In their annual meeting last week, Kraft Foods shareholders approved Mondelez as the corporate name for the company’s business. The new name, which is pronounced moan-dah-LEEZ and signifies “world of deliciousness” (or something like that), was chosen through an employee contest.
Armin Vit reviewed the logo for his Brand New blog:
It’s no secret that I don’t like hate the Kraft Foods logo — see spots 6 and 5 in 2009’s Worst list — so I was very skeptical about anything good coming out of the same company. Even more so with a weird name like Mondelez and its, like, totes ridics pronunciation. I have to say: I’m extremely surprised by how nice the new logo is. It’s bouncy, it’s flowy, it’s perfectly kerned, and it even manages to tie in to the Kraft Foods logo with those two teardrop shapes.
Teardrops … or ketchup splotches? Or the bleeding edge?
Read my original post about the Mondelez announcement.
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Microsoft has figured out what the world needs now: a new social network. Its entry into the market, So.cl, launched on May 20, while business and tech reporters were still distracted by Facebook’s IPO. The name is pronounced “social,” says Microsoft, but I can’t help reading it as “SoCal.” (The .cl domain is Chile’s country code.)
Microsoft makes us smile!
Anyone can join So.cl, but according to a ZDNet story the target market is students and academics. The So.cl FAQ says the network “helps you create rich stories (posts) by making it easy to assemble and share collages of web content.” The site is powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing. (Via Duets Blog.)
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AdFreak, the AdWeek blog, reports that a Texas-based chain, Pizza Patrón, is giving away a free large pepperoni pizza to anyone who orders in Spanish on June 5. Predictably, that got the English-was-good-enough-for-Jesus crowd all riled up. Well, let them eat Domino’s. Anyway, I was more interested in the respelling, ransom-note style, of “pizza” as “picza” in the promotion.
Yes, I know there are only four days left.
“Picza” is in fact how “pizza” is pronounced by many native speakers of Spanish, because it’s a more natural consonant blend in that language. And “pizza” isn’t the only example of that pre-sibilant pronunciation shift: In 2009 I wrote about a Pepsi-Cola campaign in Argentina in which “Pepsi” was changed to “Pecsi” in advertising and signage.
As for Pizza Patrón, for more than 25 years the chain has catered to the Hispanic community. The company’s slogan is “Más Pizza. Menos Dinero”—more pizza, less money—and its web content is 100 percent bilingual.
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Via the KidCrave blog, here’s a follow-up to my postlet in the May Linkfest about the latest baby-name data in the U.S.: 102 of the most unusual baby names of 2011. And by “unusual” I do mean “insane.” Five babies named “Aunesty”? Another five named “Honestii”? And six named “Onesty”? Six named “Dearria”? Five named “Peniel”? I rest my case. (Via @eponymia.)
*snort*
Moan-dah-leez does not say K-R-A-F-T to me, or anything else repeatable, but clearly they did not name the company for consumers.
"English-was-good-enough-for-Jesus." Never mind that whole Palestine/Jewish/Galilee thing. As always, your snark brings a smile.
Posted by: tanita | June 01, 2012 at 07:10 AM
"Peniel," at least, has a Biblical antecedent: it's the place where Jacob wrestled with some supernatural entity (Genesis 32), though the correct Hebrew seems to be closer to "Penuel." Peniel Avenue runs through the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany, home of Southern Nazarene University; the usual local pronunciation is "puh-NILE."
Posted by: CGHill | June 01, 2012 at 07:34 AM
When I see "socl", I want to pronounce it "Sokal", and am inclined to think the website is a postmodernist hoax. This probably isn't what they had in mind, either.
Posted by: Jon Lennox | June 01, 2012 at 01:48 PM
My mother met a woman who had moved from the Deep South to California, and had named her daughter "Wolverine." She had lost all her previous babies and a wise woman back home suggested that she give the next baby the name of a fierce animal, so that the spirits might think it was not a human baby and therefore ignore it.
Of course, the woman credited the wise woman's advice for her healthy baby, and not decent pre-natal care.
Posted by: Marta Randall | June 01, 2012 at 02:59 PM
"Socle" is French for "pedestal." I'm trying to come up with some connection there but am failing ...
Posted by: Jessica | June 02, 2012 at 06:46 AM