I enjoyed Douglas Quenqua’s piece in Thursday’s NYT on the UNCF “name change”. Very interesting dilemma. (For those of you who don’t want to read the article, the United Negro College Fund just announced it was changing its name, at Landor’s suggestion, to UNCF.)

Of course, as a guy who runs a naming company I was particularly intrigued by the solution they chose. While I completely understand *why* they made the name change, I have to question their final decision. I liken it to the recent name change made by AARP (they also tried to avoid an awkward reference by reverting to their familiar initials).

I see two problems with this tactic. First, as is the case with AARP and “retired persons”, everybody knows what the “N” stands for. Just because they use the initials doesn’t mean they escape the reference. Landor’s last attempt at this ploy was to “rename” Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC. No one was fooled, and the company has recently gone back to the longer, less healthy sounding version of the name. It is amazing to me that people continue to pay Landor huge dollars to recommend such inane solutions.

Second, by switching to the initials, UNCF joins the litany of companies swimming in alphabet soup (NCR, ATT, WWE, etc.). While I don’t think a concocted “naming company name” like Accenture or Agilent would have been appropriate (also the work of Landor), I do think they could have found a name that has more warmth and distinction, while communicating some message of relevance (e.g., equality, support, guidance, etc.). Adopting the initials is a cop out, and may hamper UNCF’s ability to raise funds. They certainly have missed an opportunity to excite their audience. I understand they want to keep their heritage, but that heritage can be bridged to a new name (ask the folks at Altria). Now they sound just like any other big, corporate, enterprise with a cumbersome name. They’ve wasted a wonderful opportunity to instill new life, and new messages into their organization. To borrow their phrase, a name is a terrible thing to waste.

The article also references the struggle faced by the NAACP (maybe they can hire Landor to tell them that they should use their initials too). As a namer, all this name changing is a very poignant reminder not to tie a name to any current buzzword, technology, or (in the case of UNCF and NAACP), politically-correct reference. Names must be able to stand the test of time. What is politically correct today may not be tomorrow.

I almost forgot to mention this great coverage that one of our recent clients received in the New York Times. Check out Stuart Elliot’s write-up on our new name Daptiv. (For a PDF, click here.)

Amazon is holding a Customers Vote contest on their site. The way it works is this: There are six categories, each with three products in it. As a registered user, you vote for one product in each category (a total of six votes). If the product you voted for wins the contest, you get entered to win the chance at being one of a thousand people who can purchase the product at a drastically reduced price.

How is this contest relevant to the world of brand name creation? Why would naming specialists care to blog about an e-commerce holiday contest? The answer is simple: Two of the eighteen products are great examples of Catchword’s new product naming adventures in 2007. Both Magellan’s Maestro and LeapFrog’s Clickstart were product names created by Catchword. We’re very pleased to see two of our consumer electronics names so prominently featured this holiday season.

Enterprise IG’s recent rebranding to The Brand Union has created quite a stir in the naming and branding community. The general perception seems to range from “yawn” to “those idiots”. And really, who can argue? It’s just another “brand___” name in a sea of “brand___” competitors.

But to evaluate their choice, I think you really have to break it down into two components: the naming strategy and the naming execution. IMHO, the naming strategy actually makes sense. I’m all for coming up with distinctive names that stand out in the competitive landscape, but a company the size of BrandUnion, with the pedigree it has, doesn’t really need to stand out. Does IBM stand out? Does Southwest Airlines? How about General Motors? Folks who stand out just for the sake of standing out (um, does anyone remember MarchFirst?) often end up following the dodo bird.

The strategic issue this rebranding work is designed to solve is that Enterprise IG was spending too much energy convincing people it was a branding company. Their previous name was generic, irrelevant, and downright awkward. The new name, while not perfect, at least puts them in the right competitive set. The end result should be that the company can now spend less energy telling people it should be considered along with Interbrand and more energy telling people why it is better than Interbrand. Of course, we all know the real truth: Catchword is better than either firm, but that is for another blog entry …

However … and this is a really big “but” … the new identity certainly suffers from a few major execution problems. Consider the following issues that any good naming consultant would have pointed out:

1)Which is it, “THE Brand Union” or just “Brand Union”? The logo says “Brand Union” (at least I think so, it’s awfully hard to read — another ding against the execution) while the URL is “thebrandunion.com”. It looks as though “brandunion.com” is for sale — I’m shocked they haven’t tried to procure the easier and more intuitive domain. Regardless, it seems silly to launch BOTH names at the same time. Pick one and run with it. Changing names is confusing enough with out clouding the waters this way.

2) While I laud their effort to join the competitive set by using the word “brand” in their name, I would have expected something more from a firm of this stature. When we named our company, we explicitly ruled out names that included the word “brand” because the term was so cluttered and downright overused. The name development team at EIG/TBU could have placed the company in the right competitive set while still being more distinctive. The old name was generic, irrelevant and awkward. The new name is just generic. I guess two out of three ain’t bad.

3) If you’re going to use “brand”, at least pair it with something exciting. Union sounds so … Jimmy Hoffa. Not exactly a cutting edge creative association. Very blue collar. Very “soon to be on the missing persons list”. I wouldn’t even know where to start digging.

4) I’m not from New York, but even I’ve heard of Grand Union. Quite the retail hot spot in the Big Apple. Not a trademark issue, but certainly a mindshare issue. Maybe they don’t have any customers in New York. Riiiiight.

All in all, I’d give them a B+ on strategy and a C- on execution. Not exactly the best testimonial for the kind of work they are likely to provide their clients. But you didn’t hear it from me.

We were so thrilled to see a product bearing our newly-created name - Corning’s ClearCurve fiber optic cable - named one of the best inventions of the year at Time magazine!

Fiber-optic cable has to lie fairly straight to carry a strong signal, so it’s difficult and expensive to install in apartment buildings. Corning’s ClearCurve works out this kink by adding a protective rail around the skinny glass core, so you can bend, twist and turn the lines in and out of tight corners without degrading the connection. The innovation has Verizon and other telecoms—ever eager to expand their data services to new addresses—jumping for joy.

We loved working on this new product name, in conjunction with the fine folks at Doremus. The technology is exciting and the potential for this unique product is unlimited. Finding a distinctive way to describe the properties of this fiber optic cable in a consumer-friendly way was a challenge, but we were delighted with the final result. We’ve been there and we got the t-shirt too!

Naming a business is no easy task. Renaming a business is exponentially more challenging. Thus, it is with great excitement and pleasure that we announce yet another Catchword success in corporate branding: Daptiv.

Formerly known as eProject, this project management client approached Catchword to help them rename their company. Their need was straightforward: a new name and identity to help position themselves as more than just a project management software firm.

Once the client had defined the goal, we put on our strategic naming caps and presented a selection of unique company names. The name “Daptiv” conveys the ability to be more flexible and adaptive in an ever-changing, fast-paced business environment. After the brand name was finalized, our good friends at Michael Patrick Partners completed the corporate branding process by creating a catchy visual identity.

Congratulations to Daptiv on a successful relaunch of its company name and identity.

We love to see press coverage of the company and product names we’ve created. We were especially excited to see Vudu, a great example of our new product naming prowess, pop up in the news over and over recently. Not only was this corporate branding and product branding project fun to work on, but the technology thrilled us.

I noticed in the Macworld article that Vudu is now the proud owner of Vudu.com. As naming specialists, we are often asked to present company names that have available exact dot-com URLs. This is no small task when naming a business, especially naming a technology start-up. A four-letter exact dot-com with a CVCV construction is nearly impossible to come across these days. We have no doubt that Vudu.com will be invaluable to the success of this promising technology brand.

There is yet another article on baby naming called “What’s in a Name?“, by Sam Kean, at the NY Times this week (get the PDF here) - honestly, every other naming article has this title, so editors, THINK OF A NEW ONE, PLEASE. It cites work done by two members of the American Name Society (of which I am a proud member), Alleen and Don Nilsen, around the use of traditional boys’ names for girls and the subsequent drop in use for boys. Here’s a quick take on “unisex” names:

Albert Mehrabian, a psychology professor at U.C.L.A., has studied people’s blink reactions to unisex names. Take Casey. People classify male Caseys as more feminine than Johns or Jacobs and female Caseys as more masculine than Sarahs or Susans. That’s not all bad: masculine names are often associated with success, for instance, which might explain why parents historically chose androgynous names for girls. As for boys, Mehrabian says that today “some traditionally feminine characteristics may be seen as desirable in men, like caring and giving.” Given the desirability of those traits, at least for some, parents may be less shy about naming a boy Brooke, Taylor or Morgan than in previous decades, when the “feminine” connotations of those names might have come at a social cost — the potential loss of status, jobs or friends.

You know what? I don’t think so. I think that as soon as a “boy” name gets used for even a small minority of girls, it will become like unto death for a boy to have it. (In the US, anyway; I’m still amazed that there are men called Vyvyan, Hillary, and Evelyn in the UK.) This is because, for the majority of men, being confused with a woman is the worst thing that can happen. Ever. Women with “successful” (i.e., male) traits = good, while men with “other” (i.e., female) traits = bad. Are there truly unisex names, ones used equally as often for boys as for girls, in the same cultural context? I wonder.

I saw a commercial on TV for this new product the other night:

VERAMYST works on a whole range of chemicals that lead to your allergy symptoms.*

*The way VERAMYST works is not fully understood.

Say what?

Although I like this pharma product name - vera connotes truth, reliability, effectiveness - the fact that the FDA has approved a prescription drug that works by magic is disturbing. I suppose I can believe that it’s non-lethal, having been through clinical trials, but I don’t think I would take a drug whose mechanism “is not fully understood”. But that’s just me.

The marketing tagline on the Veramyst site is “The Power of One”, because presumably the mysterious action of Veramyst is effective against many different types of allergens. I think they should change the tagline to “It really works - but we don’t know how!”

Somehow I missed the news in July that Dell introduced another new brand name for its computers - Vostro. This line of computers is aimed at “the smallest businesses”, which I guess means 0-1 employees, since 1-25 (or even 1-50) is usually considered SMB. At the launch, Dell explained the name thusly:

Vostro means yours in Latin and Dell says the new brand is a milestone for the company, because it involves the company restructuring itself with a new division focussed on small businesses.

While Googling it, I noticed that “vostro” is sometimes said to be Latin, sometimes Italian. That’s because it’s both! As you will remember from your introductory Linguistics class, Latin is the ancestor of the modern Romance languages, including Italian.

It’s interesting that they’ve chosen a real non-English word here, in contrast to the real English words (Latitude), coined words (Inspiron), and alphabet soup (XPS). Maybe they’re just trying to cover all the bases.

I became aware of this brand while watching Mike Rowe on the Discovery Channel; a Vostro commercial has been running pretty often. At first I thought Vostro was a new brand name for Dell’s small business service, since the TV commercials are all about service and caring and your needs and so forth. Until I went to the Dell website, I didn’t realize that actual computers were named Vostro, too.

I think the meaning of the word is spot-on, but I disagree with points made by the good folks at Strategic Name Development:

Like many Italian words, it sounds powerful and racy.

I don’t find Vostro to be particularly “racy”, although, by virtue of the two “o” vowels it does sound grounded and weighty. (I’m not a big fan of the sound symbolism stuff, but I do think there are some cultural associations with certain linguistic structures.)

Italian also has the advantage of being a phonetic language, so it’s not hard to guess how to pronounce it.

Not really. I’m still not sure whether it’s “VAH-stroh” or “VOH-stroh”. Also, the consonant cluster “-str-” will be a bitch to pronounce in most Asian languages. So, do I like it, or spike it? I guess I like it, but sadly, it does not sing to me. Maybe Mike Rowe likes it better.