June 17, 2010
Uprooting the Personal Bias in Brand Naming
Naming a company is one of the most challenging aspects of branding. A name is the most visible, least changeable brand element, and it’s entirely wrapped up in the collective personality of the people running the company.
But that explains only part of the challenge.
Underlying the selection of a name are personal biases and fears. Like [...]
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June 10, 2010
That’s “Chevrolet” to you.
This just in: The New York Times reports that employees at General Motors’ headquarters in Detroit are being encouraged to use the brand name “Chevrolet” instead of the long-popular nickname “Chevy.”
Oh, GM. Or should I say “General Motors”?
The switch to the more formal moniker brings to mind an analogous experience in my own career. In [...]
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May 18, 2010
Your Name Goes Here
Your name has been your name for as long as you’ve known you. At least that’s the case for most of us. Sometime between the ages of four and seven months, the neurons involved in name recognition kicked in, and you learned to recognize your own name. And so you learned the word or words [...]
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February 17, 2010
Genericized Trademarks in Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole, one of Haiti’s two official languages (the other is French), is the most widely spoken creole in the world today. Commonly known as Creole or Kreyòl, it is French-based with borrowed elements from African languages, as well as Spanish and English. It is considered part of the Romance family of languages.
So what [...]
November 18, 2009
The Dark Side of Brand Names
Political correctness—and the scrutiny of language it spawned—might not be the cultural neurosis it was in the early 90’s, but we’re still sensitive to it. Except when it comes to certain brand names. These names, like all brand names, are able to acquire their own meaning and associations over time. But taken out of their fuzzy, protective brand context, they have unintended—and often unfortunate—associations.
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October 30, 2009
“Halloween”
The name as we use it is a Scottish shortening of “allhallow-even” (”even” meaning “evening”) and dates from 1745.
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October 19, 2009
When Phone Numbers Had Names
Some of you might be old enough to remember this…
From the 1920s to the 1960s in larger US cities, phone numbers beginning with the same three (later two) digits were given an “exchange name,” a mnemonic device to help customers
and switchboard operators remember the sequence.
September 28, 2009
Branding from Memory: Mad Men
I’ll admit it upfront, so diehard fans of AMC’s Mad Men are forewarned: I’m one of the few people who’s not completely infatuated with the show. But as someone who does branding for a living, I’m intrigued by how it reconstructs the ethos of an era using brands and pop cultural references.
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September 22, 2009
When Brand Names Go Bad
There’s one indisputable truth about brand naming: your name is only as good as your company, product, or service. Consumers rarely invest in something based solely on the perceived quality of its name. They invest in a product’s or brand’s reputation. Names can influence purchase decisions, but they don’t unilaterally prevent or guarantee them.
Which leads [...]
September 18, 2009
“Friday”
It comes from the Old English frigedæg, meaning “Frigga’s day.” Frigga, or Frigg, was a major Norse goddess and the wife of Odin, the big cheese of the Norse pantheon. The Old English word developed into friedai (12th century), which more closely resembles the word we use today.
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