How to Name an Innovation (the movie)

Design legend, Don Norman, honored me with an invitation to speak at UC San Diego Design Lab about naming innovations. My talk specifically focused on innovative product descriptors, the part of a name that establishes what the product’s category is, such as “smartphone” or “universal remote”.

Why is a product descriptor important? If you're inventing a “World’s First” product, the invention’s product descriptor should establish a category all its own. But naming a unique product category is not always easy.

In my presentation, “Naming the New”, I detail a best-practice process to develop an innovation’s product descriptor. Real-world project examples for Quell and Cinder illustrate how it works. The video is an hour long, but you'll probably learn a lot if you get through the whole thing.       

If the topic of novel product descriptors interests you — and how could it not?! — read my other posts on the topic, Describe Different and The Names of MIT Media Lab. 

Enjoy!

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

Pause: A Brand For Our Time

One afternoon, an entrepreneur named Ben Tabai called me. He liked my blog, and wanted to know if I was interested in helping him name a new relaxation beverage. The opportunity was so unusual, so exciting, that just developing the name didn’t feel like it would be enough. I proposed that Operative Words also develop the tagline and provide creative direction on the brand identity and packaging. Our mutual enthusiasm sealed the deal.

This project began, as all do, with learning about the product category. I discovered that the emergence of relaxation beverages bears significance. More than just new products on the shelf, relaxation beverages are an inevitable outcome of our times.

Let’s consider their larger context. Advances in technology enable people to be constantly connected. Social networks and societal expectations urge an immediate response to every email, tweet and text message that comes our way. As a result, we have become overloaded and under-rested. It’s no wonder that relaxation beverage sales doubled between 2008 and 2010, and is projected to double again by 2014. Our growing need to unplug is reflected in articles, springing up everywhere.

The names of current relaxation beverages reflect the opposite of our connected world. More analog than digital, the names have a vacation/zen/escape vibe. There’s surprisingly little differentiation:

Dr. Zen’s Liquid Calm
RelaxZen
Serenity Zen
Ichill
Minichill
ViB (vacation in a bottle)
Tranquila
Mellow
R&R

The problem with these names is they are removed from workaday reality of today’s connected urbanites who have the greatest need to disconnect. They don’t reflect the hectic and demanding lives that characterize BlackBerry-next-to-the-bed workers. Aspirations to take a vacation in a bottle or retreat to zen serenity feel more like wishful thinking and suggest promises that can’t be fulfilled.

People who are overworked and always connected do need relaxation. But relaxation should be framed in a real-world and relevant context, not as a pie-in-the-sky, day-at-the-beach fantasy. Therefore, I recommended this new beverage should make relaxation practical and relevant. It should be inspired by, and be a part of, our digital, connected world.

Allow me to take a short detour and provide instructive details about the creative naming exercise that led to Pause.   

In developing creative directions for a naming project, it’s most fruitful to broaden core functions or benefits to more conceptual, expansive ideas. Creative development for this new brand required thinking about relaxation broadly and its context narrowly. Rather than just focus on relaxation, bigger ideas like change, decreasing, cessation and ideal end states were considered, specifically within contemporary and vernacular domains.

 
The ultimate name came up during a creative ‘excursion’ to the ‘world’ of electronics. An excursion is a brainstorming technique that inspires by analogy. I learned about excursions at Lexicon, where I was trained in Synectics problem solving by John Prince, whose father, George Prince, invented Synectics. Excursions are part of the Synectics process and an indispensable part of my creative process. Excursions are related to the ‘cloaked brief’ technique which I described in Creative Names the Easy Way.

Here’s how to use excursions to create brand names: Choose a key attribute or idea that’s essential to the new brand (in this case, change). Then, choose a ‘world’ that’s distant from the actual product category (for example, electronics). From there, brainstorm examples of the key word in that world. For example, change in the world of electronics would lead us to names like Toggle, Switch, and...Pause.

Electronics is an excursion world I came up with, even though there are many already in the Synectics roster. Here’s a list of other worlds to inspire your creative development:

007 Acoustics Agriculture Animals Archaeology Architecture Art Astronomy Biology Bridges Cartoons Celebrations Chemistry Clothes Comedy Computers Cooking Cosmetics Crafts Crime Decoration Dinner Parties Dwellings Economics Education Electricity Electronics

Espionage Exploration Famous People Fantasy Sports Farming Fashion Films Finance Folk Lore Games Gardening Geology Health History Journalism Kitchen Implements Law Machines Magic Mathematics Media Medicine Metalwork Minerals Models Money Movies

Music Myths Noise Nursing Oceans Parenting Physics Plants Psychology Racing Religion Rocks Romance Science Science Fiction Sculpture Shopping Smells Space Travel Textiles Theater Transportation Tribal Customs Vacations War Weather Woodworking

Through excursions and other idea generation techniques, over 900 potential names were developed for this assignment. A shortlist of several dozen candidates underwent preliminary trademark screening. About 30 names were presented to my client. 

Demonstrating keen judgement, the client zeroed-in on Pause. The name was unexpected yet relevant. Pause could be a philosophy, a mandate, and maybe even a movement. Enthusiasm was had by all. 

After Pause was vetted by the client’s legal counsel, the naming was complete. The next step was to develop a tagline. This proved to be more challenging than naming, perhaps because there were more creative possibilities, directions and objectives.

It was the general direction of time that inspired the best work. Take ownership of your time as a specific tagline direction, reflected the day-to-day demands that can make people feel as if their time is not under their control. A related tagline direction, be present now, is a cornerstone of mindful relaxation and de-stressing regimens, and therefore benefited from existing validation.

After two rounds of tagline creative there were plenty of good ideas, but nothing that quite rose to the level of the name. I called a colleague, Daniel Meyerowitz, to talk about the taglines. He’s the best marketing writer I know; I can always count on him to inspire great work.

Upon review, Daniel dismissed anything that sounded old-fashioned or new-agey. The most promising taglines were imperatives, especially those that would incite people to, in Daniel’s words, “reclaim now”. We talked about the power of owning the moment – being present and mindful – as an effective antidote to stress and worry. Then suddenly, I heard myself say, “make now yours”. It seemed like the words spoke themselves through me.

Daniel calmly said, “that’s it, that’s the tagline”. Make Now Yours is a call to action urging people to take control of their time. Relaxation is, as suggested by the tagline, really about coming back to yourself and being the present at this moment. Make Now Yours feels fresh and contemporary and fits with the name. Tagline: done.

Writing for the back of the bottle was also needed. I recall that Ben wrote the first draft, I wrote the second, and Daniel provided valuable direction and advice for this final version:

Sometimes the best way to recharge is to unplug. How? Naturally, with chamomile, lemon balm and wild oats to calm your mind and vitamin B’s and green tea antioxidants to clear your head.

Get back to your productive best with a Pause and a few minutes of downtime: Step away from your work and the screen to let your body and mind reboot.

You’ll be ready for anything and everything when you take control and make now yours.

Writing: done.

With the word work complete, it was time to express the brand visually with a logo and packaging. Ben engaged several designers from around the world who submitted sketches of their ideas. I continued in my role as creative director of the brand by reviewing work, insisting on simplicity, and guiding creative to reflect the spirit of the brand.

The leading logo built on the name by incorporating a pause symbol in the letter u of Pause. It was elegant serendipity: by sheer accident, the symbol was centered perfectly in the word.

Behold: the Pause logo

Like the name and logo, the packaging design for Pause would also have to reflect our wired lives. Ben Tabai, my client, was on the front line, evaluating over 120 initial designs and then sending to me those that passed muster. Ben accomplished an enormous task in time and judgement. In my estimation, the most intriguing packaging candidate had its origins in ISO-like icons and modern vernacular: In the foreground, silhouettes of two people lounged on a bench while around them, in tinted colors, were busy workers on their cell phones and on the move. The silhouettes sat calmly amid the commotion. The graphics depicted a modern-day still life. Here’s an early rendition:

Good, but not quite there.

The design was simplified and polished. Instead of two people lounging, there would be just one. Instead of a bench, the figure sat back relaxing in an office chair. Appetizing imagery of fruit was added. The typography and layout was refined again and again. Packaging design: done.

Get your paws on Pause. 

With the core brand identity and packaging complete, the client brought the brand to life in other media. There’s a website, Facebook presence, and periodic pop-up Pause relaxation stations that give hardworking people a chance to pause, drink Pause, and pause for a chair massage.

Clients get the work they deserve. Judging by the results of the Pause branding effort, Ben Tabai deserves high praise – and sales! – for his strong judgement and hard work. As Ben’s first branding endeavor, Pause precedes what will undoubtedly be an enduring and successful future.   

 
That’s the story of Pause, a brand for our time.

Brand architectonics from the mind of Gucky

One evening at the local pub, Broken Record, I was rapt in conversation with Amanda Peterson, a brilliant former Landorian and current former HP Google namer and brand strategist. “Gucky,” as she’s known to friends, said two things so great I just had to share.

One gem gave me a new appreciation for “branded house” architecture systems and how to garner internal support for them. In a branded house, there’s one master brand and all products have descriptive, often generic, names and/or alphanumeric designators (e.g. FedEx Ground and FedEx Express, or BMW i3 and BMW 535). If you’re a product manager it’s natural that you’d want to give your product a real name with depth and character, not a generic one.  

For a product manager at a branded house, generic names can be a bitter pill to swallow, reducing your unique product – your baby! – to a descriptor and a mishmash of letters and numbers. But the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, so somebody at some point has to break it to the product manager that their product won’t get a unique name. This is how Gucky frames it:

“You should feel sorry for sub-brands because they have been kicked out from the heartland of the brand.”

I just love this. She positions the master brand as a real source of pride, and any product that doesn’t have the privilege of basking in its radiant glow and rewarding equity is in brand exile, banished and left to fend with only a new and unknown name to set it apart and fight for attention in the jungle of the marketplace. She makes the master brand irresistible, which is helpful, because in a true branded house, resistance to master branding is futile.   

Next beaut: Gucky thinks the era of the disconnected “house of brands” is over. She points to a recent backlash against Unilever. As a house of brands company, Unilever sells independently-branded products like Dove and Axe that compete and coexist on shelf with “kisses and punches.” But sometimes punches outnumber the kisses.

That’s what happened when Unilever tried to play the field with two personal care brands that were antithetical to one another. Specifically, their Dove brand staked its position in The Campaign for Real Beauty, a celebration of women who are beautiful despite, or because of, their imperfections. At the same time, Axe body spray advertising featured sex-charged, objectified women; sexist to most, sexy to some.

Now, if the brands were Tide and Downy in the same portfolio (as they are in P&G’s), no problem. One is best for deep cleaning, one best for softness. Those ideas can play well together. But when two brands in one company’s portfolio have violently conflicting values, it spells trouble. That was the case with Dove and Axe, when it wasn’t just a small handful of hard-core feminists who loudly objected to the sexist Axe ads; a whole country had a problem with them, too.

According to Gucky, this portfolio dissonance is a sign of the times.

No, not that sign.

Back when things were simpler and we walked five miles to school in the snow (uphill both ways), there was such a thing as “invisible branding” in a house of brands. Invisible branding, when a parent brand is not visible in the consumer communications of a product brand, is how Disney insulated its family-friendly brand image from the grown-up content of Touchstone Pictures. It's how the soybean-hugging Silk brand could be quietly bought and silently operated by industrial agriculturist, Dean Foods.

There have always been limits to invisible branding. Shareholders and employees know who owns what. Gucky reminded me that Unilever now owns Ben & Jerry’s, whose original, radical values changed after their buyout, demonstrating that the parent brand is invisible only to consumers, but is in full view and control of the brands in its portfolio.

The limits of invisible branding have recently become more pronounced. Before the social network era, you might not know that your favorite mom-and-pop brand is now part of a corporate behemoth. Or that the maker of your preferred moisturizer slash feel-good cause also uses oiled-up nymphomaniacs to sell men’s body spray. Today, everyone knows everything. As I wrote in Bullshit-Free Branding: 

Armed with Snopes, mass reviews, WikiLeaks and other trusted sources, everything a company claims can and will be verified, almost instantly. Every pissed-off critic holds a megaphone and now the whole world can hear their rant.

That means the glory days of true invisible branding are over, says Gucky:

“There’s no such thing as invisible brand architecture. Social media has made it impossible. Dove can’t peacefully coexist with Axe.”

Today, companies must be ever-mindful about the values and messages of all the brands in their portfolio, even those with no visible brand relationship. Despite the distance between Axe and Dove, they are close enough to create brand dissonance in the mind of the market, and a whopping headache for Unilever.

Thanks, Gucky, for your words of brand architecture wisdom!

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.

Bullshit-Free Branding

This article accompanied my speech at the 2010 Pivot Conference, in NYC.

 Let’s be honest: There’s a lot of bullshit in branding.

It’s a pity — and it’s a threat. Because today, brand or marketing communications exuding any whiff of bull will be distrusted, discredited and derided by today’s cynical audiences.

And no audience is more cynical than the 18-34 years-olds — the Millennials — who were born into an online marketplace awash in spam, paid “user” reviews, phishing and other greedy deceptions.

These cynics can sniff out bullshit from a mile away. Actually, they’re waiting for it. And when they zero-in on the source of a communication’s stench — an exaggeration, an ambiguity, an inconsistency, nonsense, a promise too good to be true — they’ll pounce. And rather than just take their business elsewhere, they’ll take up a cause to expose and punish the bullshitting offender by urging others to boycott.

Bullshit-free branding has always been important. Today it’s important and urgent.

Because nowadays, you can’t fool any of the people any of the time.

Armed with Snopes, mass reviews, WikiLeaks and other trusted sources, everything a company claims can and will be verified, almost instantly. Every pissed-off critic holds a megaphone and now the whole world can hear their rant.

Online customer rants: Not good for business.

So what exactly is bullshit, this offensive toxin?

Based on my deep-dive research into bullshit, including On Bullshit by Harry G Frankfurt, Deeper Into Bullshit (pdf) by G.A. Cohen and Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit by Laura Penny, I’d define “bullshit” as any communication that is:

• Nonsensical
• Insincere or disingenuous 
• Unclear and unclarifiable
• Exaggerating
• Inaccurate or
• Not believable

Bullshit is like obscenity: We know it when we see it. These are some specific indicators of bullshit in branding:

• Anything too good to be true
• Exaggeration, superlatives and hyperbole
• Proprietary claims
• Weasel words
• Vagueness and ambiguity
• Omissions
• Euphemisms
• Triteness and clichés
• Inconsistency
• Dishonesty

For cynics, this list practically defines marketing. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Marketers would be well-served to avoid these customer repellents and instead practice bullshit-free branding.

So what's bullshit-free branding? It's brand definitions and communications that pass the SNIFF test:

Self-aware	Your brand should not try to be more — or less — than what it is.
Natural	Writing, ideas, and brand names that are not contrived
Integrity	True to itself and customers
Forthright	Straightforward, revealing, sincere, specific
Factual	Claims are true, verifiable and evident; endorsements are earned not purchased

You can't fake your way through this. It takes honest marketing to pass the SNIFF test:

• Be who you are and act that way
• Wear your consumer hat
• Be real and honest but not folksy
• Write simply and clearly
• Be specific
• Avoid triteness, clichés, weasel words and exaggeration

Beyond the tips offered here, there are books and online resources to help you practice bullshit-free branding:

• Why Businesspeople Speak Like Idiots by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, Jon Warshawsky
• On Bullshit by Harry G Frankfurt,
• Deeper Into Bullshit (pdf) by G.A. Cohen
• Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth about Bullshit by Laura Penny
• Say Anything, Jim Holt, The New Yorker
• The Language of Advertising Claims, Jeffrey Schank
• Brand Authenticity, John Furguson, Brand Insight Blog
• Development and Validation of a Brand Trust Scale, Elena Delgado-Ballester
• Truth is Stronger than Fiction, Anthony Shore, Operative Words

Follow the advice I've offered here, read the resources and links provided, and use the SNIFF test to evaluate your brand communications to ensure they remain bullshit-free.

And remember: Let's be honest.

Please share your ideas on how to create and evaluate bullshit-free branding.

- Anth

Thanks to Amanda "Gucky" Peterson, David Schargel and Matthew Cross for their contributions.

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.]

Scribe Winery: The story behind the name

Telling a story is a lot easier when there's a story to tell.

Companies that sell the same things as others have to create a perception of difference, otherwise they're doomed. That's where branding comes in.

However, discovering -- or inventing -- a brand's point of difference isn't always obvious.

But sometimes you get lucky when there's not just a difference, but a relevant one.

I was lucky enough to name a winery that offered something special: A story.

Now dear reader, if you're really on the ball you'd call me on that. There's scads of wineries that have a story to tell, right?

Our winemaker comes from generations of....

Our vineyards are kissed by abundant north slope sunshine and a soft ocean breeze.... 

Our soil is a unique blend of Egyptian clay and 400-count gravel.... 

Our property is patrolled by Shep, the graying Labrador that raised our master winemaker and taught him all he knows...

The thing is, these winery narratives all sound pretty much the same (except maybe that last one about the Labrador). That's why I was tickled to name a winery which had a story remarkably different.

My client, Andrew Mariani, told me about the property he and his partners just bought on the border of Sonoma Valley and Carneros. As we drank wine in San Francisco's Dolores Park -- a great place for a project briefing -- he regaled me with property's colorful history:

This was the place where artificial insemination of turkeys was perfected. Before that milestone, turkeys could only breed the old-fashioned way. Turkey is now available just about everywhere thanks to this innovation.

There's a house on the property that was a speakeasy during prohibition. Rumor has it, this was also at times, a brothel.

Back in the day, a plane crashed on the property.

The winery's property is the setting for stories like these, whose importance and relevance isn't just limited to a storied place. Storytelling itself is important to people who can pay $60 retail for a bottle of Cab.

Those who are able to afford expensive wine have probably accumulated enough nice things that it's their experiences which set them apart. When you already have money, stories are the valuable currency that buy bragging rights.

Armed with the insight that this winery's property had real stories to tell, and that stories are important to their future customers, I recommended the strategy that this brand should be  defined by storytelling.

As part of my strategic and creative branding work for the winery, I offered them ideas of how they could bring storytelling to life. One idea was inspired by a local (San Francisco) Japanese restaurant whose restrooms have hidden loudspeakers quietly playing an audiobook of Japanese language instruction. I suggested the winery do the same, but with audiobooks of literature as the background "music".

Once the central brand idea of storytelling was agreed-upon, the naming creative work could begin. With such a focused and salient direction, the naming itself was, frankly, pretty easy. I scoured resources -- most online -- that listed terms from the worlds of literature, writing, and storytelling.

From my master list of names, I culled several dozen for preliminary trademark screening. As I recall, about 20 made it through and those were presented to my clients.

A handful were shortlisted and two names survived their full legal screening, one of which was Scribe. After spirited discussions, Scribe was adopted as the final name.

Scribe launched with an identity and website designed by the brilliant craftsmen of Nothing: Something: New York. I'm thrilled and thankful their design work is so faithful to the brand. And my God, it is exquisite:

The Scribe website is equally textured, redolent of an old book with weathered typography and vignetted images. The story of their property and its lineage of owners is presented as major and minor "Chapters". The brand reveals a playful side when small insects, such as those which presumably inhabit their soil, skitter across the page. They serve as a reminder that the property has brought forth life, not just to a brand, but to acres and acres of fruit that will, with time and craft, become their wine.

That's the story of Scribe. May their success live happily ever after.


UPDATE: June 2010

Scribe Winery pairs well with foodies. Here are a few recent articles:

Sonoma's Wildest Party (Food & Wine)
Carneros turkey farm returns to its winery roots (San Francisco Chronicle)
Lovely Package

Describe different

"What am I?"

Every invention begs this essential question of identity.

The answer is found in the product's descriptor. A descriptor defines a thing, categorizing it, framing it, positioning it and signaling its intended future.

A product that doesn't claim to break new ground adopts its category's standard convention. For example, a new, run-of-the-mill digital camera would be marketed as a "digital camera".

A revolutionary product, on the other hand, deserves an innovative product descriptor. And, sometimes, a me-too product benefits from one, too.

The trouble is, innovation is easier done than said.

I wrote in this article about the "brander's paradox": Human instincts make us wary of unfamiliar and different things, yet differentiation is essential to a product's success.

By definition, an innovation is unfamiliar. How can its product descriptor differentiate without triggering people's fear of the unknown?

The New York Times gives us an idea in this recent article about product descriptors,

"When people encounter something they don’t recognize, they make sense of it by associating it with something familiar."

The most effective new descriptors combine familiar terms in unfamiliar ways. They make product function or form clearly understood, even upon first exposure. Novel descriptors insufficiently informative should at the very least pique interest.

Descriptors that differ

The following products illustrate different approaches:

Starbucks VIA ready brew



It's a me-too product but you can't tell from its descriptor. This is really instant coffee, a product designator unbecoming Starbucks. "Ready brew" emphasizes the chief benefit of saving time by using current, casual vernacular.

Dreyer's Slow Churned ice cream



Food scientists have a name for everything, but that name isn't always appetizing. The dessert wizards at Dreyer's, for example, had perfected a new way to blend low-fat ice cream so it acquires the texture and richness of full-fat ice cream. In precise but dry science lingo, they called the process "low-temperature extrusion". Doesn't exactly make the mouth water, does it?.

Dreyer's isn't dumb. They knew "extrusion" had no place on a quart of mint chip. They needed a term that had immediate appetite appeal. The words of their final, market-facing descriptor, "Slow Churned", taps into the semiotics of yesteryear, when food was simpler, unprocessed, and naturally indulgent. "Churned" evokes hand-mixed barrels of butter, hinting at the product's creamy richness. "Slow" connotes food that's unprocessed and handcrafted.

On the heels of Slow Churned ice cream's astounding success, Breyer's flattered Dreyer's with their imitative descriptor, Double Churned ice cream.

Disclaimer: I led the naming of Dreyer's Slow Churned ice cream as Global Director of Naming and Writing at Landor Associates.

Bing decision engine

Can't fault Microsoft for trying. Bing is a search engine, pure and simple. Although "decision engine" will never become part of the vernacular, it does suggest how Bing is different: Giving relevant information to help make a informed decision, instead of overwhelming with googlebytes of information.

Noah's Stuffed Saladwich



Coined words are hard to get right. This inventive, efficient descriptor gets mixed results. At a glance, "saladwich" looks like real word because it begins and ends with the same letters as "sandwich" (a phenomenon cheekily called, "typoglycemia"). But "Saladwich" sounds clunky because "-wich" is not a productive suffix and doesn't normally combine with other words (unlike the "-tini" of "martini" that gives us "chocotini" and "apple-tini"). "Saladwich" will sound less contrived as it becomes more familiar.

Blackberry wireless email solution



Technology products that blend hardware, software and services are tough to describe. More often than not, catch-all words like "solution" or "system" are employed. Though vague, these words avoid long descriptors that specify all key product dimensions. "Wireless email solution" is a lot shorter than "phone, PDA, email, internet, software and services." To its credit (and my alma mater's, Lexicon), the differentiation in Blackberry is borne primarily by the Blackberry name itself, not its ho-hum descriptor.

Segway personal transporter


This NYT article discusses the difficulty categorizing the Segway, a product that's really unlike anything else. Although the article touches on the brand name, it doesn't mention Segway's official descriptor. "Personal transporter" suggests who the product is for and what it does at a basic level, but it doesn't capture how revolutionary the product is, what it looks like or even whether it's motorized.

But a descriptor can't do everything. Like most products visibly inventive, a photo of the Segway speaks volumes. And messaging, mostly communicated through PR, does the heavy lifting of describing Segway technology and its applications.

Describing technology convergence

Each of the products above fit, more or less, into one functional category. But in electronic devices, disparate functions inevitably converge. Over time, we've seen phones integrate video cameras, music players evolve into movie players, and televisions that browse the Web.

Technology convergence presents a naming quandary: How do you categorize a product that merges others?



There are five approaches a marketer can take when describing one device that does the work of many:

• List all of the converged technologies (e.g. "all-in-one printer, fax, scanner")
  Long but accurate, clear and communicative. Needs to change as new functions are added. Generic and not protectable.
  
• Cite one function only (e.g. "mobile phone" [the built-in camera is not referenced in the descriptor])
  Short; relies on copy and imagery to tout other functions. Doesn't suggest "new". Generic, not protectable.
  

• Use one of the technology descriptors as the focus but modify it (e.g. "smartphone")
  Short; borrows from the familiar to aid understanding. These descriptors can take a long time to be adopted by industry and customers. It helps if the modifier is already understood from other categories and retains that meaning. May or may not be protectable.
  
  
• Come up with something totally new (e.g. "media center")
  In naming, unfamiliarity is friction. Descriptors like these resist widespread adoption. They typically require a lot of time and money to gain traction. May or may not be protectable.
  
  
• Use no descriptor at all (e.g. "iPod")
  This is a risky approach and is only viable when the device marketer has
  (1) control over all communications, distribution and sales
  and
  (2) a lot of money.

Apple has conspicuously avoided using a product descriptor per se for iPod. It turns out, they didn't need one. No distributors or resellers could tinker with Apple's disciplined and exacting messaging. At launch, the ad headline, "1000 songs in your pocket" made it clear the iPod was a portable music player.

Today, the iPod has grown in function and familiarity. So confident is Apple, they answer "What is iPod touch?" with "A great iPod. A great pocket computer. A great portable game player." When you can recursively describe your product and people get it, you've transcended product descriptors and become a category unto yourself.
 

The iPod answers "What am I?" with the most basic statement of identity, "I am me".
I guess if you're iPod, that's all you need to know.

###

Take the innovation descriptor challenge!

Innovations are easier done than said. See if you can come up with better product descriptors than these:

• Segway personal transporter
• Blackberry wireless email solution
• The Internet global network
• Onstar in-vehicle safety and security system
• Wii console

Share your ideas in the comments section.

[This article was originally published in Duets Blog]