Announcing: FOND

A company name should reflect a single, big idea. By rising above the functional and descriptive, a name that speaks to a higher-order idea can endure and inspire forever.

At one time, the name AnyPerk made sense to its founders, as it describes functionally that they provide a range of perks to employees of their corporate customers. That is technically true: AnyPerk does provide product discounts and other perks.

But they are really more than that. The company had long-embraced a single, big idea to define their brand: “The employee happiness company.”

As a name, AnyPerk says nothing about this noble reason for being. Moreover, as the company expanded beyond perks per se to also offering rewards and other benefits, AnyPerk was limiting.

It had to change. 

I was honored with the invitation to create a new name for the company.

For six weeks, the senior team at AnyPerk and I weighed the relative merits of 140 names that cleared preliminary global trademark screening.

And today, AnyPerk, “the employee happiness company,” announced their new name: Fond.
 

As a single, big idea, the name Fond will remain always relevant to the company and their customers. It will endure even as the company evolves. It’s easy to like.

I couldn’t be happier for them.

For their internal launch event, Fond asked me about the name. Here's what I said:

Fond's blog has a post detailing their rebranding. Their VP of Marketing, Michael Stapleton, offered these kind words:

"We're thrilled with Fond! Anthony did a wonderful job uncovering this name that was remarkably untaken. It so clearly reinforces our mission of 'helping companies build places where employees love to work,' but isn't an obvious, too-on-the-nose choice. It also leaves room for the brand flexibility we need as we grow."

Congratulations to my wonderful clients at Fond on their successful launch!

Fifty Futures

It’s my job to imagine different tomorrows.

As a professional namer, I strive to explore every perspective on my clients’ new brands. Each one is articulated as a name, representing a potential brand future. After spending weeks creating names and then filtering them through trademark screening, I present a shortlist to my client. Many possibilities, all potential, but which one will become reality?

Like Schrodinger’s cat, who, while boxed up is dead and alive at the same time, these names are futures coexisting under the cloaked secrecy of a client presentation. Once the curtain is lifted and the final, approved name is launched worldwide, those possible futures, the ones that might have been, evaporate (my clients get to own one name I have developed, and the rest go back into my quiver). All that remains of the runners-up is a memory, lingering among the select group in attendance at the original presentation, and they are all sworn to secrecy.

But this once, my client and I have agreed to share with you a few of the futures which a list of names represents. Although the final chosen name for this assignment is a particular favorite in my portfolio, the runners-up reveal a lot about how a namer thinks, and how the process of naming works.

The Project

In the spring of 2012, I was approached to name a start-up. My client was creating a line of ready-to-drink cocktails, made with select, natural ingredients, organic when possible. The drinks would be lightly carbonated, delicious and, being made simply, would be low in calories. These cocktails, starting with a margarita, would give competitors like Skinny Girl a run for their money.

My client didn’t have much capital to invest initially, so I agreed to be compensated, in part, with a thin sliver of their revenue for a few years. If they didn’t succeed, at least I could experience the sheer fun of naming a new line of cocktails.

The recipes were created by three women who called their stealth, startup venture Moms on the Rocks, a witty name befitting their bubbly personalities. With a placeholder that good, I knew this client would be a great partner in naming.

Names are a mirror. They reflect products and the people who create them. After all, it’s the founders who ultimately set the direction for naming, narrow the shortlist of potential candidates and anoint the finalist. You can learn a lot about the founders of a company just by looking at their placeholder name. 

Fun, confident, outgoing, opinionated, unvarnished. In my briefing with the founders, these emerged as the traits that best described them and the personality of their new brand. Each of these qualities was a starting point, and from there, I searched for related words, branching out in ever widening circles. Exploring outward in every direction from these core ideas traces a sphere in words. These words form a world, and every point on and inside that world is a possible future.

For this project, I explored several concepts, included fresh, natural, green, fruit, squeeze, mixing, farm, agriculture, organic, and pure. I also looked at idioms and phrasal verbs to see what might pop up. 

After two weeks of exploration, I cherry-picked the best names and screened them for trademark availability. How? That’s a topic for another post. 

So what are the futures, the names, that might have been for this line of cocktails? Here are a handful:

Happy Place –Where does a great drink take you? For some, it’s here. The name Happy Place would tell the clients’ story about their Marin County home, the orchards where fresh limes are picked, and the Mexican fields where the blue agave grows. If this were the name, the brand would be about places that make people happy. The client could sponsor a YouTube channel where people tell their stories about places that are dear to them and make them smile. 

True Nature – The cocktail’s natural ingredients were fertile territory for name exploration. This one would emphasize the cocktail’s use of real fruit juices. True Nature would be an honest brand, a straight shooter. But it’s not terribly fun, while my clients and their brand certainly are. It's a good name, but for a different product.

Green Party – Natural doesn’t have to be serious. With a name like Green Party, this brand could be about having a great time naturally. Sure, the name skews political, but what if it were paired with a picture of dancing limes? With the right imagery, this would move the name away from Ralph Nader and towards skinny dipping and icy glasses of margaritas. Party on!

Picnic – You can feel the sunshine in this name. It’s warm, fresh and innocent. There’s a light buoyancy. The name is all about being social, with friends and family. A margarita called Picnic would be full of fresh fruit. The label might sport red gingham. It would be simple and honest. It would be good and clean and fun. Picnic illustrates how a surprising name can also be a real and common English word and not some crazy coinage. 

Squoze – A playful way of suggesting fresh-squeezed. Squoze would be a brand about living life with a twist,  and sometimes being a bit twisted. Familiar objects and experiences would be featured, but they’d be a bit off, in a safe and playful way: 
We hug our limes until the juice comes out. That’s Squoze. 
Be the lime of the party. Bring Squoze. 
Something to that effect.

Laughing Glass – This is not a name that might have been. This is the name. Because it articulates the sheer delight the client sought for their brand foundation, Laughing Glass was adopted as the go-to-market moniker. When a name instantly has the whole room beaming, as this one did for the client, it stands a great chance of success in the meeting and the marketplace. The name inspired the brand philosophy, Laughing My Glass Off and reflects what the client really believes in: Joy.

Snappy packaging by Voicebox Creative

The founders, in high spirits in The San Francisco Chronicle 

Laughing Glass is the reality that we see today on shelves in Whole Foods and elsewhere throughout California. But it didn’t have to be that way. It could have been one of the other names I presented to the client that day. Each one would have emphasized different aspects of their identity, and raised different expectations in their audiences.

I’m very grateful to Laughing Glass for such an exciting collaboration, and for letting me share this peek behind the curtain.

Thanks to my go-to copywriter Daniel Meyerowitz for valuable edits and contributions. 

Jaunt: The Story Behind the Name

“You’re going to need to sit down.” 

That was the understatement of the day.

Taking a seat in my client’s office, cluttered with computers, video equipment and prototypes, I strapped on the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.

I was now looking at the same office, but in the monitor of the VR headset the room was neater. My three clients had shifted positions. As I turned my head, I could see them seated around the room; in front, to the side and behind me. They started throwing a Nerf ball to each other and my head turned to follow the ball. 

I could swear that the ball was being tossed around me. But it wasn’t. It was a 3D video recording that so closely mirrored reality, I could only react by gasping and giggling. 

It was a real “Mr. Watson, come here” moment. I was bearing witness to a new and profound invention: Cinematic VR. And I was honored with the task of naming it.

The Briefing

The opportunity came to me through Character, an outstanding branding and design agency whose work I admired. We had worked sequentially on the same projects but hadn’t yet collaborated. Character designed packaging for products I named, like the Plantronics Rig gaming headset, and they designed the identity for Zact Mobile, which I also named.

Character’s work designing the Android identity system for Andy Rubin, the mobile computing pioneer, had led to other interesting projects, such as this mind-blowing VR startup.

Character and I rendezvoused at Redpoint Ventures where our clients were “entrepreneurs in residence.” This unassuming office building belied the fact that within it, the future of entertainment was being invented. 

Three clients briefed us: Jens Christensen, Arthur van Hoff and Tom Annau. Their words flew around the room: immersive, transporting, transcendent, virtual presence, mimics reality, a whole new medium, science fiction, Jedi training ball. When Jedi training ball is used to reference a new technology, it’s going to be a big deal.

Meet the clients.

After the briefing, they whisked us to the office next door for the demo. It was weird, this nondescript, plain-vanilla space was strewn with crazy, never-before-seen inventions-in-progress. There was the 3D-printed sphere covered with lenses, the dev kits of the Oculus Rift, and assorted networking, videography and optics widgets strewn about.

Meet the camera.

To establish a baseline experience in virtual reality, I was handed an Oculus Rift headset loaded with an off-the-shelf demo called Tuscany. I put it on and saw a computer rendering of a well-manicured Tuscan estate. I rotated my head to look around. Using a trackball, I wandered the property. Wearing special VR gloves, I could grab or throw objects. It was pretty cool.

Tuscany: Cool. But not cool enough.

Despite being cutting-edge, the Tuscany demo was quickly eclipsed by the technology my clients’ were creating, which was nothing short of astounding. Their high-definition video feed in the headset was completely convincing. I really felt like I was watching something happening live all around me. In the Tuscany demo, I was aways aware it was CG. 

Ask your doctor if Jaunt is right for you.

The Strategic Framework

Being there. That was the promise of this new technology. Concerts, sports, family reunions, Presidential press briefings, sightseeing. All these things could someday be experienced remotely yet immersively. I’ll admit running a little hyperbolic, but I’m telling you: Cinematic VR will change everything. This technology represents a paradigm shift in entertainment and communications as significant as the radio or television. 

I reviewed the notes from the meeting and synthesized them into name objectives. Name objectives should be MECE: Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. It’s tempting to etch every detail about a product or company into objectives, but it’s better to leave details out that might distract or take creative down an unproductive or short-sighted path.

Here are the name objectives for the cinematic VR project:  

The new name should support or connote a brand that:

• delivers unprecedented experiences presented in an entirely new medium
• provides immersive, virtual experiences that are completely realistic
• is capable of representing an entirely new category of experience
• transports people to another place 
• is not limited to a visual experience

The new name will refer to an experience, hardware, software, a website and app, among other things. 

The new name should have the ability to be appended as a modifier, as in ESPN 3D, The Avengers Blue-ray or Pacific Rim IMAX. 

The name should be relatively short and easy to spell. 

The trademark and domain should be available or acquirable.

• The domain might include a modification of the name, or be something other than .com (though not .net or .org).

The Names My Destination

Upon approval of the objectives I started naming, plundering the worlds of immersion, travel, space, entertainment and verbs. I scoured science fiction – teleportation in particular – and found The Glossary of Science Fiction Ideas, Technology and Inventions, an alphabetic inventory of over 2400 glorious gadgets, gizmos and doodads. It is the go-to resource for studying futuristic, albeit fictional, advances in science. 

It was there, filed under J, that I found the entry for Jaunte Stage – a little space to teleport. Alfred Bester’s 1953 novel, The Stars my Destination, introduces jaunte to mean teleport. A Jaunte Stage is a platform for teleportation. 

Jaunting, in the novel, was not named after the word jaunt, but after a character, Charles Fort Jaunte, who discovered the ability to self-transport by mind power alone. Jaunting was not a technology, but a psionic capability.

Any man was capable of jaunting provided he developed two faculties, visualization and concentration. He had to visualize, completely and precisely, the spot to which he desired to teleport himself; and he had to concentrate the latent energy of his mind into a single thrust to get him there. 

–Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination

Decades later, Stephen King wrote a short story about teleportation called The Jaunt. He got the name from the same place I did. Quoth The Jaunt:

“Of course you know that the Jaunt is teleportation, no more or less,” he said. “Sometimes in college chemistry class and physics they call it the Carune Process, but it’s really teleportation, and it was Carune himself — if you can believe the stories — who named it ‘The Jaunt.’ He was a science-fiction reader, and there’s a story by a man named Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination it’s called, and this fellow Bester made up the word ‘jaunte’ for teleportation in it. Except in his book you could Jaunt just by thinking about it, and we can’t really do that.” 

– Stephen King, The Jaunt

Bester did not make up the word jaunt, only its use as teleport. We don’t really know where the word jaunt first came from. It might have originated in Old French. We do know that it was originally pejorative and meant “a tiresome journey” (1590s) or “to tire a horse out by riding back and forth on it” (1560s). The current, positive meaning of jaunt to mean “a short pleasure trip” came about in the 1670s. 

Oddly, the word jaunty does not come from jaunt, but from French gentil (meaning gentle, genteel). Despite jaunty meaning “having a lively, cheerful and self-confident manner,” and jaunt meaning a “lively, cheerful excursion,” their resemblance is just a coincidence. 

I created 1200 other names for the assignment and over 200 were screened for preliminary global trademark availability by my long-time trademark partner, Steve Price of Tessera. I worked closely with Character refining the list and over 100 names were presented in two rounds of work. 

Context is King

It’s vital to stage name candidates in a presentation so they have the best chance of acceptance. As a presenter, you must help the audience suspend disbelief that these are not just words on a page. That requires presenting name candidates in a fait-accompli, real-world context. The more a hypothetical name looks like it’s an actual living, breathing brand, the better. (More on that topic here.) 

I chose to present the names in a mocked-up entertainment website. The visual identity development had not yet begun and my client did not have a website, so I started with Ticketmaster’s website then altered it to fit my client’s prospective future. This is what the Jaunt name exhibit looked like for the name presentation: 

The right context makes a hypothetical name seem like a done deal.

Fortunately, Jaunt’s final identity and website is way slicker than my hack. 

The client loved Jaunt. Here’s why:

• A jaunt is a short trip for pleasure, just as their technology offers a fast and fun escape
• The name has already been validated – twice! – as a perfect name for teleportation, which is itself the perfect metaphor for cinematic VR
• It’s short and pairs well with other brands as a technology platform (“See Wimbledon live in Jaunt!”)

Jaunting Ahead 

Following my client’s full legal screening, the name was adopted. Character created Jaunt’s iconic identity:

The name was launched on a snappy website highlighting power-player testimonials:

“Jaunt has created a completely new experience that will change the way we enjoy media.” 

–Brad Wechsler, Chairman of IMAX  

“Jaunt is a total sensory experience unlike anything I've ever seen.The creative community is going to blow our minds with this technology over the coming years.” 

–Peter Gotcher, Chairman of Dolby

I loved how the client incorporated the name into their messaging. From the website:

“The idea for Jaunt originated in early 2013 when one of our founders returned from an amazing experience at Zion National Park.  What if he could go back there for a brief jaunt, at any time, from any place?” 

For further reading on the technology and future of Jaunt, check out these articles:

Meet the Crazy Camera That Can Make Movies for the Oculus Rift 

Virtual reality has another ‘wow’ moment as Jaunt introduces 360-degree cinematic videos 

Jaunt wants to make virtual reality a platform for beautiful, immersive cinema

I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to name Jaunt. Thank you Tom, Arthur, Jens, Ollie, Ben and the rest of the talented team at Character.

- Anth

Wanderful: The Story Behind the Name

“Mickey Mantle needs a new name.”

That’s how I first heard about the assignment, when a colleague told me about his client named Mickey Mantle and his yet-unnamed interactive children’s book company.

To name a publisher, imprint an imprint, title a maker of titles; this would be a dream assignment.

The resurrection of an old brand would be the inception of this new one. Living Books, the products that created the category of highly interactive children’s books, was dormant for years. Broderbund was the original publisher and in a series of acquisition/mergers/spin-outs and ownership changes, Living Books ended up as the property of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Despite a decade of great success, new stories in the Living Books series were not released, and the software languished without updates to newer operating systems for PC and Macs.

Mickey Mantle, once Broderbund’s VP of Engineering/CTO and now an entrepreneur, struck a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to re-publish the Living Books series, which includes about 20 individual stories each by a variety of noted authors, including Mercer Mayer (Little Monster), Marc Brown (Arthur), Jan and Stan Berenstain (Berenstain Bears), Dr. Seuss and others. For today’s kids, the assets from the original CD-ROM titles, like  graphics, animations, sound and music, would be used directly by a new technology platform developed by Mickey’s team running on iPads and iPhones, Android mobile devices, and current Mac and PC computers.

Once again, Living Books would live, but it would have to do so under a different name. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt allowed the Living Books content to be re-published so long as the Living Books name remained theirs. That required the new publisher to use a new moniker but could include an attribution that the stories were “originally published as a Living Book by Broderbund Software” and the display of a small Living Books logo accompanying the attribution. The new name would have to coexist and contrast with the former one.

The original Living Books logo

I interviewed the founders of the company: Mickey Mantle; his wife, Natasha Krol, a PR and marketing veteran; and Mark Schlichting, an expert in child education and language development, a children’s book author and illustrator, the creator of the hysterical, award-winning Noodle Words app, and the original creator of Living Books.

I learned from them that Living Books and its reincarnation were richer, deeper and far more interactive than other e-books. Every page of every title features a multitude of tappable elements. With a dozen or more things to do on each page, children linger longer. Their attention, knowledge and imagination are strengthened as a result.

The new brand had two key facets: education and play. Because education is sometimes framed as work – homework, schoolwork, et al. – I first believed these ideas stood in opposition. Indeed, the pedagogical foundation of Living Books 1.0 was rigorous enough that thousands of schools incorporated them and accompanying teaching aids into their curricula. Even today, some schools keep legacy Macs or PC systems around just to retain access to Broderbund’s wunderkind series.

In our discussion, Mark explained to me that play actually enhances learning. If kids have fun while learning, they will engage more deeply and eagerly with the materials. The new brand and its name would have to convey that these interactive books are both educational and fun in order to appeal to kids, parents and educators.

The new name would also have to stand out in the absurdly crowded iTunes and Android marketplaces (500,000 apps and counting). Presented with a list of hundreds of interactive book choices, the brand name needed to leap off the screen to catch the attention of a busy parent or impatient child.   

I wrote name objectives that assimilated and synthesized the interviews and background research into one page. With the criteria for name development and selection established, creative development could commence.

Quoting Maurice Sendak, who passed while this naming project was in development: Let the wild rumpus start!

The Internet was my creative playground. I discovered inspiration researching children’s words, vocabulary acquisition and development, “Dolch” words, fairy tales, games, verbs, exclamations, and children’s word play. Foundational words like fun, happy, laughter, tickle and learning were fed into corpora engines, word lists and other online naming powertools like Wordnik, Sketch Engine, and OneLook. Specialized children’s sites like Lanternfish supplemented my longstanding resources, as did primary research with my nieces and nephews. Watching the kids, who age from 4-7, play with a beta version of Living Books on my iPad demonstrated its power; they threw themselves into the stories and played with rapt attention.

Here’s a list of some of the creative searches I did online. Please consider this list a handy resource for your naming projects:

action verbs
animal sound verbs
baby talk
cvc words
double letter words
first verbs
first words
frequentative
fun words
funny laughter words
happy-happy joy-joy
i am talking
idioms for kids
idioms in education
laffterglow
language acquisition
language development
the first words that children learn
learning words
list of verbs
meanings pictures sentence list
movement-fast
movers and shakers
my dogs words
my little ponies
of imitative origin
onomatopoetic
phrasal verbs list
place names of distinction
potionbook
punkin words
rhyming words
songs
sounds
stragglers
that’s funny
time to be cute
verbs
verbverse
wander
wander rhyme
wonder
wonder rhyme
wordplay is child’s play for punsters
words my 19 month old daughter says
words used by or to young children

I also used Sketch Engine quite a bit. Here are some of the terms searched for this project. Bear in mind that Sketch Engine requires a paid subscription (well worth it!) and thus links will work only after you've logged in:

fun

book

laugh

learn

play

playful

smart

tickle

wander

wonder

These lists illustrate how different resources can be used to delve into one idea, and the surprising sources of inspiration that can come up when you’re freely exploring (my little ponies!). These offer glimpses into a naming mind.

 

The stories in Living Books are playful and multidimensional, and I strived to create names that were, too. Making frequent use of a specific creative technique – letter substitution – generated scads of such names. It’s the same method I used to name Fanhattan and BrainForest.

The words wonder and wander, being one letter apart, were already mingling. I researched all English words that contain wonder, and respelled those results with an a. Thus, wonderful became wanderful.

Wanderful is packed with paradoxes. It brings together many ideas, yet is perfectly simple. It is a new word that feels familiar. It is as surprising as it is comforting. Wanderful describes the books, full of joy and the invitation to explore. It describes the free-form play afforded by Living Books’ expansive and non-linear interactivity. It describes whimsy and curiosity, delight and enrichment.

After preliminary screening, Wanderful was presented along with 30 other candidates. The client team deliberated and chose Wanderful plus a few backup names for full legal vetting. Upon clearing, Wanderful was adopted as the final name.

The wonderful Wanderful identity designed by Wild Out West

The Wanderful icon, now available at an iOS app store near you!

It might be coincidence, or maybe zeitgeist, that the day before Wanderful was announced in June, the New York Times Sunday Review featured this passage in an article about presence and happiness:

“In a modern world, when can we come closest to our original, thought-free happiness? Well, the Harvard psychologists noted that, after sex, the two activities during which we are most fully in the present, are conversation and exercise. Rousseau saw this as well; but forget the treadmill: he lost himself in mountains and valleys and, while walking, conversed with himself. Indeed, ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ is a manifesto on the benefits of wondering while wandering.”

The Wanderful brand launched ahead of the books themselves. Starting today, Wanderful Storybooks will be sold in the iOS app store for $4.99 each. Android and Kindle versions will soon follow

It’s a Wanderful launch party: Mark, Anthony, Mickey

Congratulations Mickey, Natasha and Mark: What a Wanderful world this will be!

Look for Wanderful on the iOS app store, Facebook, Twitter and on their home page.
 

Bracket: The Story Behind the Name

A name should be worth a thousand words.

That is, a brand name should be able to simplify a complex set of ideas into a single word.

That was the creative challenge Operative Words faced creating a new name for a division of United BioSource, a Medco-owned company that, among other things, helps pharmaceutical companies run efficient and effective clinical trials.

Three key features of my client's organization were factored into name development: people, process and precision.

People, that is the people who work at the company, are responsible for helping solve their pharmaceutical clients clinical trial challenges; their people write the brilliant software that helps clinical trials run remarkably efficiently and effectively; and people are the ultimate beneficiaries of the company's know-how as new and better medicines are launched into the market.

Process is tantamount to the whole category of clinical trials. A clinical trial is a process, so even though process generally would not be differentiating, the articulation of my client's special brand of process could be.

Precision characterizes well-run clinical trials; it reflects research data that is complete and pinpoint accurate; and it corresponds with the carefully defined parameters of valid and projectable product studies.

Creative name development followed these paths. The ultimate name was discovered while thinking about the people who worked at UBC and how they treated their clients. I dived into the notion of support. One of my resources is a great desktop application called Word Menu. It's also available in book form, but the software let's you do things that you can't do with a book.

Word Menu lists words and their definitions in categories. So if you look under 'fish', you'll find a list of different types of fish. If you look up 'action words', you'll find dozens of those. It's quite handy.

Typing in 'support' -- a key attribute of my client -- into Word Menu's search box returned 490 results, each of which was an entry or definition that included the word 'support'. In that list, I found 'bracket'.

Brackets do indeed provide support. But the word 'bracket' says more than that. A good name like Bracket is polysemous, it has many meanings.  Brackets provide support, and, as symbols, they are endemic in clinical trial reports. Brackets are used to indicate subsets; they delineate and thus suggest precision. The word 'bracket' sounds smart and strong.  And, as a real word, it's easy to relate to and understand, unlike some of my client's competitors who have Latinate coined names that are alien and institutional.

Miraculously, Bracket was also available as a trademark.

The denotations and connotations of Bracket are perfect for a company that wants to reinforce precision and support. It demonstrates that a name with many meanings will ultimately fit one company perfectly when presented in a real-world business context.

Bracket illustrates that just one name can be worth a thousand words.

Truth is Stronger Than Fiction

There was a time when a simple, honest name was good enough.

Venerable brands like General Electric, Kentucky Fried Chicken, National Biscuit Company and International Business Machines didn't hide their business name behind metaphors or fuzzy ideas. Each name was a hammer. It delivered one message with brute, blunt force. And it was good...for a while.

Eventually those companies established a path followed by countless others. They cut short their names to cut free of their restrictions, trading names too burdened with meaning for ones that were utterly meaningless: GE, KFC, Nabisco, IBM.

The trend in naming since has been away from the harsh, direct light of descriptive names and towards the shaded canopy of evocative and arbitrary ones. The change is partly motivated by necessity, as descriptive names are difficult or impossible to protect as trademarks.

But it's not just the law: It's a good idea. Descriptive names are similar to other descriptive names so they aren't differentiated and thus don't get noticed (not without a ton of money).

Today, the vast majority of brand names are not descriptive at all.

And I think people are getting tired of it.

The pendulum is swinging back, towards names -- and marketing in general -- that's honest and bullshit-free. Maybe even humble.

Living in San Francisco, I've sought examples of words in commerce that speak the unvarnished truth. I've documented some of these sightings with my cell phone camera. Several relate to food because I am a gastropod.




This Little Cookie: Absolutely adorable. This is disarming partly because its design is slightly flawed, as if the cookie maker ran out of space scribbling This Little Cookie but was too busy baking to perfect the label. The name, reminiscent of This Little Piggy, and the letters' uneven spacing give the whole package an authentically human and unmanufactured quality.




This tidy kiosk is a perfect setting for a brand called Batter. It's a name that's immediate, short, and to the point with nothing artificial added. It suggests their baked goods are as pure and simple.




Food Should Taste Good: Not just a simple message, but a four-word name. Because it doesn't follow the established convention of big companies and their short, sharp brand names, Food Should Taste Good feels a little home-made. It's a little unpolished and that's OK. Preferable, actually.




You know about MECE? Pronounced "mee-see", McKinsey Consulting says that the best solutions are Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. They include everything they need and nothing they don't.

Tasty Salted Pig Parts? 100% MECE.





Ichthyo: Breathtaking! So honest and so arresting! A word like that...Ichthyo...that twisted car wreck of a consonant cluster! Why, words like that shouldn't be allowed!

And words like that are not allowed in the sweeping majority of the world's languages. But it just so happens that ichthyo was A-OK in ancient Greek, the mother tongue of much scientific and technical nomenclature, including terms like ichthyo and architecture. (Notice how the book's title and subtitle dovetail perfectly?)

A title as inscrutable and unpronounceable as Ichthyo is an irritant -- an itch -- that lures in the reader to scratch. And yet despite the word's alien, other-worldly quality, it just means "fish".




Blackwire is the same as Ichthyo but different. They are both honest yet unexpected. Ichthyo is entirely unfamiliar, whereas Blackwire seems oddly familiar. In a world becoming ever more untethered -- insecure -- a product that actually celebrates its cord stands out. What's good for power cords, spinal cords and umbilical cords is good for headsets, too.

My firm, Operative Words, named and worked on the nomenclature for the Blackwire family of PC headsets by Plantronics.

It's clear they mean well enough. The Diversity Center [of Santa Cruz] is obviously committed to inclusivity, as enumerated in their tagline above the entrance. I don't know if Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Questioning Community -- lesbiana, gay, bisexual, transgénero, intersex, inquisitivo en Español -- would qualify as mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

But collectively, it's exhausting.

I wish there was a better and more succinct way for The Diversity Center to describe all of these alternative sexualities. If you've got ideas, throw them in the comments section. If nothing else, your submissions will place Operative Words among some pretty interesting Google search results.




How could anyone resist INTERESTING ITEMS!?

Names like that: Not fair.




What qualifies a particular truth for inclusion in a product's name? Every product has many true qualities and a name can express but one or two.

Consider this sign for Passive Lawn in New York City's Washington Square Park. It used to be that a lawn was a lawn was a lawn. Activities officially disallowed were listed on a conspicuous notice: No Ball Playing. No Radios. No Smoking. And so on. Until recently, there was no characterization of the lawn itself.

Urban planners and municipal parks departments evidently need to distinguish different types of public lawns, so those intended for quiet pursuits are branded "passive". (A lawn where activities are allowed would presumably be called an active lawn but a cursory online search uncovered no evidence of its use.)

As I wrote in Describe Different, an innovative product deserves an innovative generic descriptor. The most effective new product descriptors combine familiar terms in unfamiliar ways. The best ones are intuitive and accurate. They are truthful.

Passive Lawn strives for truth but it's not the whole truth nor is it intuitive. The novel use of passive requires a mental leap because it defines a new class of passive -- inactive? -- activities. Inadequate as a stand-alone name, Passive Lawn needs the support of No Sports and No Dogs to convey what's not allowed.

I've considered alternatives to Passive Lawn but they are more flawed. Inactive Lawn might suggest it's entirely off-limits, especially with a chained perimeter like the one above. Quiet Lawn is interesting but also misses the mark.

Perhaps the best solution would be the traditional one: A simple list of prohibited activities. Defining the lawn itself -- something useful for urban planners and parks department workers -- isn't very helpful for park visitors. If this sign simply read No Sports, No Dogs, we'd know all we need to know.

In this case, no name would have been preferable to one whose truth is not self-evident.




Up to now, I've focused on truth in meaning. Names and other commercial words can be functional and obvious and honest, yet also unique.

Although meanings are important, so are appearances. The presentation of a name -- font, size, color, materials, etc. -- can magnify, minimize or morph its meaning.

Which brings us to our last exhibit, GOLD TEETH, a spectacular example of meaning and manifestation in true alignment; a visual and verbal syzygy. These words don't merely deliver, they shove. In a compounding reaction, gold and teeth -- each picturable words individually -- combine and project a third mental image that beams so vividly we are compelled imagine it: A gleaming yet incongruous smile flaunting gilded teeth.

This picture in our minds, already palpable and dazzling, is intensified by the words' physical representation: Electric neon, red and shining like polished gold. It is expressive, smiling broadly, exuding the same confidence we might associate with someone who would choose gold for their pearly whites.

It's as if every detail were punctuated with exclamation points: GOLD! TEETH! RED! NEON! CAPITALS!

The honesty of this sign, its stark message and medium, makes it impossible to ignore.


Today's consumers are overwhelmed by marketing excess and underwhelmed by unfulfilled promises. They have become inured to marketing that's rife with the artifice of ambiguity and embellishment. Consumers are disillusioned because much of what they've seen are illusions. Only unabashed honesty will change that.

Like never before, truth is stronger than fiction.

[A version of this post was originally published at Duets Blog, the leading blog on creativity and the law.]