Fritinancy

New writing on Medium: How BlackBerry got its name

BlackBerry, the new feature film from writer/director Matt Johnson, opens in theaters on May 12. I saw it last month at the San Francisco International Film Festival, at Lucasfilm’s Premier Theater in the Presidio. (Driving directions specify “Look for the Yoda fountain.”) I enjoyed it a lot, and I bet you will too, especially if you loved your BlackBerry as much as I loved mine.

Blackberry 7280, circa 2003

 

I did notice one missing plot point, and so my latest story for Medium, “How the BlackBerry Got Its Name,” fills in the gap. Click your little keyboard to read the story and then tap the clap icon if you liked it—up to 50 times per story! That link will give you a free pass, but if you want more goodies, you can join Medium with my referral link.

So many words, so little impact

When is a billboard not a billboard? When it’s a freakin’ 227-word manifesto – 239 if you include the headline.

 

“This is our only billboard. We need it to say a lot.” No you don’t.

 

Yes, I counted the words in this screwy outdoor ad from Public Mobile, a Canadian wireless-telecom company. (I lifted the photo from Tim Nudd’s post on Adweek, which called the ad “clever.” I disagree.)

Name in the news: Oath

“Broadly speaking,” Winston Churchill may or may not have said*, “short words are best, and old words when short are the best of all.” With Oath, the name of the new division that will house AOL and Yahoo’s media and business-to-business properties after those two companies merge, parent company Verizon gets a twofer: short and old.

 

The name was revealed in a cryptic tweet from AOL CEO Time Armstrong on Tuesday afternoon: “Billion+ Customers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017.” Twitter predictably piled on, not without justification. But I solemnly pledge to give the new name a fair hearing.

What season is it?

Why, ’tis the ’tis-the-season season!

Ampersandinistas

Two huge companies on opposite sides of the globe. Two ad campaigns with ginormous budgets. Two teams of copywriters burning the midnight oil, pushing themselves to be original and authentic and cutting edge.

And powerful, too. Let’s not forget powerful.

Let’s see what they came up with.

In the Wild: Adjective Noun Is Adjective

Here’s one of the Verizon “Better Matters” ads currently papering the Montgomery BART station in San Francisco:

 

“A better network is better.”

 

“Well, of course better is better,” you may be thinking with a twinge of annoyance. (“Some copywriter got overpaid for that?”) Ah, but there’s more to the slogan than meets the eye.

Introducing Mast Mobile

I’m pleased to introduce Mast Mobile, which was named by my company, Wordworking.

 

Mast is a new kind of mobile-telecommunications platform for businesses and their employees: a carrier, software platform, and device manager all in one. It gives business owners the power to manage productivity, costs, and security, and it allows employees to carry a single device with two numbers, one for personal use and one for business use.

When the co-founders of Mast Mobile—all of whom had extensive experience at large multinational companies—contacted me in January, their company was less than 18 months old and was operating in private beta under the name Grid Mobile. That name had evolved from an early plan to provide mesh networks as overlay on existing mobile networks. Now that the original strategy was no longer central, the founders wanted to replace a name they correctly perceived as having unwelcome connotations of infrastructure and “electrical grid,” and a static rather than dynamic and innovative sound.

Half-Fast, Whole F-Word

If you needed proof that “ass” and its variants (kick-ass, bad-ass, Big Ass) have become unexceptional in mainstream US advertising, here’s a new Verizon ad that tells customers they can “stop living with half-fast Internet.”

Geddit? “Half-assed,” haha.

Update, December 2014: the video I originally embedded is no longer available, but the campaign continues.

“Don't have a half-fast holiday.”

Via Language Log.The comments are worth reading.

For additional examples of commercial near-profanity, see Booking.com’s “Abso-Booking-Lutely,” Sheets Energy Strips “I Take a Sheet in the Pool,”  Peet’s Coffee and Tea’s “Do You Give a Cup?” and Kmart’s “Ship My Pants.”

*

Meanwhile, a new cookbook from Rodale—yes, that Rodale, 84 years old and famous for healthy-living publications like Women’s Health and Prevention—says F-U to innuendo and drives straight into foul territory.

Thug Kitchen: The Official Cookbook. Tagline: “Eat like you give a fuck.” Via AdFreak.

 

It’s a real cookbook, and there’s a real trailer for it. As the header warns, the language is “explicit”—and also very funny. The ad team has clearly paid attention to pharmaceutical advertising.

  

“Consult your doctor or use common fucking sense.”

 

The Thug Kitchen website minces nectarines but not words.

Hey, you missed a fucking apostrophe there!

 

I can’t wait to read the review by Cursing Mommy.

Modern Framily

For the record, I am not categorically anti-portmanteau. I think affluenza and gundamentalist are inspired. I admire the speedy, seamless blend of Travelocity. I appreciate Lewis Carroll’s contributions to the genre.

But few commercial portmanteaus rise to those heights. Instead, what we see is a lot of chop-and-jam (or perhaps choja, as the blend trend would have it).

Last year, for example, saw the debut of Burger King’s Satisfries, a combo of “satisfy” and “fries” that satisfied no one. (It doesn’t help that the word sounds almost exactly like “saddest fries.”) Sonic Drive-In tortured phonetics with Spicedictive, a distinctly nonaddictive word. The New York Times devoted many column inches to a bourbon-rye blend called Bourye, which I see as Bour Ye and want to pronounce like “Hear ye, hear ye!”

Also in 2013, Subway introduced the Flatizza (flatbread/pizza), which invites adolescent chortling* about flat tits.

Image via A Walk in the Words, who called Flatizza “a phonetically problematic portmanteau.” Indeed.

 

And I’m sorry to say that we are far from finished with this tired trend. Today marks the rollout of Framily, from Sprint.

RIP OMG

Two moments of silence, if you please.

Obit #1: FierceCable, July 23, 2013.

Cablevision Shutting Down OMGFAST Wireless Broadband Service

Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) said Tuesday that it is shutting down its OMGFAST wireless broadband service in Florida next month. …

“OMGFAST will be discontinuing its voice and broadband services.  We are in the process of notifying existing customers so they can identify alternative services,” Cablevision told FierceCable in a statement late Tuesday. While Cablevision didn't announce a specific shutdown date for OMGFAST, a recorded message on its customer service line Tuesday said that service in Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and 10 other cities would be discontinued on Aug. 19.

(Via my brother Michael the cable maven.)

 

Obit #2: TechCrunch, August 5, 2013.

OMGPOP Team Tried to Buy Back Its Site, but Zynga Killed It Instead

OMGPOP almost got an extra life, but Zynga said ‘game over’. Zynga just finalized plans to shut down OMGPOP, the game developer of Draw My Thing it acquired for $200 million in March 2012.  But multiple sources familiar with Zynga tell TechCrunch the OMGPOP team was in direct contact with Zynga leadership in an attempt to buy back the site or continue operating it, yet Zynga refused.

 

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.