingerless balls for hands. But developers hope its price will someday come down to the level of a laptop.
Nuvo is a creature of ZMP of Japan, which also develops more expensive humanoid robots such as PINO and morph3. Advanced robotic technology is being developed to integrate with human lifestyles of today and tomorrow.

Honda's robot, named ASIMO, has its own website with movies and a history of humanoids.

Sony's QRIO, an amazing little humanoid robot, is very slick. Not yet ready for the consumer market, QRIO is making the rounds at trade shows for the robotics industry, and other events to showcase the Sony brand. A well choreographed dance number performed by six QRIO robots can be seen in this movie, if bandwidth permits.

Toyota's new humanoid robot can even play the trumpet, but doesn't yet have a name. We'll probably be getting requests on the Wordboard, "I need a name for my new robot."

If you just can't wait to get your hands on one of these robots, you can buy AIBO, Sony's robotic dog, right now. AIBO can be ordered online from the Sony Style website for only $1,599--less than the price of a runner-up at the Westchester Kennel Club dog show.

Some of the world's cleverest robots, humanoids and their four-legged friends, will compete this summer at RoboCup2004. These robots are smarter than your average Roomba.

Robots are becoming part of our everyday lives; not just the fantastic inventions of science fiction, like Hal from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Recently, the CSMonitor Movie Guide reviewed a new Japanese film, Robot Stories:
Four stories with automatons as important characters: "My Robot Baby," about would-be adoptive parents practicing with an electronic doll; "The Robot Fixer," about an old woman who collects toy gizmos for her dying son; "Machine Love," about humans with a new robot in their office; and "Clay," about an elderly artist who's reluctant to transfer his brain from a fatally ill body to a computer bank. The last is the most touching, but all are skillfully made.
This film depicts human situations quite different from the intergallactic adventures of R2D2 and C3PO, the droids of Star Wars.

These new robots, ASIMO, AIBO, QRIO and Nuvo, are the stuff of dreams come true. But, what happens when robotic dreams turn into nightmares? You'll see this summer, when Will Smith's new movie, I, Robot comes to a theatre near you.
Why didn't I think of that? Kids today are raised in households with neopets, tamagotchi, virtual fish and all kinds of other virtual pets. Many of their parents had pet rocks. Now, we've got mypetfat™.
Deutsche Marks: Margaret Marks, a British lawyer and freelance translator, writes a weblog on German-English legal translation. In a recent post on her Transblawg, she comments on an article in Deutsche Welle about Denglish, a mix of English and German that is commonly used in advertising. She writes:
Apparently February 21st, a week ago, was International Mother Language Day. The article suggests more German is beginning to be used in advertisements in Germany - for instance, McDonalds has replaced the slogan ‘Every time a good time’ by ‘Ich liebe es’ (I love it, or, according to Deutsche Welle, I’m lovin’ it - well, OK, that’s the original US verb form, but it doesn’t really go into German, at least not as Ich liebe es).
Browsing Transblawg for other notes of interest, we learn that Germany has a law that limits the number of forenames a person can be given. In a recent court case reported there:
The complainant, at the registry office (after changing her mind about names and their order several times), wanted her son to have twelve forenames: Chenekwahow, Tecumseh, Migiskau, Kioma, Ernesto, Inti, Prithibi, Pathar, Chajara, Majim, Henriko and Alessandro. The court admitted only four, on the grounds that the son would later be made fun of otherwise. The four names were Chenekwahow, Tecumseh, Migiskau and Ernesto, so he has a good chance of being made fun of anyway. The court of intermediate appeal added a further argument: the more names a child had, the less it could identify with them. So it allowed him one more name: Kioma.
It's a good thing there are judges to ensure that people in the Mutterland don't go around calling themselves by too many names. Urkomisch!
Don't believe the hype: Huh? It makes you wonder whether the stuff written on some websites is hype or a parody of marketing lingo.

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Note the cool Fine Print: The content found on WordLab is free to the world. Although we cannot guarantee that any of this content is not already in use by someone, somewhere, on this planet who may have seen it on this Web site or created it independently of our Web site, we have made a reasonable effort to give you what we believe to be original names and slogans and generally good stuff. Use what you will of our content since it is here for the taking. However, if you decide to use one of our names for a commercial activity, and since we have no assurance that the name may not already be in use by someone else as a trademark, domain name or otherwise, we strongly suggest that you take appropriate legal precautions, such as seeing a lawyer. In short, any necessary due diligence is up to you, but we at least make no claims on your potential future dream name. We merely ask that if you do decide to use any of our content, that you please send us an email ["word at wordlab dot com"] about it for use in our internal records and eplosive marketing campaigns. Thank you, and enjoy.