The Pollywog Blog

Pollywog has just completed a naming project for Medtronic’s Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management division.  Watch for an update in the coming weeks–we’ll reveal the name after the product has launched.

GM has announced that it is selling its Saturn division to racing icon Roger Penske. The $1.3 billion Penske Automotive Group has a number of auto-related businesses, including exclusive distribution of the Smart Car in the U.S. and a collection of dealerships representing 40 different brands.

Introduced in 1988, Saturn was once Detroit’s wunderkind. Launched with an advertising campaign by the late, great Hal Riney, it was “A different kind of company. A different kind of car.” The positioning, a  common-sense car from with a no-hassle purchase process, resonated with American car buyers, and the Saturn brand took off like a comet.

But through the years GM eroded its brand by failing to innovate with new products–or, more precisely, innovating too little, too late–and muddling its brand messaging. As a result, the “common-sense car” became the “uninspired and dull” car.

Plus, Saturn’s original “no-hassle” message was easy to copy. And even if the experience at competing dealerships didn’t always live up to the promise, the commoditization of message was enough to whittle away at the distinctiveness of Saturn’s brand.

Eventually, Saturn’s brand image could be summed up by consumers as, “The same old GM company. The same old GM car.” Ouch.

This must have broken Hal Riney’s heart in his later years. As a brander, he did so many things right. But brand messaging can only take a brand so far.The product has to deliver on its brand promise.

So it will be interesting to see what product innovations Roger Penske pursues. Will he try to put Saturn back on its original track? Or will he make Saturn stand some for something else entirely?

Much depends on how tarnished the Saturn brand has become. Only market research can determine how much brand rehabilitation is possible. Will it be enough to untether the brand from GM, innovate with some provocative new models and return to its original positioning?

Or will the new Saturn need a total makeover, including a name change and completely new positioning?

I’ll be watching from the Pollywog observatory.

Looks like I was giving Microsoft too much credit when I wondered if “Bing” was a shortened form of “bada-bing” and might refer to the ease of finding what you want with its new search engine.

Cnet reports that in addition to branding the search engine, Microsoft is saddling several other products with the Bing brand name. Microsoft Farecast is now Bing Travel.  Virtual Earth is now Bing Maps for Enterprise.

So, no. It doesn’t have anything to do with “bada-bing”–except, according to BusinessWeek, for introducing the brand with a gag video featuring James Gandolfini —or search for that matter.  Microsoft’s criteria for choosing this brand name?

Microsoft chose Bing, Ballmer said, because it wanted a short one-syllable name that could “verb up”—in the way people say “Xeroxing” copies or “Googling” search results—and was inoffensive in several languages

In English, “bing” is tangentially related to concepts far afield from any brand promise associated with these Microsoft products. In other languages, it’s “inoffensive.”

But it’s short, and you can make a verb out of it.

Wow. That’s a very low bar. It’s a good thing Microsoft has boatloads of money to spend on building this brand, because the name isn’t pulling its own weight.

Illustration by Jake Turcotte, Christian Science Monitor

Rumor has it that Microsoft’s new search engine–previously known as Live Search, then temporarily renamed to Kumo–will now be launched as “Bing.”

Admittedly, we have been tough on Microsoft for its lackluster naming. But when a company has the budget of a Microsoft, shouldn’t it nail its branding every time?

According to this story in PC World, Bing’s value innovation lies in making searches more efficient by providing a list of related categories with your search results. So what does “Bing” refer to?

To me, it connotes cherries and Crosbies. But maybe Microsoft was going for the “bing” in “bada-bing.” As in, “Bada-BING! Here’s what you were looking for.”

If that’s the case, they should have used the whole word so that the idea hits the brain fully formed. Without the “bada,” the “bing” can mean too many things, leading the brain off on tangents.

On the other hand, maybe I’m giving Microsoft too much credit. Maybe they were just looking for a short, meaningless, onomatopoeic word that sorta sounds like that seminal moment when you find exactly what you’re looking for online. Maybe they wanted a short word that could be made into a verb.

I get that. But of all the criteria that a name should be evaluated against, brand promise is the most important, not length or sound.

“Bing” is not the worst brand name ever invented. But it could have been better.

Moral of the story: When you’re naming, don’t use just parts of words that can make too many irrelevant connections and diffuse the focus of your brand message. Use the right whole word–a word that people already know–and (bada-bing bada-boom!) you’ll connect to existing ideas that communicate how you want your brand to be perceived.

Communication is a two-way street. What’s sent isn’t always what’s received.

So when you find out that what you’re sending is being horribly misinterpreted–to the point of angering people and potentially damaging your business–you’d change what you’re communicating, right?

I would, but then I’m not an artsy hipster like these guys in Baltimore. They created a brand of eyewear based on an ancient design that helped the Inuits prevent snow blindness. They’re basically big glasses with slits that you look through.

Let’s recap the dominant ideas here: eyes, Inuit, slits. These simple concepts are about the most you can expect people to grasp in the nanosecond that you have to make a marketing point.

So what did they name the product?

Slanties.

If you detected a whiff of racial slur, you’re not alone. The product introduction was met with a mixture of outrage (”mind-blowingly offensive”), befuddlement (”i do not get it, not at all“), derision (”fucking retarded“) and praise (”freaking cool“) One reviewer even commended the company for trying to make it cool to have slanted eyes, helpfully adding, “at least they didn’t call these things Chinkies.”

Did the makers of Slanties intend the name to be racially charged? Not from what they’re saying publicly:

The term slanties can be interpreted and perceived in many ways. In this context, Slanties are meant to directly imply having conceptually slanted vision, meaning a subjective, biased or narrower viewpoint, “to see with a slant”. The slant is caused, not by any physical characteristics (as one can see, since the slits are not slanted), but from eyewear being specifically built to limit your ability to see, allowing Slanties to antagonize your viewpoint. Such a vision can be understood as representing both a unique perspective or a flaw. The wearer decides, is it enlightenment or is it a flaw?

They go on to apologize to anyone who was offended.

But that apology rings hollow when you read elsewhere that, apparently caught off guard by the controversy, they temporarily regrouped but decided to forge ahead with the Slanties name.

There are a number of lessons to be learned here.

1. Always disaster-check your proposed brand name. When it comes to seeing the weaknesses in their own creation, many entrepreneurs have blinders on. But outside feedback is critical, and any feedback is better than none. An unscientific poll (what we ad agency creatives used to call the “secretary test”) gleans opinions that are mostly useless, except when you’re about to have a branding accident. If you try the name out on your family and friends and hear consistent concerns about racial connotations, stop. Put your product launch on hold, and either rename the product or hire a researcher to tell you what you know is true but don’t want to hear. Then rename the product.

2. Esoteric explanations do not travel well in a name. You may intend for “Slanties” to signify “antagonizing your viewpoint” (whatever that means), but brand names don’t come with an attached brochure. People will read or hear the name and form an instant impression based on their own experiences and filters–they’re the receiving end of the afore-mentioned two-way street. You can’t change what’s already in someone’s mind. You can only craft your message so that it connects with the appropriate ideas. As we’ve seen, when the context is eyewear, “Slanties” connects with ideas that already exist but are far from what the name is purportedly trying to convey.

3. If your brand name has negative connotations, it must also have positive connotations. As I’ve blogged about before here and here, there’s nothing wrong with negative connotations in a name as long as there are also positive connotations conveying the brand promise. “Slanties” has no such balance. At best, “slant” is a neutral concept lacking any strongly attractive qualities to offset the word’s potent negative connotations within an optical context.

4. If your brand name has negative connotations, they can’t be racially based. Just don’t go there. No amount of buzz will compensate for the damage to your brand (not to mention your karma). Yes, your brand will be talked about, but it will mostly end up as a punch line.

It’s disappointing that the makers of Slanties decided to dismiss all the negative customer feedback. And ultimately, it’s unfair to the product, because now this outrageous fashion statement is forever saddled with stigma. For many customers, it will be the name that puts them off buying a pair. They wouldn’t want people to think they’re racist, after all.

As for the makers of Slanties, my hat’s off to them for creating such a remarkable, brave product. I just hope they’re always wearing equally impressive flame-retardant underwear.

Today P. Scott Cunningham of the Miami New Times imagines the bureaucratic comedy of errors resulting in this:

Last week, Devon Thomas Treadwell, Principal of Pollywog, was interviewed by Ed Schultz on his nationally radio syndicated show.  Listen here:

Yesterday’s announcement by Rolls-Royce that it will call its newest model the “Ghost” reminds us of the power of names that have both positive and negative connotations.

The name “Ghost” is a slimmed-down version of “Silver Ghost,” the legendary model that Rolls-Royce introduced in 1906. Following in the, er, spirit of supernatural names, the company later produced the Phantom and Wraith.

While this history helps “Ghost” instantly mean “legendary Rolls” to vintage car buffs and those old enough to remember the original, for others the word “ghost,” er, conjures up a host of negative imagery.

But that’s what helps make it such an effective name. It has the power to trigger a reaction.

As I explained in “It’s All Good,” if a brand is desirable, and its name happens to have both positive (”other worldly,” “exciting,” “rare,” “inaccessible except to a few”)  and negative connotations (”creepy,” “dangerous,” “evil,” “nonexistent”), cognitive dissonance sets in. The human mind is unable to hold conflicting beliefs for very long, so people will either:

1. Convince themselves that the negative belief isn’t important (”It’s called a Ghost, but it’s still a Rolls-Royce, so it doesn’t matter.”)
2. Add more comfortable beliefs that outweigh the negative (”This car isn’t named after a spirit–it’s named after the first Rolls.”)
3. Or change the beliefs so they’re no longer inconsistent (”Ghosts are powerful and scary–I kind of like it when people think of me that way too.”)

This process is usually not one that people labor over. In fact, it can be done in a Malcolm Gladwell Blink–cognition and decision-making so rapid, it takes place without conscious awareness.

Maybe it was a no-brainer for Rolls-Royce to reach back and, er, resurrect a brand name from its venerable history. On the other hand, naming this model “Ghost” was not without risk of being off-putting for certain customers.

So I have to give Rolls-Royce credit for branding the car with a daring name. From a naming and branding perspective, “Ghost” fires on all cylinders.

Colourlovers.com provides a handy list of all 120 current Crayola crayon colors (along with their hex and RGB values).

And while we’re in the crayon box, check out this full list of crayon colors and the years they were added or deleted. I can remember the thrill of getting that fat box of 64 colors, which included a built-in sharpener and  a crayon called “Flesh.” When its name was changed to “Peach” in 1962, it was probably my first lesson in racial sensitivity.

Other colors dropped from the box since my childhood coloring days: Maize, Lemon Yellow, Blue Gray, Raw Umber, Green Blue, Orange Red, Orange Yellow and Violet Blue. (How can anyone color without Raw Umbrage–er, I mean Umber?)

Along the way from its original package of 8 crayons to today’s bountiful box of 120 colors, Crayola recognized the limitations of using actual spectrum color names, which are broad and abstract, and began using metaphors in their naming strategy.

Among the newest crayons in today’s box: Mango Tango, Jazzberry Jam, Inch Worm and Wild Blue Yonder.

On a related note,does anyone think this is a good idea?

This is a line extension that fails to leverage Crayola’s core brand essence–creativity and play. It’s just a beverage. While it may catch a child’s eye as he’s passing by in a shopping cart, Crayola branding does nothing for a juice cooler, and a juice cooler does nothing to enhance the Crayola brand.

Plus,  I’m no longer 8 years old, but still–the thought of drinking a crayon is, well, yucky.

The Brand New blog (well worth adding to your blogreader, BTW) offers a critique on the rebranding of Canadian retailer, Hudson’s Bay Company.

I don’t know this brand’s history, but its previous identity appears to have been an attempt to “modernize” this 339-year-old company by stripping away all vestiges of its heritage and reducing its name to “HBC.”


Thankfully, someone there recognized the travesty of that approach and initiated a rebranding effort that proudly embraces the company’s rich and differentiating history. Designed using the full brand name, the new identity offers a traditional crest intersected by Hudson’s Bay Company’s signature stripes in four colors.

It’s nice to see a corporation bucking the pervasive and brand-suffocating trend toward initialization of names some may consider long and unwieldy. Length is only one of many traits that affect the power of a brand name–rarely does it make sense to rebrand when length is the only issue.

Even for someone who knows nothing about the history of the company, the name “Hudson’s Bay Company” resonates with connotations and has the potential to pique interest. It’s insane to throw all that away for the sake of brevity.