It’s been awhile since my last post. In the interim, I’ve moved to Shanghai where I’ll take a position as Senior Consultant with a Shanghai-based strategy firm. More on that later.

Today’s post is about naming—specifically naming in English, or at least for primarily English-speaking audiences (suppose I have to make that distinction now). Upon seeing Pollywog’s list of what they consider the best and worst names of 2009, I realized that most of the “best” names are …Read More…

According to this ad, the OC Autoshow is “more than an auto show.”

1. Ad for an auto show at a bus stop. Thoughts?
2. Ad (and website) contain very little evidence that the show is anything more than an auto show
3. Obviously, contradiction between the name and the headline (X ≠ X+Y, where Y ≠ 0)

How many times have you …Read More…

There’s an issue in advertising and identity design—maybe in all creative endeavors—commonly referred to as “not created here” syndrome. Well, there’s probably a better name for it than that, but that’s what I’m going with. Basically, it means creative people are less likely to approve of work done by somebody else. In fact, they’re more likely to say it stinks. I’m probably just as guilty as the next guy, and just to prove how snarky I can be, here’s something I’ve been itching to poke fun at:

Are there two Barnes & Nobles at the Irvine Spectrum Center? And, no less, they’re both to the right?

But anyways, speaking of Barnes & Nobles, I do like to try and give credit where credit is due. …Read More…

We had identical, simultaneous reactions. “Tech Ninja? Huh.” Kind of a goofy name, but it caught our attention.

About one second later…

“Oh wait, it says …Read More…

Heard a great story about naming on NPR the other day. I love the interviewee’s idea of “WTF should I do in Wisconsin?” Hilarious.

Click here to read or listen.

And here’s a link to the related blog post at A Hundred Monkeys; NPR interviewed them for the story.

A few months back I wrote a post about a local coffee (?) joint near my house. The problem with DeSpyro Coffee, from my point of view, was that they were claiming expertise in too many categories at once (coffee, burgers, breakfast, mexican food, gelato, subs, and “grill”), which gives the impression that they’re a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe that’s fine if you’re a diner or a Jewish deli, but for a place with “coffee” in the name, it would be nice if they’d at least mastered a good cup a’ joe.

The other day I noticed that DeSpyro is now Dukes Burgers. I called, and apparently it is just a name change, with little change to the menu or anything else. The lady I spoke with wouldn’t give me a real reason for the name change.

But here’s the kicker: …Read More…