Fritinancy

Big-Time Tagline!

I’ve written dozens of taglines for clients and seen them on lots of websites, brochures, and business cards. But until last week I’d never seen one of my taglines on a 16-by-20-foot wall at a conference.

 

RSA Conference, Moscone Center. Naturally, I zoomed in on the tagline. That wall is tall.

 

Or on a car wrap.

The Narus Audi A6. Ethan was the designated driver during the conference.

 

Narus, an independent subsidiary of The Boeing Company, is a cybersecurity company whose clients include governments, carriers, and enterprises. The recently hired president, John Trobough, wanted to relaunch the company in time for the RSA information-security conference in San Francisco. Our branding team had just over three months to do all the pre-launch work: new visual identity, new web content, new print materials, and – here’s where I came in – a new tagline and product nomenclature. (The Narus name, which is derived from Latin gnarus, meaning “skillful,” did not change.)

Many of Narus’s competitors use “secure” or “security” in their taglines. Rather than imitate them, I focused on Narus’s distinctive strengths: its brilliant staff (collectively, they hold 32 patents), its close ties with academia, and its advanced machine-learning algorithms. I worked with concepts like penetrating, insightful, and sophisticated, and I looked for ways to shed light on the Narus name (which probably doesn’t have a lot of meaning for non-Latin scholars). The result: Incisive Intelligence.

Everyone on the client team responded positively to incisive, an underused word whose literal meaning is “cutting-edge.” Also positive: the way intelligence communicates both “information” and “intellect” while supporting the original meaning of Narus. The in-in alliteration is a memory aid, and it carries echoes of the N in Narus. We continued the N mnemonic with the simple yet effective (and flexible) nSystem and N10 product names.

Mark Landkamer of Landkamer Partners created the visual identity and web design. (Fun fact: the green-and-orange symbol next to the Narus name was abstracted from a graph of a mathematical formula for equilibrium. It also resembles a stylized N.) Stacey King Gordon and her team at Suite Seven developed the content strategy and wrote all the content. Jay Cornell and James Foreman did the HTML and Joomla programming, respectively. Special thanks to trademark lawyer Jessica Stone Levy for assistance with legal questions.

The CMoS Interview

I recently had the honor of being interviewed by the Chicago Manual of Style—the indispensable resource for editors and publishers—for the monthly Shop Talk feature. I rambled on about the name-development process, mental workouts, and favorite books; the expert CMoS editors made me sound focused. Go take a look. And if you have editing or proofreading questions of your own, check out the CMoS Q&A while you’re there.

The Wordnik Interview

I’m over at the Wordnik blog today, answering questions from Angela Tung about name development and the naming process. Come for the interview, stay for the rest of the wordy Wordnik goodness: word of the day, random word, word lists, and – of course – the fabulous Wordnik dictionary, one of my favorite tools for naming.

A Nice Mention on "A Way With Words"

Many thanks to Grant Barrett and Martha Barnette, co-hosts of public radio’s “A Way With Words,” for mentioning my blog in their September 21 program! The segment is called “How Products Got Their Names,” and if you missed the broadcast you can listen online.

The rest of the episode—“Good Juju”—is entertaining and informative, too. It includes segments on M&Ms, Hallmark Cards, restaurant lingo, aspirin (the name), and, of course, juju. 

I wrote about how aspirin got its name about a year ago. You can read all of my “How They Got That Name” posts here.

Honored

Also surprised, thrilled, and grateful.

The results of the 2012 Top Language Lovers Blog contest are in. Fritinancy placed second in the Language Professionals category and twentieth overall.

Thanks to all of you who voted! I’ll do my best to live up to your high regard.

A New Look for Wordworking

Big changes over at my business website, Wordworking: new design, new content, easier navigation. I’ve added a section on what to expect during the naming process, and I’ve created a handy guide to some of my most popular blog posts.

Big thanks go to ace designer Mark Landkamer of Landkamer Partners; super-smart, super-fast programmer Jay Cornell; and nonpareil copyeditor Elissa Rabellino. Hire them for your own projects!

And as long as I’m promoting myself, I hope you’ll vote for  Fritinancy in the Top Language Professional Blog 2012 contest! Voting ends at midnight, German time, on Monday, May 28.

Vote for Fritinancy!

Breaking news—for the fourth consecutive year, this blog has been honored with a nomination in the Lexiophiles Top Language Professional Blog competition.

I’m hoping for another top-10 appearance, but like Miss Velma Kelly in Chicago, I simply cannot do it alone*. I would be very grateful if you (and your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, colleagues, children, and in-laws) voted for me. Here’s how, in one easy step: Click on the badge and select “Fritinancy” in the alphabetical list.

Yes, it’s just that easy!

I cannot tell a lie: The stakes in this contest are low, the financial rewards nonexistent. But my professional honor, and the honor of all name developers, is at stake. Why? Because the list of nominees is packed with translators, whereas Fritinancy represents exactly half of all the naming blogs in the running. (The other nominee is my esteemed colleague The Name Inspector. He’s very good, but my selflessness extends only so far.) Let’s win this one for the namers!

And just look at that handsome set of Lexiophiles badges over in the right rail! Wouldn’t a fourth one create a pleasing symmetry? Of course it would. So vote for Fritinancy!

While you’re on the Lexiophiles site, you may also choose to vote for your favorite Language Learning Blog, Facebook page, and Twitter account. (Yes, once again I neglected to nominate my own Twitter account. Will one of you please take care of that task for me next year?)

You can vote only once in each category, so make it count! Voting closes at midnight (German time) on May 28; results will be published May 31.

I thank you for your support.

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* That’s right: I am shamelessly sweetening the deal by throwing in some Zeta-Jones T&A (and gams).

Introducing Linea

I’m pleased to announce the official launch of Linea, a photo-sharing app for iOS and Android devices and (soon) for the Web. Working closely with Post+Beam, the innovation and communication firm, I developed the Linea name and tagline—Your Stories. Your Pictures. Yours to Share—along with much of the brand vocabulary for the product.

The primary naming challenge with this project was making the product stand out in a crowded namescape. Most of the competitive names refer directly to cameras and picture-taking: Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterfly, Instagram, and so on. We wanted our name to suggest seamless, secure photo organizing and sharing rather than the photographic act. The name also needed to appeal to adult women with concerns about online privacy; a second market consists of professional photo organizers who could use the app with their customers.

In the naming brief, I identified several key objectives and criteria for the name, including:

• No overtly descriptive words. Metaphors are preferred.
• Should sound cool and modern … yet warm and human.
• Should sound effortless … just like the app itself.
• Should sound sophisticated.
• Should suggest “special moments, special people.”

Then there was the app’s most distinctive design feature: a horizontal timeline that allowed easy identification and sorting of photos. The “line” concept had already given rise to the app’s code name, Ziplyne. That name didn’t sound feminine enough (and it wasn’t available legally), but Linea soon emerged as an appealing alternative. The vowel ending gave it a feminine personality, and the name sounds both swift and elegant—desirable attributes for our market.

To reinforce the desired pronunciation—LIN-ee-ah—among the internal audience (design team and photo organizers), I wrote a spoof of the Groucho Marx song “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady, in which “Linea” replaces “Lydia.”

Next came the tagline: Your Stories. Your Pictures. Yours to Share. It reinforces the idea that photographs are more than digital files or prints: they’re memories. The repeated use of your reinforces the security theme. (No one sees these photos unless you choose to share them.)

Linea.com was not available (the owner hadn’t developed the domain, but wasn’t interested in selling), so we went with a call-to-action URL: getlinea.com.

The Linea app is available through the iTunes App Store and on the Web. An Android version will be released soon.

Read about the making of Linea on the Post+Beam blog, Introduce the New.

The Versatile Blogger Award

Aw, shucks. The Wordnik blog has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award, which is like Stephen Hawking giving a trophy to the local Science Fair winner.

Thank you!

These are not the resting-on sort of laurels: I’m supposed to nominate 15 other blogs and tell you seven interesting (or, according to some versions of the rules, “completely random”) things about myself.

Here are the interesting/random things about myself. As Grammar Girl put it, “This will be easier if we all pretend you care.”

1. I made my television debut at age four on the Los Angeles version of “Romper Room.”
   
   
2. I’m very good at American-style crosswords and word spirals, but hopeless at acrostics and cryptic crosswords.
   
   
3. A story I wrote for New West magazine about tampons and toxic shock syndrome was nominated for a National Magazine Award. In her bestseller The Coming Plague, science writer Laurie Garrett cited my article as an “outstanding piece of investigative journalism.” That was better than winning the award.
   
   
4. I named a condom for Mayer Laboratories. (It’s not on their website, but you can read about it here, at least until I overhaul my website.)
   
   
5. I once wrote a sonnet in Spanish in the style of the Siglo de Oro poets.
   
   
6. I once wrote five original nursery rhymes for a company that made fancy furniture for children’s bedrooms.
   
   
7. I have swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco on two New Year’s Days—water temperature 50° F—and on many slightly warmer days as well. I don’t wear a wetsuit.

As for the 15 blogs, here are my choices. I also endorse the selections made by my predecessors in this chain (Wordnik, Grammar Monkeys, and Grammar Girl).

 

Baby Name Wizard Blog. Intelligent, BS-free analysis of baby names and naming trends. While you’re there, check out the highly addictive NameVoyager tool, too.

Beauty Marks. Commentary on trademarks and brands by the smart, funny Jessica Stone Levy, a trademark lawyer who really knows her stuff.

Brand New. Before-and-after analysis of visual-identity makeovers by the team at Under Consideration LLC.

Catch This. The naming blog of Catchword Branding, my esteemed colleagues here in Oakland.

Copyranter. Frequently angry, often profane, usually hilarious takes on advertising copy.

Figaro Speech. Figures of speech and rhetorical tropes in daily life, brought to you by Jay Heinrich, author of Thank You for Arguing.

Johnson. The Economist’s language blog, covering English on both sides of the Atlantic.

Language Log. Group-written linguistics blog. Sometimes academic, occasionally arcane, often very funny, always worthwhile.

Literal Minded. Linguist Neal Whitman takes on the big subjects, like ass/fucking intensification and why you can say “where to go” and “how to go” but not “why to go.”

Name Inspector. Christopher Johnson’s nom de noms; his blog is “a close look at names and what makes them tick – or tank.”

Not One-Off Britishisms. Ben Yagoda’s heroic pursuit of U.K. expressions that have seeped (or barged) into American English.

Sentence First. Stan Carey writes from Galway, Ireland, about crashblossoms, glottal stops, totes amazebags abbrevs, and much more.

Separated by a Common Language. American linguist Lynne Murphy, aka Lynneguist, writes about American and British English from her expatriate perch in the UK.

Throw Grammar from the Train. By Jan Freeman, former language columnist for the Boston Globe.

Word Routes. Ben Zimmer’s column for the Visual Thesaurus, “exploring the pathways of our lexicon.” Unlike my own VT columns, Word Routes doesn’t require a subscription (but you should subscribe anyway).

And because I’ve never met a rule I didn’t want to break, here’s a 16th nomination: Dustbury isn’t a language or branding blog, but it more than fits the “versatile” description. In a typical week, the sole author, C.G. Hill, might cover social media, automobile tires, basketball, My Little Pony, print magazines, transportation in Oklahoma, women’s shoes, and Zooey Deschanel—all with enviable literary skill and brio.

If the abovementioned nominees feel moved to play the game, here are the rules:

1. In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award.
2. In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award.
3. In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog.
4. In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself.
5. In the same post, include this set of rules.
6. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs. (Or tweeting.)

This, That

A few miscellaneous items for the first full day of (Northern Hemisphere) winter. Tomorrow: Festivus! I’ll present my annual Airing of Grievances.

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The Japanese word of the year, announced by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation on December 12, is kizuna. The word, which means “bonds between people,” was frequently used to express the solidarity and support shown by Japanese people in response to the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in March.

 

(Hat tip: Rochelle Kopp of Japan Intercultural Consulting.)

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Every year since 2006, expatriate American linguist Lynne Murphy, who blogs at Separated by a Common Language, has selected two words of the year: the most useful import from American English into British English and the most useful import from British into American. This year, the most useful UK-to-US word is kettling, which happens to be a word I nominated! (You may recall that it was a Fritinancy word of the week in October.) The most useful US-to-UK word is FTW, an abbreviation of “for the win.” And yes, initialisms are words. Be sure to read Lynne’s thoughtful and well-informed defen{s/c}es  of her selections.

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Speaking of FTW, I’m flattered and delighted that my blog has been nominated for a Macmillan Dictionary “Love English” award in the blog category. I’m in excellent (read: daunting) competition: Separated by a Common Language, Language Hat, Johnson, Sentence First, Throw Grammar from the Train, Language Log—and several language blogs I’d been unaware of, which is always the most interesting thing, in my opinion, about contests like this one. If you’d like to cast a vote for Fritinancy, I’d be most grateful. There’s also a Best Website category; check out all the links, then vote for Visual Thesaurus.

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A little comic relief: You may recognize Christopher McDonald, David Koechner, Maria Bamford (the crazy Target Christmas lady), and Andre Royo (Bubbles from The Wire) in Funny or Die’s spot-on spoof of campaign commercials. Yes, let’s restore the dignity and the tradition of our Founding Santas!

Via AdFreak.