Qookies are gluten-free cookies made by TruRoots, “inspired by tradition and using recipes perfected by artisanal bakers.” The ingredients list does mention quinoa, so maybe that explains the Q. But why not Quookies?
True, the U-less spelling lends itself to a kooky pairing of Qookies and Qream.
It’s not perfume. It’s liqueur.
For the full scoop on Qream – that’s “Qream with a Q,” “a truly elegant experience for the modern day queen and her court of friends” that’s “created by” rapper/producer/fashion designer Pharrell Williams – get yourself over to The Hairpin. Also check out this story about the $5 million Qream lawsuit.
I haven’t been able to enlarge the mascot sufficiently to tell whether it’s a smirking tomato or a sneering pepper.
Hat tip to Jessica Stone Levy, who blogged recently about another brand from Crosby Lake Spirits: Kinky Liqueur. (“To enter this site you must be of legal drinking age. And irresistibly fabulous.”)
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No cutesy mascot or winking copy for Mr.Beer (spacing sic). No About Us or FAQ, either. Just kits and gear for the home-brewing aficionado, who – if the community forum is an accurate guide – is likely to answer to “mister” himself.
Mr.Beer was acquired last April by 150-year-old Coopers Brewery, Australia’s largest brewery and the world’s largest maker of home-brew beer.
(Via MJF.)
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If you like your upcycled products with a Scandinavian aesthetic and a dash of cuuuute, you’ll love mr Tedi. If you care about writing and editing ... not so much.
Charming design. Lovely photography. But that word is spelled “lovable” (or “re-lovable”) …
… and this word is spelled “huggable” …
… and there’s an apostrophe in “Valentine’s Day.”
mr Tedi (capitalization and punctuation sic) is made by a company called mrs [sic] Jermyn. The company’s founder, Annika, is from Finland; perhaps she wrote her own copy and isn’t 100 percent fluent in English, but that doesn’t explain the failure to hire a proofreader. (Penny wise, Euro foolish.) And it definitely doesn’t excuse the biggest error of all: misspelling your own company’s name:
Here’s my standard rant: Polishing your copy is not optional. Language is every bit as much a part of your brand identity as your name, your logo, your website, and your product design. Carelessly written, unedited copy tells me you’re not serious about your professional image.
Pre-drinking: “Chugging cheap alcoholic drinks before heading out to a bar, club, or sporting event.” – “ ‘Pre-drinking’ or ‘Pre-funking’ Common Among Young Alcohol Users,” Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2012. Also called pre-gaming, pre-partying, pre-loading, or frontloading.
Young drinkers’ reasons for pre-drinking include saving money, “getting in the mood,” and “facilitating contacts with potential sexual partners,” according to a new Swiss study to be published in the February 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research. It’s risky business, the L.A. Times reports:
Researchers found that when students drank prior to going to a bar or club, they drank more than they would otherwise. On average, pre-drinking students consumed seven drinks, and students who drank only at a bar or event consumed just over four drinks.
The researchers surveyed 183 Swiss adults, with a median age of 23, over five consecutive weeks. They used a recently developed cellphone assessment technique to collect reports. The legal drinking age in Switzerland is 16.
Florian Labhart, one of the study’s authors, was quoted by Science Daily as saying that “pre-drinking has been found in about one third of all on-premise drinking, which is a very high rate.” Pre-drinking rates in the United States may be even higher than that, according to Shannon R. Kenney, a sociology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles who did not participate in the study. Kenney told Science Daily:
“In fact, due to U.S. legal drinking age requirements, pre-drinking may be most prevalent among underage drinkers in the U.S. … Research shows that underage drinkers may be motivated to pre-drink to achieve a ‘buzz’ or become intoxicated before going to a licensed premise where they cannot legally consume alcohol, such as a bar, club, concert, or sporting event.”
Happy new year! And if you pre-drink, please don’t pre-drive.
Women, do you feel locked out of the consumer playground? When you go shopping, do you say to yourself, “Golly, I sure wish they made a car/Chardonnay/chocolate bar/pen just for women?”
Nope, didn’t think so. But that hasn’t stopped manufacturers from trying.
So far, the She’s is – I can’t believe I just typed “She’s is” –available only in Japan. But you can buy lady-wine right now, right here in the U.S.
Be. wines at my local supermarket, Piedmont Grocery.
Be. wines were introduced earlier this year by Beringer, the oldest continuously operating winery in the Napa Valley (established 1875).
“Get in the mood.” Be. point-of-purchase poster at Piedmont Grocery.
The brand is targeted at “eighties babies*,” according to Beverage Underground, an industry blog. A Beringer spokesman, Stephen Brauer, explains:
“Be.is about inspiring Millennial women to open up to the exciting world of wine without taking it too seriously. … This launch of this brand is particularly important to us because the women behind its inception are among the most curious and influential in the industry right now. We want to make sure they feel inspired to explore and are rewarded with a small but exciting indulgence.”
The name is a truncation of Beringer; I’m guessing that’s why it’s punctuated with a period. It also also works as an imperative, and it’s easily extended into other brand language: Pinot Grigio is called Be.Bright; Chardonnay is Be.Fresh. The store locator, I regret to inform, is labeled “Find your Be. Spot.”
Need a snack with your vino, girlfriend? Cadbury (now part of Mondelēz International!) has just the thing: Crispello chocolate, “three curved crispy wafer shells, each one filled with a smooth creamy center, dipped in Cadbury milk chocolate,” according to a press release. It’s “a lighter way to eat chocolate,” says Cadbury, which is why it’s OK for XX types.
Because, as we know, women need a lot of coaxing to get over our well-documented hormone-linked aversion to chocolate.
Just one little question, Cadbury: If it’s for gals, shouldn’t it be Crispella?
Maximus is a Polish vodka brand acquired last year by Brown-Forman Corporation, which also owns the Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort brands. If you think “man throat” and “rise and conquer” are suggestive, you should see the old European TV spots, which really put the gluteus in the Maximus.
See more kitschy-cool Maximus print ads by 81-year-old Civil War painter Mort Künstler at Buzzfeed.
Actually, it’s been a very good year for every iteration of the A-word. According to the media-news site Romenesko, which pays attention to such things, “ass” has appeared 22 times on NPR in the last year, only three times “in reference to the animal.” And there’s been little objection among booksellers to the barely taboo-avoiding title of linguist Geoffrey Nunberg’s latest book, released in August.
Book cover with wall of assholes.
The subtitle—“Assholism, the First Sixty Years”—makes it clear that Nunberg’s A-word is “asshole,” a word Nunberg says originated among American GIs during World War II and entered everyday language in the 1970s.*
I haven’t (yet) seen “asshole” in brand language, but—as noted in this space on severalpreviousoccasions—“ass” has been steadily gaining ground in the marketplace. In fact, “bad ass,” noun and adjective, has become practically a badge of brand honor.
The winery’s own website, however, compares the taste of Charles & Charles rosé to Jolly Ranchers, which seems kind of candy-ass to me.
Down in Los Angeles, there’s a food truck—excuse me, “gourmet mobile burger concept”—that puts “badass” right up front in the name: Baby’s Badass Burgers.
(Hat tip: Michael.)
Indeed, LA may want to change its acronym to “BA.” TechCrunch reported last month on an infusion of cash for online retailer Nasty Gal, whose offices are in the 213.
Nasty Gal takes its name from the album by Betty Davis, “the patron saint of badass women,” according to the About Us page.
In other news, a movie called Ass Backwards, starring Clueless’s Alicia Silverstone, is currently in post(erior)-production. The film’s writers raised more than $50,000 in funding on Kickstarter but haven’t sent updates to backers in more than 15 months, which sounds downright A-wordish.
And because if I don’t include it I’m sure to hear from several of you, here’s your Big Ass Fans mention. The company, whose logo is a donkey’s behind, is based in Lexington, Kentucky; the ad is in the September 17 issue of the New Yorker and may represent the first time “bespoke” and “ass” have appeared together in a commercial context.
* I heard Nunberg talk about Ascent of the A-Word last month at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, where his interviewer was Robert J. Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule. Because the event was being taped for public-radio broadcast, both gentlemen had to sidestep actual A-words in favor of “A-word.” It was an impressive exercise in forbearance, although Nunberg did slip in a D-word.
Volkswagen started the game 50 years with its famous Think Small ads, and Apple imitated the slogan to great effect with Think Different. Lately, the imperative-adjective formula has proved irresistible to creative directors hoping for some borrowed interest.
My latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, published today, looks at brand names that break the ultimate naming taboo: death. You’ll have to subscribe (just $19.95 a year!) to read the full text; here’s an excerpt:
At your local liquor store, you can find bottles of Black Death Vodka, Death’s Door gin, Death & Taxes beer, and red wines from Australia named Dead Letter Office and Dead Arm. There’s an upscale New York City boîte called Death + Company, and a popular San Francisco Bay Area restaurant called The Dead Fish.
A cosmetics website sells Dead Sexy No. 6 perfume. A business called Dead Sexy Nails, in Southern California, will give you a manicure (to die for, presumably). You can buy sportswear from companies called Board 2 Death, Death Grip, and Death Nail. (The last name is an eggcorn of “death knell.”)
If you’re in Key West, Florida, you can stop by Baby's Coffee for a bag of Death by Coffee, a proprietary blend of beans. If you’re in Boston and have a baby grand to transport, you can call Death Wish Piano Movers (motto: “We're So Good, It’s Scary!”). Pretty soon, if the trademark record is to be trusted, we’ll be seeing a line of toy cars from Mattel called Dead Fast.
Click the Death category at the bottom of this post to read my previous posts about “dead” brands. And stay tuned: It’s Life-or-Death Week on Fritinancy, and I’ll have more reports from both sides of branding’s Great Divide.
Remember the Starbucks “Let’s Merry” slogan from the 2011 holiday season? It was no fluke. Recently I’ve seen two new examples of “Let’s X” branding, in which X = a non-verb enlisted to play the part of a verb.
Tanqueray has a new campaign that doubles down on the anthimeria. The campaign slogan, “Tonight We Tanqueray,” turns the brand name—legally speaking a modifier, as in “Tanqueray gin”—into a verb. And one of the ad slogans, “Let’s Tonic,” turns a noun into a verb.
Shot from the window of my car in San Francisco (Columbus near Washington).
Tonight. Tonight we off the cellphone, retire the email. And save it for another day. We slow it down, drag it out and downshift day into night. Then throw in a few limes, a few rocks, maybe toss in some juice. A wink. A toast. Give her cheek a little love. Tonight we raise our glasses and let them kiss.
Note the Mafia-style use of “off” as a verb.
“Tonight We Tanqueray” reminded me of those much-parodied “Tonight, Let It Be Löwenbräu” commercials from the late 1970s to mid-1980s. Here’s one from 1984:
“Here’s to good friends/Tonight is kinda special…”
A second Tanqueray ad instructs “us” to “Grab the Night by the Junipers.” Here’s a version of the ad on the website.
Juniper berries are, of course, a key ingredient in gin. And “Grab X by the horns” (or, more crudely, “by the balls”) is a well-documented idiom. But I wonder how many passers-by will figure it out.
The idiom was a lot clearer in the marketing materials for the 2004 film Dodgeball:
In Australia and Europe, the tagline was “Grab Life by the Balls,” plural.
The second example of “Let’s [non-verb] X” comes from Amsterdam-based Let’s Pizza, which has been dispensing hot pizza via vending machine to customers in Europe for about three years. Which surprised AdFreak: “How did Europe get these things three years before us, anyway? The universe got that backwards.”
Let’s Pizza kneads the dough, forms a round, adds tomato sauce, layers toppings – and then bakes it all in front of your very eyes. There are no frozen pizzas here; Let’s Pizza is a mini-pizzeria that’s open 24 hours a day!
And here’s the news you’ve been waiting for: PizzaMarketplace.com reported last month that Let’s Pizza will introducing its first machines to the U.S. market later this year. A ten-and-a-half-inch pizza will cost about $6 and deliver 646 calories. In Europe, that probably translates to “dinner for the family”; in the U.S. it will probably be marketed as “personal size.”
The ready-to-wear division of 50-year-old fashion house Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) has been renamed Saint Laurent Paris (SLP). Hedi Slimane, who became the company’s creative director in March, said through a spokesperson that “he was drawing inspiration from 1966, when the ready-to-wear line was launched as Saint Laurent Rive Gauche.” (Daily Mail / UK)
The all-caps, no-vowels naming trendcontinues with BNDWGN(pronounced “bandwagon”), a social-media aggregator that also permits private conversations. BNDWGN was developed by the free texting serviceHeyWire, whose name is a homophone for “haywire,” which means “mentally confused or erratic; crazy; not functioning properly; broken.” (TechCrunch)
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I learned this week that two well-known culinary creations were named for popular stage plays. Green Goddess salad dressing, invented at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel in the 1920s, takes its name from The Green Goddess, a 1921 play by William Archer that was also made into two films (silent and talkie) and a radio drama directed by Orson Welles. (Via Simply Recipes.) And Lobster Thermidor, invented in Paris in 1894, honorsThermidor, a controversial 1891 play by Victorien Sardou. Thermidor (“summer heat”) was a month in the French Republican calendar, which was used continuously between 1793 and 1805 and for 18 days in 1871. (Via@ennuisansfin.)
