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Ask Jeeves has changed its name to Ask.com, muddying the branding waters with About.com and Answers.com.
Of bigger concern is the track record of generic brands on the web, especially in this space. Remember FindWhat, LookSmart, InfoSeek, AllTheWeb, etc? How about Pets.com, Drugstore.com or Business.com? And there are no intellectual property laws stopping anyone from launching AskAbout.com, AboutAnswers.com or AskAboutAnswers.com.
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Right now. Or at least begining at 12:10 pm pst today. If you are close to San Francisco, tune to 91.7 on the radio or listen online here. Igor’s Senior Brand Strategist Andy Valvur and our good friend Will Durst will be discusing what makes funny funny.
Updated two days ago, it’s our free guide to naming a company or product. Although a bit protracted at 86 pages, this PDF takes up a mere 1.1 mb of cargo space, allowing you to wear it undetected under the most form fitting of fashions–that’s right, it’s now super absorbent and discrete.
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…three months and a million dollars later he wakes up on a steamer bound for ports unknown, unable or unwilling to reconstruct the events that culminated in this new tattoo…
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Former Enron Broadband CEO Ken Rice laid out the power of language in court this week, demonstrating the value inherent in what a business is called. From Fortune:
He later described a May 1999 meeting where Skilling advised Enron’s top executives that, to boost the company’s shares, they needed to help him dream up an alternative to describing Enron as a “trading company” — since Wall Street viewed trading companies as risky ventures, and refused to give them lofty multiples. Management soon embraced a new mantra: Enron was a “logistics” company, engaged in “intermediation.” Its multiple began to soar.
The rollout of the broadband business accelerated that process. When Enron announced broadband’s new status as one of the company’s “core” businesses at a January 2000 analysts’ meeting, Enron shares leapt 25 percent overnight. The problem? “The business had very few customers and almost no deal flow,” Rice testified. And, oh yes — costs of $100 million a quarter.
Alas, the power of language and the leverage it wreaks in framing perception is equally as potent in the cloven grip of a centaur as it is in the hand of man.
Stay tuned — coming up next on ‘My Little Pony’, Honolu-Loo pony hedges against U.S. inflation by going long on Japanese equities and buying puts on the yen.
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AdLand conducted an online popularity contest for the past several weeks, judging a handful of blogs in each of sixteen categories.
Snark Hunting captured the flag in the coveted “Best Topical Blogs (trademark, branding, media, adbusting)” category, the final category nestled prominently at the bottom of the page. A hearty thanks to all our competitors for letting us win.
There will be a parade in our honor beginning at the 1913 Armory Show and concluding in Plato’s Cave.
We’ve collected 58 articles about product and company names here.
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The inane monosyllabic grunts of Igor co-flounder Steve Manning can be suffered through on this week’s “The Infinite Mind” (he’s on for contrast) radio show on NPR. If you don’t normally listen to the radio at 3 a.m. on Sunday, you can listen online.
Somewhere in Middlesex there is a drivng school called “Impact“. They’re lucky — if they had hired us they would be called “Crash Course” or something. Via Brian Millar.
Which reminds me, I think I had a weird aunt named after these.
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Two new Igor named entities have gurgled to the surface today, Landslide and The Signature at MGM Grand.
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Johnny, we hardly knew ye. The description on the steering wheel reads, “Naturally Sweetened Chocolate Pearl Shaped Cereal with Pirate Shaped Marshmallows”. In fact the marshmallows are heart, pentagon and other non-ship shaped shapes, so your actual satisfaction may depend on your definition of “Pirate”. Let’s see how Sean Penn tops this.
With the unrelenting consistency of a Borscht Belt comic, naming and branding parody site Landor continues to go for laughs with a well worn schtick:
Landor developed the family name Vanceva, coined to suggest both “ever advancing” and providing “every advantage.” In tone and style the name captures the dual nature of this technology: functional performance and aesthetic design.
They’ll be here all week. Try the veal!
More of Blandor’s wisdom here.
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Posted by Steve on
February 28th, 2006 - 2:17pm |
branding + company names + name changes |
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