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.
Read the rest of “Death to Branding!”
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.
A few weeks ago I was driving in New Jersey and was near a road that, according to my GPS map, was called Shades of Death Road. I wondered who would want to live on this road, or have a business there -- I was happy not to be driving on it!
Posted by: Jennifer Brown | July 24, 2012 at 10:50 PM
@Jennifer: Spooky! Wikipedia has several theories about the name's origin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_Of_Death_Road
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | July 24, 2012 at 10:51 PM
I just read all your posts tagged "Death" (though not all the comments) and didn't see any mention of Rainier Ale, which used to be known (from the color of the cans and labels) as Green Death. At one point their ad agency tried to turn this to advantage by creating a character called Green Beth; I don't know how long this campaign lasted.
Posted by: rootlesscosmo | July 24, 2012 at 10:52 PM
@rootlesscosmo: I'm familiar with "Green Death" but didn't write about it because I'm sticking to official names--preferably registered trademarks--rather than nicknames.
Posted by: Nancy Friedman | July 24, 2012 at 10:52 PM