Fritinancy

Name Changers, Part 2

More stories from the Recent Name Change file:

In the beginning there was TweetPhoto, founded in 2009 to allow users of Twitter and other social-media platforms to share photos. In August 2010 TweetPhoto became Plixi and added a geolocation focus to the service. And on May 1 Plixi will change its name again—to Lockerz Photos , to show its kinship with Lockerz, the social-commerce network that acquired Plixi in January.

Congratulations to all concerned, but really: “Lockerz”? Enough with the hip-hop Z-plural, which was already looking dated in 1999, when Fox launched the Boyz Channel and the Girlz Channel—and when Lockerz’s target market of 13- to 30-year-olds was barely sentient. Even worse, Lockerz awards its users something called Pointz—it prefers that you call them PTZ—which can be exchanged for discounts or direct purchases. PTZ: it’s just a vowel away from “putz.” (Hat tip: Trochee.)

*

Texas-based Seeing Interactive, which launched in January 2010 after three years in development, changed its name last month to OwnLocal. In addition to its original mission—helping newspapers take ad dollars away from the Yellow Pages—the company has added a daily-deals feature. Like Groupon, yes, but for “markets that haven’t even heard of Groupon,” according to CEO Lloyd Armbrust. “Seeing Interactive” was a less-than-optimal name for this combination of services. OwnLocal is an improvement, but not just because it’s shorter: interactive was boring and overly technical, and what does seeing have to do with ad revenue? OwnLocal, by contrast, contains the keyword local, communicates ownership, and incorporates assonance (vowel rhyme) to make the name more memorable and fun to say.

*

Here’s a cautionary tale about names, language, and slang.

PinkelStar founder Alexander van Elsas had a great story to tell investors and customers: his company name was a blend of the color pink and Elstar, a Dutch apple variety. The –star suffix could be transformed into a versatile graphic element.

Founded in July 2010, PinkelStar (the S is lower-case in the logo but upper-case everywhere else), which provides tools for developers of mobile apps, got off to an encouraging start, with a $500,000 funding round and coverage by VentureBeat and TechCrunch. I’ll let van Elsas take it from there:

And then it all happened. After a TechCrunch post someone made an smart remark about our company name. Were we aware that ‘pinkeln’ actually means ‘to pee’ in German, and that we effectively managed to call our company ‘Peeing star’? WTF?

Our company is based in Amsterdam, Germany is our neighboring country. But none of us realized what PinkelStar translated to in German. We were hoping that developers would pick up on the benefits of our service. Instead that one comment lead [sic] to an entire new discussion.

The comment got picked up by ‘a few’ German Twitter users, and a ‘peeing’ storm was born.

Long story short: van Elsas and his team went back to the drawing board and emerged with a new name for the consumer service, Zwapp, and a related name for the developer platform, Zwapp Connect.

 

 

I’d have liked van Elsas to explain name choice. Is it as meaningless in Dutch (or German) as it is in English? Is it meant to suggest “zap”? Since the website and blog are in English, are we meant to give the name an English pronunciation, or is the W pronounced like V?

In any case, it’s an interesting choice with some positive non-urinary associations. I wish the company well. And I wish all startups would seek the counsel of professional name developers with strong linguistic skills before they make costly and energy-sapping mistakes. (Hat tip: @CalliopeCo.)

Shpoonkle in The Economist

Robert Lane Greene, the New York correspondent for The Economist’s language blog, Johnson, has written a brief, very funny post about Shpoonkle and has generously linked to my own post about this oddly named legal-services business.

“It’s one thing to come up with a name that violates English orthographic rules,” writes Greene. “…It’s another thing to violate English’s rules of pronunciation.” Be sure to read the comments, too.

Name Changers, Part 1

My “recently renamed companies” file is so big I’ve decided to split it into two posts. Come back tomorrow for more.

*

The Oakland Coliseum, home stadium of the Raiders and the A’s, will be renamed Overstock.com Coliseum. The six-year naming-rights deal will cost the Utah-based e-tailer “a modest $7.2 million,” reports the New York Times baseball blog, Bats. The new name is “fitting,” say San Francisco Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross, “considering how many unsold tickets the two teams have on many game days.” But don’t get too fond of Overstock jokes (overstuffed? oversight? overcompensating?): Overstock is rebranding itself as O.co (.co is a top-level domain that’s become a popular alternative to .com), and the company retains the right to rename the Coliseum. Will they serve cocoa at O.co Coliseum? In Oco-land? Will O.co Coliseum merge with neighboring Oracle Arena and become the Ocoracle Sportsertainment Complex? Inquiring minds, etc.

By the way, “Overstock.com” will be the Coliseum’s fourth name in its 47-year history. After three decades as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, it was renamed Network Associates Coliseum in 1998 and then McAfee Coliseum in 2003. McAfee’s naming rights expired in 2008, and the Coliseum has used its original name ever since.

*

More sporting news: Sports channel Versus, which debuted in 1996 as the Outdoor Life Network, will change its name within 90 days, reports Multichannel News. The new name will “have a strong utilization of NBC in the title,” said NBC Sports Group chairman Dick Ebersol, an expert in corpspeak. Versus is owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. I’ll be sorry to see Versus go; as I wrote in 2009, the name “speaks directly to the competitive spirit.” But apparently not to everyone: I recently stayed at a hotel whose TV guide included a listing for “Verses.” The 24/7 poetry channel? (Hat tip: MJF.)

*

Qwest, the Denver-based telecom company, is being rebranded with the name of its new owner, CenturyLink. That’s one less Q-name, one more very peculiar tagline. “Stronger connected”?  (Via @Catchword.)

 

*

Shwowp, which earned the highly uncoveted Worst Brand Name of 2010 award from naming agency Eat My Words, is now Buyosphere, “a tool to help you take control of your shopping history.” In what must have been a very satisfying twist, Eat My Words got to do the renaming after Shwowp’s self-directed experiment in crowdsourcing flopped. There was one hitch, co-founder Tara Hunt told TechCrunch: the startup didn’t have enough money to buy the Buyosphere domain, which was owned by a squatter.

Hunt wrote the site owner an email, explaining the (sob) story, “I was like, I have 500 bucks,” she said. Needless to say he took her offer.

Needless to say? More like “mirabile dictu.” In my experience, domain squatters are not so easily moved by a weeping woman.

Mr. Bra

As I’ve acknowledged, I have a soft spot for “Mr.” names. Mr. Peanut? Mr. Espresso? Mr. Sandwich? Mr. Nature? Mr. Zipper? Mr. Bling Bling? Love ’em all.

But I’m pretty sure I draw the line at “Mr. Bra.”

 

 

“I’ve fitted 10-, 12-, 13-year-old girls,” says Mr. Bra. And a little later on: “I’ve sold bartenders this bra!” If you make it to 13:26 you’ll see a sign announcing “Breast Forms Silocone [sic] or Foam,” followed by Mr. Bra dancing with a large synthetic breast and chanting “Call me Mr. Bra, call me Mr. Bra, call me Mr. Breast Form.”

You have been warned.

I haven’t found Mr. Bra’s real name anywhere on his website (another warning: barfogenic zone), which is otherwise very comprehensive (mastectomy bras, transgender bras, lymphedema bra, zipper girdles, padded underpants, history of corsets, “guide to breast care and health for PLUS SIZE women,” etc., etc.). But if you’re in Phoenix you can check out his shop—it’s at 3247 East Thomas—and ask him yourself. He’s also on Twitter.

Via The Hairpin.

Related: “I Know! Let’s Put the Word ‘Flat’ in the Name of Our New Bra!” (via Dustbury)

Objection!

I swear to tell the truth: This is the actual name and bona fide logo of a real legal-services business.

 

Where to begin with Shpoonkle? Well, there’s this description of the logo as registered in the trademark filing:

At the center of the word, there are two O’s of which the left “O” is larger than the right “O” with two dots in them to give the effect of crossed eyes.

There have been a lot of crossed eyes in the legal community since Shpoonkle—an auction site that allows clients to bid for lawyers’ services—launched last month. “The name is absolutely awful. The concept far worse,” wrote Scott Greenfield, who blogs at Simple Justice, a New York criminal defense blog:

Any lawyer who signs up for this service should be immediately disbarred, then tarred and feathered, then publicly humiliated. It doesn’t matter how awful a lawyer you are, how pathetic your business, how grossly incapable you may be in getting any client to retain you. Those are all good reasons to apply for the assistant manager’s position at Dairy Queen. This is worse.

Thank you, counselor! Me, I’ll leave the legal judgments to the lawyers and stick to what I know. Which is this: “Shpoonkle” is a silly, ineffective name. It looks and sounds like a fad toy (Slinky meets Foozle?) or one of those new dog breeds (schipperke-schnauzer-poodle?). The double-O in the middle and -le at the end suggest a pale and passé imitation of “Google”: dumb coined -oo- names like Thoof were all the rage in 2007 and now sound contrived and dated. (Thoof—the business and the name—bit the dust in 2008.) 

The list of infractions goes beyond the name. The logo would be amateurish for a babysitting business; it’s cringeworthy for an endeavor built on consumer trust and professional ethics. The website inspires even more skepticism with its poorly considered stock photos, cheesy music, and cheesier video. (Video highlights: US Constitution; Statue of Liberty with fireworks; “It’s a win-win situation!”) The generic-sounding voiceover actor sounds embarrassed to be intoning, “Come to Shpoonkle dot com!” As well he should be.

 

Word of the Week: Doc-Buster

Doc-Buster: A documentary film that becomes an unusually successful hit. A blend of documentary and blockbuster; apparently coined by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock in tongue-in-cheek reference to his new release, Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

Spurlock, whose 2004 documentary, Super Size Me, was nominated for an Oscar, told a reporter from the CBS business channel BNET:

My producer and I were talking about all these blockbusters like Iron Man that had these product placements. And we wondered if a documentary that had those same partnerships and co-promotion could be a blockbuster?  Could we have a ‘doc-buster’?

In the film’s official trailer, Spurlock describes his project as a film “all about product placement, marketing, and advertising, where the entire film is funded by product placement, marketing, and advertising.”

In the New York Times review, published April 22, critic Stephen Holden writes:

[Spurlock’s] idea for a “doc-buster” supported by corporate sponsors, he says, was a tough sell. Telephone calls to several hundred companies are met with indifference and sometimes suspicion, which is not surprising because “Super Size Me,” for all its humor, attacked McDonald’s.

Blockbuster has an interesting and diverse history. It was coined by the US military around 1942 to describe a high-explosive bomb capable of destroying (“busting”) a city block. (The OED calls the verb bust an Americanism for “burst”; however, Dickens used it in that sense in Nicholas Nickleby and Martin Chuzzlewit.)

In the 1950s, blockbuster acquired two figurative meanings: the entertainment meaning (1957) and a racial/economic meaning (1959). The entertainment sense gave rise to the name of movie-rental chain Blockbuster, which was founded in 1985, filed for bankruptcy in 2010, and was sold at auction to Dish Network earlier this month.

The racial/economic sense is illustrated in this 1967 citation from the British weekly The Spectator:

The ‘block-buster’ is a figure in American urban life who has yet to emerge in this country. He is a property dealer who by subterfuge introduces black residents into all-white neighbourhoods.

Documentary has lent itself to a few blends, notably docudrama (a movie or TV program based on fact). Besides doc-buster, I found two other humorous coinages based on blockbuster: mock-buster (“a low-budget movie with a title and plot similar to a current blockbuster film”) and bonk-buster (“a bestselling novel that features numerous sex scenes”). (Both citations from Word Spy.) For more on bonk, see Mary Roach’s nonfiction book with that title.

Guest Post at Manolo’s Shoe Blog: They Named That Shoe WHAT?!?

I am pleased to be guest-blogging once again at Manolo’s Shoe Blog, the “wildly popular internet site” whose author is a blend—as The Manolo himself puts it—of “two parts high-class shoe fetishist, one part Ricky Ricardo, one part Jacques Barzun, [and] a dash of Ignatius J. Reilly.” My soul mate!

My subject this time—one I’m partial to, as regular readers of Fritinancy well know—is the wackaloon names shoe designers sometimes bestow on their creations. (Flubby? Rimactivity? Weirda?)

As The Manolo himself would say: Go! Read!

And while you’re there, you may also want to read my original guest post, “If the Shoe Name Fits,” about some rare and refreshing instances of shoe-nomenclature sanity.

Not Stupid

In honor of Earth Day, here’s an eco-friendly slogan I admire a lot. Although maybe “friendly” isn’t quite the right word.

 

 

“Don’t leave the planet to the stupid.”

The slogan’s been around for at least a year, but I’d never seen it—or anything else from the German solar-panel company Solon—until I opened my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago*. Last May, TriplePundit called the slogan “the most fantastic, and perhaps the most arrogant corporate tag-line of all time.”

I agree, if “fantastic” means “excellent” and “arrogant” means “smart and confident.” In a world of interchangeable Three P slogans (“People Passion Performance,” et al.), Solon’s tagline is bracing, distinctive, and unequivocal. It’s unafraid to break rules—like the “no negatives” rule (why not start with “Don’t”?) and the “keep it bland” rule (why not call the stupid “the stupid”?). And, yes, it’s seven words long. Just because Nike uses a three-word slogan doesn’t mean your company has to.

The Solon name is satisfying, too. It packs a double punch: it suggests “sun on”—“sol” means “sun” in Latin and Spanish—while evoking wisdom and laws. (Solon was an Athenian lawgiver; lower-case “solon” used to show up frequently in headlines when editors needed a shorter synonym for “legislator.”) It’s a solid, classical name with plenty of gravitas—nicely offset by the yeah-I’m-talking-to-you directness of the tagline.

Judging from the TriplePundit** post, Solon’s headquarters in Berlin are pretty smart, too.

Well played, Solon.

__

* The chance to discover ads like Solon’s is one reason I still read dead-tree media.

** I regret to report that TriplePundit has one of those interchangeable Three P slogans: “People, Planet, Profit.”

Oy-veda

I snapped this sign in my neighborhood last month:

 

It looked like good news. Although there are already 73* nail salons on the local commercial stretch, not one of them is a flagship for a major beauty brand like Aveda.

True, Aveda isn’t major major like Olay or Lancôme; Cosmetics Business doesn’t rank it among the top 50 global beauty brands. But it’s a serious contender. The company was founded in 1978 and is based in Blaine, Minnesota; it’s known and respected for plant-based beauty products sold in Aveda stores and in nearly 7,000 salons in 24 countries. I hadn’t heard of Aveda products for nails—only hair and skin—but maybe, I reasoned, I’d just missed the memo. After all, the typography of the sign sure looked a lot like Aveda’s all-caps sans serif font.

 

Aveda Dry Remedy hair products.

A sidewalk sign near the Coming Soon storefront offered a free pedicure to the first 500 people who signed up at AvedaNailSpa.com. (Don’t Google it; the URL no longer works.) What the heck? I signed up.

A couple of weeks later, here’s what I received in my inbox:

The Olsens and the Cohens

Sweetheart, bubbeleh, have I got a shirt for you! It’s from those lovely twins, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, just 24 years old and, maybe you haven’t heard, they have their own line of clothing! It’s called Elizabeth and James, because they have a sister Elizabeth and a brother James. Such nice family girls, Mary-Kate and Ashley!

So it’s a very nice white shirt, which of course is a must-have! And look! It has your name.

 

Polish Cohen, $225 at OTTE. 

“Polish Cohen”? I ask you: Where did a couple of shikses named Olsen come up with that? I mean, it’s not as though they’re also selling the Goldberg Pants or the Markowitz Dress. (Although I wouldn’t exactly object to a Friedman Skirt. Just saying!) No, we’ve got the Bogart trenchcoat and the Emery blazer and the Emma maxi skirt (which, you should pardon me for saying so, looks like it should be called the Grateful Dead I Need a Miracle Skirt). Totally goyish! Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Oh, and here’s the really meshuggeneh thing: Polish Cohen has relatives! No, not the Lithuanian Cohen and the Somewhere-Near-Kiev Cohen. I’m talking about the Back-Zip Cohen, 50 percent off (such a deal!) at The Outnet.

 

And the Wilderness Cohen, which Saks Fifth Avenue calls (what else?) a must-have.

 

Their wilderness is not my wilderness.

And for those warm-weather months—or maybe the Hadassah convention in Miami Beach—we have the Summer Cohen, available at SSense.

 

Kind of plain, I know—it would kill them to add some ruffles?—but nice and roomy, so you can nosh to your heart’s content! 

So maybe you can explain this Cohen business to me? Because honestly, bubbeleh, I don’t understand.

Oh, and happy Passover!