We talk a lot about language as it appears in advertising and marketing, and especially in the names that define brands, but the most crucial arena for finding the right words is in international diplomacy, where our very survival is at stake.

In the latest development in the tug-of-war over potential war with Iraq, the United States and France are wrestling over the language of the proposed U.N. resolution that would force Iraq to disarm, or else…. The sticking point comes down to two words: “material breach,” in this case of Iraq’s past U.N. obligations. The U.S. wants very badly to include those two words, “to show the Security Council’s resolve in the face of Iraq’s failure to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors.”

The French, however, were concerned that the mention of “material breach” would allow the United States to attack Iraq on its own. Diplomats said French and the U.S. diplomats were talking about ways to change the wording to make the text acceptable to both sides.

Not quite the home run that “It depends on what your definition of is is,” perhaps, but startling nonetheless, as yet another reminder of how history is often painstakingly built upon a foundation of words.

A couple years ago, Ricochet was a hot company that provided high-speed wireless Internet access that actually worked. So, of course, they went bankrupt. Bought-out by Denver-based Aerie Networks in mid-2001, the Ricochet service is hoping to bounce back with an all-new brand and extensive advertising, first in the metro Denver area, then gradually nationwide.

The original Ricochet service was used primarily by now-extinct Silicon Valley techiesaurs, but the new brand is aggressively targeting the average consumer. Perhaps the best of the new taglines: “Plug one end into your computer. There is no other end.”

A brand new China: China’s financial industry has a new mantra these days as its markets open up to the world: branding. This, according to a story in China Daily, is an industry that used to be tightly regulated, based on networking, unwilling to compete, and was in a country with no awareness of advertising or brand building. Now all of that is changing very quickly, and competition is building:

“Brand reputation is a company’s largest single intangible asset,” said Tian Rencan, chief executive officer (CEO) of Fortis Investment Management Asia Ltd….

“Buying a fund is actually buying a brand,” said Xu Xiaosong, Southern Fund’s chief economist and deputy managing director.

We’ve lost track: is China still considered a communist country?

On the heels of last month’s announcement by Toyota and Nissan that the two silverbacks of the Japanese auto industry will, for the first time ever, team up to produce hybrid gas-electric automotive engines, comes today’s shocker by Toyota that it plans to have only hybrid engines in ALL of its cars by 2012.

This news, coupled with the Toyota-Nissan alliance, is sure to send shock waves through the U.S. auto industry. The Detroit automakers have been downplaying hybrid engines and focusing their R&D efforts on fuel cell technology, which may take longer than ten years to move into widespread availability.

On the fuel cell front, GM’s prototype car using fuel cells and electronic “drive-by-wire” technology, Hy-wire, could use a new name. After all, this is a major new technology that could completely revolutionize the automotive world and eventually lead to a serious reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; shouldn’t the name of this breakthrough driving experience capitalize on the emotional implications of such a revolution?

Also, it seems risky to couple the innovative propulsion system of the Hy-wire with a new driving mechanism that would effectively force all drivers to abandon everything they know about how to drive and instead learn to drive electronically, giving the X-Box Generation an unfair advantage out on the freeway. This could be a situation developing where, while GM is designing a great lunar rover to be piloted by astronauts and fighter pilots, Toyota and Nissan are covering the earth with hybrid vehicles that the rest of us can drive.

Palm has just released a couple of new products whose names indicate a shift in brand strategy. The new names, “Zire” and “Tungsten,” display a move toward branding the actual products, rather than just the corporate name.

Previously, Palm’s devices all had inspiring names like “IIIxe” and “M505,” which is the same naming strategy employed by the likes of Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Jaguar – most of the brand equity goes to the company, and very little to the product.

Research in Motion (RIM) has taken the opposite tack by dubbing their product “Blackberry,” a truly great name which quickly eclipsed its corporate birth mother. This makes sense for wireless devices, because the technology and features change so quickly, functionality and price play a much bigger role than in the luxury car market. However RIM should be doing a better job of building its corporate brand as well.

The wall that RIM has hit is that with Blackberry such a tough act to follow, it has chosen not to try, and is assigning model numbers to the newer Blackberry units, a la Blackberry 6710. Soon “RIM” will fade from memory, and everyone will assume “Blackberry” is the corporate name, and the company will be in the same hole that Palm is timidly climbing out of right now.

Remember what happened to the brand equity of the company that brought you QuickBooks and TurboTax? It’s called…? Apple is an example of a company that successfully builds brand equity in its individual products AND in the Apple name at the same time; one is never eclipsed by the other, and in fact, the product and company names support each other very well.

Snark Hunting is all about naming and branding in popular culture, but what does ‘Snark Hunting’ mean, you ask? The name "Snark Hunting" comes from The Hunting of the Snark, by Lewis Carroll, "An Agony in Eight Fits" about the Quixotic voyage to hunt for the elusive Snark by nine very unusual characters: a Bellman, a Boots, a Barrister, a Broker, a Billiard-marker, a Banker, a Beaver, a Baker, and finally a Butcher, who declares after a week of sailing that the only animals he can kill are beavers:

The Beaver, who happened to hear the remark,
Protested, with tears in its eyes,
That not even the rapture of hunting the Snark
Could atone for that dismal surprise!

Brands are a little like Snarks — they are all around us, yet often invisible, and trying to pin down what makes them tick can be as elusive as the hunt in Carroll’s "Agony." Perhaps "the five unmistakable marks" taught to the crew by the Bellman to identify the mysterious Snark can serve as our guide:

"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted genuine Snarks.

"Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,
Which is meager and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavor of Will-o-the-wisp.

"Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,
And dines on the following day.

"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
And it always looks grave at a pun.

"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
Which it constantly carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes —
A sentiment open to doubt.

"The fifth is ambition. It next will be right
To describe each particular batch:
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
And those that have whiskers, and scratch.

We are all affected by the names that companies put out into the world for themselves or their products. Occasionally such names are inspiried brilliance, compact poetry in a word or phrase, but the bulk range from the banal to the downright irritating.

"For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet, I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums — " The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.

This site is dedicated to tracking what’s going on in the naming and branding world, digging deeper to figure out what names or naming trends mean for the culture as a whole, and starting a conversation about a subject and a process that many people still find mystifying.

Snark Hunting is produced by the team behind Igor. We hope to take it further with Snark Hunting, and to find "warranted genuine" Snarks without disappearing in the proc–