We name things.
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Oakland, CA, US
Remember: Only the obvious names are taken. #naming
Hello Parasail! Meet the new company that will bring enterprise-grade AI abilities to small and medium businesses everywhere. Thank you so much Mike Henry, Tim Harris, and Renée Lamb for engaging Operative Words. We are super proud to have named Parasail! https://parasail.io #naming
Like words, emojis’ meaning evolves over time.
Excellent and entertaining linguistics article on the evolution of emoji punctuation. Turns out that emoji meanings and uses change over time, just like words. https://wapo.st/3yfyAjo
The name of your logo should reflect how you want to be seen. Give it a name that reinforces a key message. #naming
The Meatball. Larry. Helios. Speedbird. These are some of the names companies have adopted for their logo. A fun read, with a solid round-up of examples. Enjoy! Thanks Trevor Wade for the tip! #naming
Not just a lovely idea, the word is too. Love its alliteration and meter.
Kinkeeper: Someone who cultivates a sense of family solidarity or connectedness. What a lovely word. #naming
Changing a term might help for a while, but when it’s the principles behind the term that some find objectionable, the new term is unlikely to stick.
A backlash against “DEI” has led to the term “Inclusion” as preferable for now. Of course the bigots won’t like that one either, so the rebranding dance will continue apace. #naming. https://wapo.st/4b3EP8G
That Fortune profile, rewritten and republished in International Business Times UK. Thanks again, Fortune! Responding to Mark Prus comment with this backstory: It’s crazy how this article happened. I did that little post about the Momofuku chili crisp trademark a few weeks ago, and the journalist happened to be researching that topic at the time. My post popped up when she did a search on it in LI, she saw my job, and that rabbit hole turned into my profile in Fortune. Which really goes to show you, that post you might not think much of could turn into a huge PR blitz!
It feels like opponents of cultivated meat wrote this article. "Lab-grown meat" is peppered throughout, a term aggressively unappealing if not downright pejorative. The Times shouldn't be squelching category innovations by choosing to use such biased terms. "Cultivated meat" is ascendant, and the Times should get on board. #naming https://lnkd.in/g7H3e3WV
Cool research on the neuroscience of naming is underway right now.
The Neuroscience of Naming: Exciting Research Underway! Names are not like other words. When a real word is used as a name, it changes; its prior associations weaken or adapt based on the name’s context. So to “slack” means to shirk work, but as a name in the context of productivity software, Slack seems not to mean that. Similarly, a “yelp” is the sound of an animal in pain, but as a review site name it doesn’t bring up those associations. When I present brand name candidates, I caution clients to not take the words literally because consumers don’t. How is it exactly that names are perceived differently than their real-word counterparts? Do our brains reveal processing differences in how we perceive a brand name versus a regular word? Research is now underway to answer those questions. Using functional MRI (fMRI) technology that measures and maps brain activity, researchers Dr. Sandra Virtue, PhD. and Darren S. Cahr will observe how the brain lights up when exposed to trademarks. The hypothesis is that trademarks will activate the parts of the brain corresponding with non-literal thinking, the same parts that light up processing metaphors, poetry, and idioms. Prior research by Virtue et al. on the neural processing of nonliteral language (Vance and Virtue, 2011) used divided visual field techniques; the research-in-progress will provide a more direct view into the brain as it is exposed to trademark and non-trademark stimuli. When I asked Dr. Virtue about her research, she said, “I believe that neuroscience studies have a lot of promise to expand upon our current knowledge about how consumers process and distinguish between different types of trademarks, even beyond what we suggest in our paper.” Tantalizing! I’ll provide an update when the results of the research are published. ### Vance, Kristy and Sandra M Virtue. “Metaphoric advertisement comprehension: The role of the cerebral hemispheres.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 10 (2011): 41-50. (paywalled source below:) https://lnkd.in/g978rnJ4 Image by ChatGPT/Dall-E
Frito-Lay's tagline evolution is fascinating. They clearly had an end game... and also equity. Their solution was to rebrand livery and packaging with a transitional line ("Good food for the fun of it!") to link the old tagline, which I wrote ("Food for the fun of it!"), with the new tagline ("Good fun!"). #branding
Frito-Lay's tagline has evolved with the trend to dial-down craveability and amp-up wholesomeness, though the article doesn't mention it. "Food for the fun of it!" — which I wrote while at Landor around 1998 — graced their trucks and packages until roughly 2005, when it was modified to "Good food for the fun of it!" That had a short shelf-life as a transitional line before becoming their current tagline, "Good fun!" (I had no role in the latter taglines.) So: Food for the fun of it! > Good food for the fun of it! > Good fun! It seems Frito-Lay saw the word "good" as a way to offset "fun," which, left alone, could suggest unwholesome food. I've provided the gift-linked article below. Worth a read. (h/t Mark Prus) https://lnkd.in/gTKw-b5K
Thank you, wonderful clients, for these creative opportunities in 2023. Can't wait to see what new names will come out in 2024!
Beginning the year with gratitude 🙏🏼 for my 2023 clients who gave Operative Words the privilege of developing their names, taglines, and category descriptors. Thank you wonderful clients! ❤️ #naming Proclaim, Ourself, TiNDLE Foods, Regenity Biosciences, Medtronic, Eko Health, Mozarc Medical, Cala Health, Meanwhile