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Full points to Verizon for redefining and taking ownership of the phrase “Can you hear me now?” Most corporations would have missed this opportunity, arguing that “‘Can you hear me now?’ is the question most often muttered in frustration during cell phone calls gone bad. Why run television ads in which a Verizon user asks this highly negative question over and over? Doesn’t this portray the Verizon experience in a bad light?”
Au contraire, mon ami. “Can you hear me now?” works for many reasons:
- it’s the last thing a consumer expects, so it gets their attention
- it speaks to the user’s experience
- it’s funny, warm and engaging
- it’s been successfully redefined to mean “Hear what we’re saying? Another breakthrough from Verizon.”
Extra points to Verizon for understanding that a negative can be more positive than a positive (think “The clear alternative to Cellular”).
Igor has posted an extensive taxonomy of company names in the biotech / pharmaceutical industries, classified by category and by level of engagement. On this chart, note that few companies have broken away from the pack; nearly all of them are heavily clustered in the lower levels of engagement.
The names that rise to the top do so because they are different, but most importantly because they are different for a good reason. These companies are using their names to distance themselves from the negative baggage that exists in their industry in the same way that Merck and ADM are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to assure the public that they are working with nature rather than against it, and that they are not cold, uncaring, profit-mad corporations. Further, these names help distance these few companies from the “GenGen”* names that conjure memories of lost investments.
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