02.02
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
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11.18
According to this ad, the OC Autoshow is “more than an auto show.”
- Ad for an auto show at a bus stop. Thoughts?
- Ad (and website) contain very little evidence that the show is anything more than an auto show
- Obviously, contradiction between the name and the headline (X ≠ X+Y, where Y ≠ 0)
How many times have you
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03.23
California roll? Yeah, we can whip that up.
Would you go to a coffee place for Mexican food? A Mexican restaurant for a great latte?
DeSpyro Coffee, a relatively new spot in Huntington Beach, is committing a common brand strategy blunder right out of the gate. In choosing a somewhat descriptive name (and they could have just as easily gone with something vague like “DeSpryo’s”), they’ve set themselves up to be perceived by patrons as a coffee shop—a well-established category that comes with a certain set of expectations.
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