As we head out on our Independence holiday this afternoon, let’s take a moment to reflect on one sliver of what makes America uniquely American.

Here in the U.S., violence is preferred over sex when it comes to what is acceptable for our kids to see on TV. Conversely, Europeans have the screwy idea that sex is normal and it’s violence that is abhorrent. Go figure.

This idea is poignantly demonstrated via this classic Travelocity U.K. television spot.

(yes, this post is a re-run from more than three years ago, but we’re headed out the door)

No, it’s not an ad for an Asian massage parlor. SHAG is the name of Cardiff University’s Sexual Health Awareness Group.

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Today ‘s Belleville News Democrat brings us a nauseating little nugget on the ingredient listed as “Carmine” on many food products:

Scan the package ingredient list next time you buy candy, ice cream or beverages with a reddish hue. The color may have come from ground-up insects.

That’s right. Instead of artificial red dyes, some food manufacturers list “natural” colorings called “carmine” or “cochineal.”

The pigments are derived from female cochineal insects, which are raised on farms in Peru, Mexico and the Canary Islands. It takes 70,000 of them to make one pound of carmine, according to the Wall Street Journal. The abdomens and eggs of the females contain the most intense color; those parts are dried, ground and heated to produce the dye.

Carmine is in the box of pink and white Good & Plenty candy I have sitting on my desk. It’s in the Dannon Fruit on the Bottom boysenberry yogurt I had for lunch last week. It’s in the Tropicana Orange Strawberry Banana juice I recently served to overnight guests.

Not all manufacturers that use carmine or cochineal are upfront about it on the package ingredient list. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows some food tints to be obfuscated under terms like “color added” or “artificial color.” So the snack you are eating may have bug bellies in it. You just don’t know it…

…Besides the products listed above, you can find carmine and cochineal in some Popsicles, strawberry milk drinks, port-wine cheese, artificial crabmeat, cherries in fruit cocktail, caviar, fruit drinks, yogurt and the alcoholic aperitif Campari, according to the Federal Register.

Wikipedia chimes in:

A request from the Center for Science in the Public Interest to require ingredient labels to explicitly state that carmine is derived from insects was declined by the FDA. Food industries were aggressively opposed to the idea of writing “insect based” on the label and they finally agreed to simply putting “carmine”.

“Carmine”, the most euphemistic ingredient food name since “gelatin” was coined as a substitute for “cow or pig bones, hooves, and connective tissues“

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Mercifully, MSNBC has cancelled “Weekends with Maury and Connie”. But showing no mercy whatsoever, Connie chose to perform a literal swan song on the last show that put her personal brand equity at a new low, virtually guaranteeing she will never work again.

WARNING, this clip is graphically humiliating. Watch it here, if you dare.

The most common mistake in naming is choosing a name that gets lost in the sea of competitive sound alikes. We’ve cobbled together a list of clothing brand names that contain the word “Bay”, with a few “Harbor” names thrown in for spice:

Aqua Bay
Back Bay
Baja Bay
Banana Bay
Bantry Bay
Bay City
Bay Reef
Bay Trading
Beach Bay
Bermuda Bay
Bikini Bay
Billion Bay
Bimini Bay
Blackwater Bay
Blubay
Brittany Bay
Buckley Bay
Buffalo Bay
Burk’s Bay
Capstan Bay
Chileno Bay
Coral Bay
Eastbay
Eccobay
Emerald Bay
English Bay
Falcon Bay
Ginger Bay
Hampton Bay
Harbor Bay
Highland Bay
Inner Harbor
Jamaica Bay
Kahuna Bay
Kips Bay
Kylani Bay
Latigo Bay
Lawton Harbor
Lunada Bay
Madison Bay
Mango Bay
Marino Bay
Mission Bay
Misty Harbor
Monterey Bay
Moonlight Bay
Orca Bay
Paradise Bay
Parrot Bay
Peppermint Bay
Peregrine Bay
Sag Harbor
Solar Bay
South Bay
St. John’s Bay
Sterling Bay
SunBay
Thornton Bay
Thunder Bay
Union Bay
Victoria Bay
Willow Bay
Yucatan Bay

“Harbor Bay” wins the coveted Gold Ridicule for including both words.

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A Hundred Monkeys, the naming company I worked at for five years prior to co-founding Igor, has added a blog to their site.

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Snapfish or Shutterfly? As the branding wars heat up between photo-sharing-print-ordering websites, Slate offers a detailed review.

The Arizona Republic declares MySpace has lost its cool factor, now that lawmakers have discovered it:

Our favorite is Rep. Pamela Gorman’s, whose online nickname is “The One.” Also, the Anthem Republican’s site’s name is www.myspace.com/gopdiva. No ego problems there.

One of Gorman’s “friends” is a dashing tuxedoed figure whose crafty online handle is “Bob.” Turns out it’s Rep. Bob “Bob” Stump, R-Peoria.

“I use it to keep in touch with friends,” Stump said. “And I am single!”

He has plenty of friends, 60 so far, lots more than any other lawmakers we found.

The other can’t-miss site belongs to newly minted Sen. Ed Ableser, D-Tempe. Ableser, who was appointed last month to replace Sen. Harry Mitchell, wasted no time in setting up his “Senator Ed” page, complete with photos of the boy senator getting sworn in, giving a floor speech and running a triathlon.

Rep. Jonathon Paton, R-Tucson, and Trish Groe, R-Lake Havasu, also have sites, but they just feature their official-looking mug shots and not much else.

Boring. They’ll never attract as many friends as “Bob” or “The One” that way.

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If you are coming to the end of your own naming process and are having trouble choosing between a short list of leading name candidates, here are a couple of questions to ask yourself.

First, if you choose “Name A”, are you comfortable with leaving “Name B’ for a competitor to adopt as its name? If not, choose “Name B”.

Second, which name suggests the most and the best taglines, adlines and wordplay? Perform a tagline generating exercise for each of the names, as demonstrated here. This tells you which name will be the deepest well for your marketing, branding and advertising efforts.

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What naming companies named their naming companies.

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Ad Rag has a post about Swedish clothier H&M taking “in your face naming” a bit too literally. Seems the name of their new men’s jeans line, “Fit Sliq”, is a provocative phrase in their native tongue.

Levi’s carries a style of jeans they’ve named “Knee Knocker”, which is a provocation all its own in English.

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Do you enjoy the pure Dadaism of the disorienting brand diagram? We love it. Click on the thumbnails for a detailed view.

The Viagra brand diagram

Brand strategy process diagram

Brand DNA diagram

Brand diagnostics diagram

Universal needs map

Corporate identity protection diagram

We are serious collectors of odd branding visuals, so if you’ve found some good ones, please post them in the comments section.

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