Microsoft has finally chosen the bid bada Bing as the name for its search engine. This is infinitely better than the zombiesque Live Search. My gutfeel is the success of Zune would have prompted the switch to 4-letter names. To know more about this intuitive search engine, go here.
First it was Lintas. Then Amiratti Puris Lintas. Then they decided to call themselves Lowe. Then Frank Lowe walked out of the agency. Still they chose to stick with Lowe. Now Lowe India has decided just Lowe ain't working. So they've opted to call themselves Lowe Lintas (or at least that's the name as of this nanosecond). My gut feel is, Lowe will be eased out sooner or later. And the agency will be back to Lintas. A rather strange journey, this. From Lintas to Lintas.
Imagine this: You walk into a friend's place and you see that he's gotten himself an adorable little puppy. (Yeah, much like the one in the picture.) Naturally, the first thing you're going to ask him is what the little critter is called. He tells you it's called 'Condom'. Of course you do a double take and ask him whether he's serious. He tells you with a straight face that he indeed is. How comfortable would you be to call out its name? It's true. There is a puppy that goes by the name 'Condom'. And you can find out more about it here.
Sangeetha's has a restaurant in RA Puram. For some strange reason, they've called it Okadey. Anyone with a little knowledge of tamil slang will tell you 'okka' is 'to fuck' and 'okkadey' can only mean 'don't fuck around'. I was quite amused when I saw the shop sign. I wonder how Sangeetha's didn't spot this potentially scandalous name. Photo courtesy: Deepan Ramachandran.
Imagine a father choosing to rename himself after his successful son. Doesn't happen in real life. But in the marketing world, it's a common practice. Matsushita is the latest to be bitten by the renaming bug. Panasonic means Everything Sound. But some of the products of Panasonic have no connection with audio, like say ovens, irons, vacuum cleaners, digital cameras, washing machines, electric cookers and massage loungers. So does the name change make sense? If you take a literal view of things, no it doesn't. But luckily for Panasonic, it's a coined word. Not many know its meaning. And that helps. Videocon enjoyed the same advantage. The name has a strong video cue. Still the company uses the same brand name to plug washing machines and what not. For all those who pooh-pooh coined names, these are cases in point. A coined name lets you straddle categories. An instantly decodable name like Mobile Store limits you to mobiles.
Did you know that the struggling-to-stay-alive Citigroup paid $400 million for the naming right to the New York Mets’ stadium in 2006? That's a staggering figure, ain't it? I learned that and more while glugging this news item with my early morning cuppa. Knowing the avaricious tendencies of BCCI, I am sure this naming rights gig will hit India soon. Look at the pots of money that can be minted. Eden Gardens can become Anil Ambani Gardens or Nano Stadium or Dalmiapuram or even Dawood Ibrahim Stadium depending on the bids. The puritans will be up in arms. But has BCCI ever cared about sanctity? If they knew there's a scope for making thousands of crores of rupees, Mr. Lalit Modi will take the first plane to Sotheby's or Christies to auction the stadia names. I believe this naming rights thingy was tried out once before in 2002 in South Africa. Dunno how well the experiment fared. With the IPL hoopla, city jingoism and all that, you never know, this may be the Next Big Thing for Sharad Pawar Incorporated.
A lot of serious branding thought went into Metallica's latest album, Death Magnetic. Brand Identitymiesters Turner Duckworth were roped in to package the album CD and apparently, they were even allowed the freedom to choose the title of the album. As David Turner says, "At the point of our very first meeting with the band they hadn't settled on an album title or finished all the songs. I always tell clients that you start with the product and then create a name and that's the theme you build your marketing around. But they couldn't decide between four potential album names. I spoke to James (Hetfield), who writes all the lyrics, and got him to talk a bit about each song. And when he'd gone through them all I immediately saw that one of their titles tied them all together. Many of the songs were about death, not just the negative side of it but the strange attraction death has and also the theme of life, redemption and something more than death. So there was attraction and repulsion, and life and death, all contradictory things. One of the titles they were playing around with was Death Magnetic and I thought it was perfect because it really seemed to tie the songs together." For more on this topic, visit Creativity Online.
Hyderabad-based Sresta Natural Bioproducts has opted for a curious sounding alpha numeric name. Curious because, they could have opted for a name like Sresta. Thankfully, they didn't. Apparently the 24-letter mantra is Bhumir Apo Analo Anilo Nabha (The 5-elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air & Ether). Although the name has story value, I find the rationale, a bit contrived. If this was the mantra, wouldn't you have picked 5wordmantra as the brand name? 5wordmantra is shorter and cues 5 elements better than 24lettermantra. The only explanation for the choice could have been numerology. I tested this hunch of mine by tallying the number score of 'Sresta Natural Bioproducts Pvt. Ltd.' and 24-letter mantra. Guess what? Both add up to 9!
Ad agency Mudra has launched a special unit for rural marketing and guess what they've called it? Terra (the latin word for Earth). Now why on earth would you go Latin if you're supposed to be the expert in integrated rural marketing? I am assuming, by rural, Mudra is not referring to global villages. Their operating ambit is clearly India. So, why didn't they opt for a Hindi/Sanskrit/Hindustani sounding name? Doesn't Mitti capture the flavour better than Terra? Or say Des. May be, Mudra didn't want to get dehaati. But if you're not proud of being dehaati, what's the point of starting a division that focuses on the same? Daiya re daiya, inka kya hoga, bhaiya?
The open source browser of Google will be beta tested today. I love my Firefox. I dunno how Chrome plans to tempt me into switching. From the looks of it, it seems more like one more move from Google to make Microsoft squirm. I like the non-techie comic strip tactic used by Chrome to explain all about itself. Makes it all the more likable.