Eat My Words - The Kitchen Sink

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Tasty Tidbits from the past week...

 Sometimes we find juicy news not worthy of a full blog post, yet too darn good to not share with you. These "Tasty Tidbits" are digestible bites of news about new names and the naming industry and what we think of them here at Eat My Words. Bon Appetit!

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A new government acronym is born. 

Watch politicians for the next decade talk about EESA, or the... Emergency Economic  Stabilization Act of 2008.   This  3 page, then 110 page and now 451 page document  spells out how the $700 billion will be spent.  We are geeks and read it.  What is interesting is that everything past page 113 are extras having nothing to do with the bailout.  We especially love the addition at the bottom of page 300 (Sec 505: Exemption From Excise Tax For Certain Wooden Arrows Designed For Use By Children).

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Sarah Palin apparently thinks David D. McKiernan, the current Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan is in fact George Brinton McClellan a major general for the Union army during the American Civil War.

 

 

Also loved when she called her opponent O'Biden.  One heartbeat away, you betcha!

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Virgin Airlines wusses out and names their airline experience Airphoria. 

We get it, you get euphoric while you are in the air.   Why not just use the real word? Lame.  

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We love House.  In this week's episode, the patient du jour was having a reaction to three unnamed clinical trial drugs he was taking as a guinea pig.  House wanted to give the medications a name so he based them on his three minions.  The names of the medicines were, Bisexidrine, Cuckoldisol and WorldSorestKneesisil.  Watch the episode, it'll make sense then.

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Here is the Namethis.com lame name of the week: 

This week we have a tie:

For "a gym which have been in operation for some time in Sunshine Coast are looking to change names and change business direction to become more of a boutique personal training studio than a gym." 

The winner is Mevolutionfitness.com.  The client has not snapped this winner up as of 2:37AM 10-04-08

a Global Lifestyle Hotel that is Unconventional, Transgenerational, Social, Eclectic, Sexy -but not obviously so."

The winner is Communinnty.com.  The client has not snapped this winner up as of 2:37AM 10-04-08

Last week's fav, "Pixelouvre.com", is also still available.

According to the website they have "rewarded" $20,670 to their crowdsource community to date.  Since they "reward" 80% of their income, that means Namethis.com's gross profit is $5,176.50 for the four months they have been active. That equates to $1,291.88 per month.  From this they have to cover all payroll, rent, latte's, antacid, cell phone charges to their VC investors explaining how $1,291.88 a month before expenses is an adequate return on their $3,000,000 investment, aspirin, therapist fees, thesaurus to come up with new terms for "start up phase" and Internet access to Monster.com for searching for their next job.

Tasty Tidbits from the past week...

Sometimes we find juicy news not worthy of a full blog post, yet too darn good to not share with you. These "Tasty Tidbits" are digestible bites of news about new names and the naming industry and what we think of them here at Eat My Words. Bon Appetit!

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Oracle announced its first hardware product this week, called Exadata.  Yawn.  Apparently, Oracle has been working on this product for three years.  However, it sounds like they started working on the name part about three days ago and grabbed something off of a whiteboard at the last minute.  We can't find a description anywhere on the Oracle website on the meaning of Exadata, but they show a picture of the product that has an "X" on it, so that makes it clear....

Also, there is a joint  HP /Oracle product that is being simultaneously released, which they are calling....wait for it......the

  HP Oracle Database Machine

Really?  Isn't that a description rather than a name?

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison refers to the products as "radical new thinking".  Maybe, but not so much for the names. 

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In the "Sure, That Will Fix the Problem" files comes this "rebranding"  news from WPP Group's MindShare:

"The agency's North American senior executives are relinquishing their formal job titles. For example, Scott Neslund, CEO of Mindshare North America, will now be identified simply as Scott Neslund, Mindshare North America, the agency said." 

In phase 2 of the job title changes to be implemented early next year,  he will be identified simply as, "The Scottmeister". 

Also, for no apparent reason, they will now be known as Mindshare, not MindShare.  In related news, they are negotiating  with the City of New York (their headquarters location) to change the city's spelling to neW yorK.

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Interesting Trademark Lawsuit of the week:  Intel is suing Intellife Travel for trademark infringement.   We are all for protection of your trademark, but come on.....

One is a small travel agency specializing in travel between North America and China and one is the world's leader in semiconductor technology.  Well, we're confused, but not in the way Intel thinks we are.

Techcrunch lays it all out for us.

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We can't help our fascination with the trainwreck of an idea, Namethis.com.  Watch later for our discussion why it cannot possibly succeed as a real business (hint: it has something to do with venture capital backers wanting an actual ROI).  If anyone wants to give us $3 million, we'll tell you how to make it really work.

In the meantime, here is the Namethis.com lame name of the week:  "Pixelouvre.com", an original name for a modern e-commerce art gallery. The company preferred a "one-word name" that "must be available as a .com".  That one sentence alone explains dreck like Pixelouvre.com. 

As anyone who knows anything about domain names knows, one-word names are all gone.  Also, emphasis on names that must be available as .com forces the production of junk names.  In any case, the explanation behind the creation of  Pixelouvre.com is:

"pixel + louvre. pixel represents the ecommerce." (a pixel is a single point in a graphic image..how does that represent e-commerce exactly?)  "louvre: an art museum that is a famous tourist attraction in Paris (Right.... Lucky it starts with an "L" or else it wouldn't have worked with pixe"l") "the domain is available" (there is a reason for that).

P.S. As of 6:00 am Pacific time on 09-26-08, Pixelouvre.com was still available, so maybe the company that bought the name doesn't want to waste another $9.99 to lock up this winner.  We were going to buy it on a lark, but decided we didn't want to face a  Pixelouvre.com  domain dispute dustup.  For free, we offer the following (domain names available) as backups:  PixelSmithsonian.com, PixelMuseumOfModernArt.com and PixelTheGetty.com.

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Tasty Tidbits from the past week...

Sometimes we find juicy news not worthy of a full blog post, yet too darn good to not share with you. These "Tasty Tidbits" are digestible bites of news about new names and the naming industry and what we think of them here at Eat My Words. Bon Appetit!
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America's # 1 Populist ! blows the lid off of the Naming Industry! !  A populist is an advocate of democratic principles, making Naming Consultants Socialists or Communists we guess.  His in-depth investigation uncovered our biggest secret; that Naming Consultants get $500,000 per name.  He also introduced us to a great new word to explain what we do...humbuggery.  He claims that "I’m not a naming consultant, so who am I to question?"  Right.  You be a populist and we'll name stuff.  We'll give you  the friend discount and charge you only $400,000.
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In an article entitled The 6 Coolest Jobs for Weird Majors, one of our competitors explains their naming process:

Linguistics plays a big role at New York-based namebase, a brand naming firm responsible for coining "Fruitopia" and Tyson's "Any'tizers," says President and Creative Director Jim Singer. The daily grind at Singer's firm involves searching for a neologism (a coined word) that communicates so well, it virtually advertises the product itself. Sound is key. The name of a small car should sound small. The name of an antidepressant should sound helpful or upbeat. The company's linguistic analysis checks for word associations and colloquialisms in a variety of languages.

Some Eat My Words differences in  process:

1. We don't consider our work a " daily grind".  The only grinding at our office is the fresh coffee beans we start our day with.
2. We don't search for coined words that virtually advertises the product, but rather look for real words that do advertise the product.
3. We think a name should not sound small or helpful or upbeat , but rather evoke small or helpful or upbeat.
4. None of our names have apost'rophes in w'eird pla'ces.

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"Branding expert" Laura Reis recently changed the name of her blog to Ries' Pieces in an entry entitled "The Time for Change in Now."  She explains that "pieces is a great triple entendre that describes my blog posts, TV appearances as well as the correct pronunciation of my name." 

Further she fesses up that "there is one problem. You can’t use apostrophes and other punctuation marks in a website address. But you can cover your bases by buying close but incorrect names and redirecting them to your main site. I got RiessPieces.com and RiesesPieces.com to cover my new name and address RiesPieces."

She goes on to say, "No name is ever 100% perfect, but Ries’ Pieces is a name that I think is worth moving to." WHAAAAAAAAAT????????? No name is ever 100% perfect???!!! On the contrary.

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There's Something Rotten in Zenmark

This is a continuing series of  postings that will spotlight other naming firms.  We think our clients should have a choice, and clearly Eat My Words is not the only naming firm in business.

Next up is the self-proclaimed "Last Word in Naming", Zenmark.

Besides being the last word in naming, they are the first to apply for a patent on a naming process, or should we say a "Verbal Identity Engineering Process." 

Really.  No joke.  They did it.  Here is an excerpt from the press release: 

Zenmark Brand Engineering, Inc. announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has received and acknowledged the company's patent application filing for its invention of a unique and innovative creative development process in the area of product, service, and company naming. Zenmark's Verbal Identity Engineering (Patent Pending) process has proven to revolutionize the naming industry by applying a rigorous and repeatable methodology to the often unstructured and undisciplined process of brand name creation.

"Our engineered approach combines art with science, which is entirely new to naming," said Greg Balla, president of Zenmark. "By adding scientific scrutiny to the process of legal analysis, linguistic assessment, and market testing, it gives clients more confidence that the names they ultimately choose will be the ideal vessels for their verbal identity and the most solid infrastructure for building brand equity.

Wow.

We have a few questions:

1. Do you want a naming company to apply a rigorous and repeatable methodology to your naming project?  Does it sound even remotely creative?  We want our dentist to apply a rigorous and repeatable methodology to cleaning our teeth, but that's about it.
2. What's wrong with being unstructured and undisciplined?  We embrace it.  The best names come from non-linear thinking. 
3. Proven to revolutionize the naming industry?  According to whom?
4. "What on earth is adding scientific scrutiny to the process of legal analysis, linguistics and market testing?  Scientists are not good namers.
5. We would love to take a look at the patent application, but we can't find it in the USPTO database.  According to the Patent Office it takes 1.5 to 2.5 years to get a patent.  Zenmark applied in May 2005, so.....

This (patent pending) process is so revolutionary and unique that Zenmark warns...yes warns potential clients that:

"Zenmark’s Verbal Identity Engineering (patent pending) Process can currently be shared with you and your team only under non-disclosure.  Federal law prohibits any unbound discussion of the trade-secret details involved in the Zenmark Design Team’s unique creative development in the area of naming and branding." 

We share mints with our clients and never threaten them with federal statutes.

OK, so what does all this double-talk and folderal about engineering and scientific scrutiny get you?

The Zenmark Portfolio!

• Airave  
• Afaria
• Amicor
• Applimation
• Audistry
• Certiport
• Evoltra  (anyone else think of revolting when reading this name?)
• Explorist
• Fusic
• HipTop
• Jurni
• LifeDrive
• MassTrans
• Mobshop
• NetVein
• Print 2.0 (Nothing like immediately time-stamping a client's name.)
• RoadMate
• SabreSonic
• Suvus
• Trax
• Vistrio
• Wellbound
• XOHM  (Read our previous post about this howler which is a leading contender for the worst name of 2008)
• Zoove

So that's what a rigorous and repeatable methodology buys you.  On the other hand, if you want a name that is free-wheeling and unique like Neato home cleaning robots, Spoon Me frozen yogurt, Cake Financial, Frigid ice cream orMonkey Dunks dips for kids, give us a call.

Namethis.com - you get what you pay for

We commented before on the crowdsourcing  website Namethis.com, where $99 gets you a new name for your product, company or service. As we predicted, it has not gotten any better. The names generated are painfully bad, as evidenced by  recent "winners"  including:

Kareero.com - Career Oriented Website /Personal Branding (sounds like a human resources magician to us)

Sheppard Systems - Online Church Communications Tool (why not spell it Shepherd?)

Givolution - Gift Card Website

www.know-a-pro.com - Website for connecting people with services

fAIRhenheit -  new technology for central heating and air conditioning systems (misspelling and case sensitive weirdness included at one low price!)

EcoCool -  First Stage of an Air Conditioner Motor

Frescomfort -Second Stage of an Air Conditioner Motor (thank God it stops here and there is not a third or fourth stage)

Health eJourney - medical tourism website (an "e" name"?  Helloooooo 1990's!)

Manĝaĵo - 100% Organic Fast Casual Californian Restaurant  (this one is a classic..... it's Esperanto......Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?)

We also noticed...

• The same peple are "winning" over and over which implies that the "crowd" is more like a small informal gathering.
• The crowd is getting  asking questions and not getting answers
• The economics don't add up.  The company keeps $36 of the $99 it charges for a naming job and they are not breaking any volume records.  Case in point.   As of today, they have two, count 'em two, naming jobs in the queue.  The investors who ponied up $3,000,000 for the parent company probably want a little more bang for their $3,000,000 bucks.

Namethis.com is the poser-child for you get what you pay for...in this case, namedreck, and is proof that crowdsourcing in many cases sounds better than it actually is in practice. NameThis, we are putting you in the deadpool.

For names that don't suck at any price, we recommend that you use a professional.

Namethis.com - $99 for a name and a laugh

The aptly named company Kluster FKC is using trying to use crowdsourcing (and $1 million) to name companies via their second venture, Namethis.com (their first crowdsourcing venture, Knewsroom went kaput in 37 days...ouch). 

For $99, Namethis.com claims to give you three world-validated names for your thingamajig in 48 hours.

We had no idea that "world-validated" was an euphemism for "really awful names in any language even if it isn't a real word, means anything or is even pronounceable".  Here are some of the "winning" world-validated names created so far:

• Eaternet - first wireless pay-at-the table entertainment device
• Magnapeutic - therapeutic magnet patches
• iChews - individualized cereal in the mail
• Vestisa - investment management company for the people
• Encompa - online strategy/consulting firm
• Beauternity - beauty and anti-aging website
• el-goog - reversed web searching 
• G.E.C. (Global.Energy.Climate) - climate change charity

We don't want to live in a world where a word like Beauternity is validated.

While we will acknowledge that $99 is a bargain compared with what you might pay elsewhere for similar  names, there are several issues.

1. The names suck.
2. They have given no legal consideration (see el-goog  above who will have Google sending one of their friendly cease and desist orders around five seconds after their website goes live).
3. Anyone can just go on the website and snatch names for free.  Why they would is a different issue.
4. The names suck.
5. Namethis.com makes about $20/name (after paying the crowdsourcers or is it crowdsourcee?).  Accordingly, the volume would have to be huge to make any real money for their investors, which seems unlikely.
6. Our friends at Wordlab already have a website doing essentially the same thing for free.
7. Did we mention the names suck?
8. Every name fails the SMILE & SCRATCH Test.

We don't know if crowdsourcing in general can be successfully monetized over the long run, but we will be very surprised if Namethis.com survives. BTW, their 37th day is July 13.

Alas, Name Mangler is not one of our Competitor's

We recently ran across this company, and thought that at last, one of our competitor's was fessing up with a descriptive name of what they do.   However, it is not a naming company but a file naming utility. Ah well.  Just in case, these URL's were available this morning, if any of you guy's want to snap them up.

• WTFNames.Com
• StinkyNames.Com
• VileNaming.Com
• EwwThatsYourName.Com
• YouNamedItWhat.Com
• THATIsWhatIPaidFor.Com

As a refresher, take another look at our competitor's work (a PDF file), take a Bromo and give us a call.  Our names go down easy, taste good on the palate and won't back up on you.  You will want to come back for seconds.

To assist you in the selection of a main course, here is our SMILE & SCRATCH Test to whet your appetite:

The secret to powerful, unforgettable and sticky brand names is simple, "A name should make you smile, instead of scratch your head." We evaluate every name we create based on this no-brainer philosophy - and now you can too with the new Eat My Words SMILE  and SCRATCH Test^TM. Run your own product and company names through the test and see how they hold up. It's not as easy as it sounds. Most names fail because they are spelling-challenged, hard to pronounce, and meaningless to customers who don't know Latin (which is just about everyone except for Alexandra's mother). So cancel your focus groups and use this criteria any time you're trying to objectively evaluate a name. You'll instantly be able to see if you have a winning name or if you should scratch it off your list.

SMILE – the qualities of a powerful name
Simple – easy to spell, say, and understand
Meaningful – your customers instantly "get it"
Imagery – visually evocative - creates a picture in your mind
Legs – carries brand, rich wordplay, brand-extensions
Emotional – empowers, entertains, engages, enlightens

SCRATCH - scratch if it has any of these deal-breakers
Spelling-challenged - it's not spelled the way it sounds
Copycat – similar to competitor's names
Random – disconnected from the brand
Annoying – hidden meaning, forced
Tame – flat, uninspired, non-emotional, boring
Curse of Knowledge – only insiders get it
Hard-to-pronounce - not obvious, relies on punctuation

All of our names pass the test: Spoon Me, Neato, Monkey Dunks, Cake Financial, Dizzywood, Dash, and countless others. Do yours?

Raw Modesy, Unharmed Donkeys, Con Men, and other strange naming firm anagrams

One of our favorite websites for wordplay is the Internet Anagram Server. Give it a whirl and see what your name spells when you jumble the letters. (For instance, "Alexandra Watkins" = "An Award In Sex Talk" and "Drink A Sealant Wax.")  We ran the name "Eat My Words" through and here's what we found... Eat My Words =
Meaty Words
Sweaty Dorm
Raw Modesty
Two’s Dreamy
Draw My Toes
Steady Worm
Tawdry Some
Wet Army Sod
Do Sew My Rat
Rowdy Meats
Wordy Teams
Steamy Word
Drowsy Meat
To Wry Dames
Eat My Sword
Store My Wad

Of course we can't just embarrass ourselves. Here are some anagrams of some of our favorite naming firms:
The Naming Company = Nymphomaniac Gent
A Hundred Monkeys = Unharmed Donkeys
Igor International = Rotate Nail In Groin
Landor = No Lard
Catchword Branding = Drab Chanting Crowd
Metaphor = To Hamper
Master McNeil Inc = Immanent Circles
Mnemonic = I’m Con Men
Interbrand = Drab Intern

Photo of unharmed donkeys by Alexandra from her trip to Tanzania in 2004.