Here a Here, There a Here, Everywhere a Here Here

Have you heard? Nokia has rebranded all of its navigation products with a single name: HERE.

The official story, in flawless brandbabble:

“HERE is a name that I think signifies what I call an ethos in cartography. HERE is about a sense of location,” said Michael Halbherr, the Nokia executive who oversees the company’s location and commerce unit, in an interview at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. (Via TechCrunch, March 2)

I can’t explain why the name is in spelled in ALL CAPS everywhere on the website except in the logo.

 

And here’s more news: PayPal has introduced a new credit-card reader for mobile devices. It, too, is called Here.

 

Eunice Park of the branding agency Catchword gives the PayPal Here name an A-:

“Here” focuses on the target audience and freshly, yet familiarly conveys its benefit: the ability to do business here and now, here and again, here there and everywhere.

However, if you happen to forget, as I did, which company makes the mapping Here and which one makes the payment Here, and you attempt to do a web search simply for “here” … well, you’ll learn some moderately interesting things about here documents and deixis and the Here Lounge in West Hollywood. 

But you won’t get Here, or HERE, from there.

Image via Medium Italic.

Comments

[Brooke]

My office has a conference room named Here. I guess they thought it'd be funny to have people say, "We're meeting in Here!" It's annoying.

[CGHill]

I am puzzled by "Here" for a navigation tool. Is not the objective to get "There"? (Perhaps this is for those who don't know where they are in the first place.)

[Jessica]

My reactions: (1) Anyone ever heard of search engine optimization? (2) There's got to be some good "Who's on first?" jokes to mine here. With Here, I mean. (3) And let's not forget Gertrude Stein.

[Autumn]

"Here. Hare. Here." —Withnail & I, a must-watch if for no other reason than the scene in which flowers are proclaimed to be "prostitutes of the bees"

[empty]

What does signify an ethos in cartography? I've always wondered.