And yet, it seems our memory is short and some did not learn from these costly mistakes.

As the likes of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have gained mass adoption, those brands treading cautiously around them forgot one simple rule: always protect your brand name. Always. Regardless of approach – whether you want to take your time deciding on the right strategy for social media, or even if you never intend on using these platforms – it always pays to protect your name.

A recent AdvertisingAge article found that many marketers that have not registered brand names or handles are concerned over their brand reputation. While many squatters don’t actively use the accounts, there’s always the risk one could use it negatively. And while, on Twitter, inactive handles tend not to rank high in search results, it can still be a source of frustration for brands when trying to wrest their names back from anonymous squatters. According to the article:

“A quick survey of accounts for the top 100 national advertisers, as ranked by Advertising Age’s DataCenter, shows that surprisingly few have ownership of the Twitter handles that correspond to the names of their companies or their brands.”

Companies being squatted on include General Motors, Nestle, and MasterCard – all using variations of their brand names (e.g., MasterCardNews). A surprise on the list? Burger King. Even Walmart is grappling with the issues.

It seems Twitter, in the meantime:

“…has hinted heavily that a “Twitter Pro” service is coming, figuring this issue for marketers and trademarked brands will be an increasing headache.”

Like URLs, it’s important to register brand names on major social media platforms – and consider also registering both good and bad variations of the name. And the rule applies for all new brands or companies launched. While plans for using social media platforms may vary today, brands can’t always anticipate where their strategy, or their customers needs, will lead them. And then you’ll want to have those names secured, protected and ready for use.

But can a brand genuinely begin to own a color through its verbal identity? Especially one as common as blue?

This appears to be Chase bank’s approach, given their recent product launches. The most visible are Sapphire credit card and Blueprint, a new credit card program that allows customers to manage their spending and borrowing. More suggestive versions of this includes Slate with Blueprint which joins the credit card offering, and a little less known (and although difficult to find on the site, featured full-page advertising in places like Inc. magazine) is Ink.

Following their major visual identity rebranding – where blue became the only color in the palette – will a naming strategy centered around “blue” help drive this home? Especially in the face BLUE from American Express? And given the apparent frequency of new product launches, will we see more blue names?

Blue is a color associated heavily with industries like finance and healthcare. Sociologically in Western cultures, the color blue – and dark blue in particular – represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness. So it makes sense – but it’s very common, and expected.

Such carefully thought out naming strategies, where names are consistent, linked and support a common idea can be powerfully effective. It gives people a consistent reference we begin to associate with a company. This, however, works best when it taps into an emotional space.

We’ll see if this can be true of the color blue.

http://www.worldcarfans.com/109090921611/citroen-revolte-concept-breaks-cover

Ever since a car has come in more than just black, and since it’s not always easy to get excited about alpha-numeric model naming, there’s been the fascinating approaches we’ve seen in car naming.

Citroën’s new Revolte (or REVOLTe) is no exception. Released at the Frankfurt Motorshow, it’s getting as much press around its throwback to the 2CV – retro, “ultra-chic” (and very purple) – as it has raised questions around the name’s obvious, and somewhat problematic, associations. Check out Ride Lust’s coverage and reference to vomit.

Finding a car name that works around the world has long been difficult. Before people can warm to the product or design itself, so much of the dialogue centers around the name because it’s the first thing we get to assess and comment on. And if there’s any sense that the product may not live up to expectation, any issues in the name gives people the opportunity to use it as a negative (Wired’s Citroën Hybrid is Mildly Revolte-ing).

Volkswagen just unveiled an electric the car at the IAA auto show, dubbed by V-dub the “Beetle of the 21st Century” (Fast Company). It’s name? The E-Up! (The exclamation is in fact part of the name.) Based on the Volkswagen “up!” series of city car concepts, the “E” – no prize for guessing – denotes the electric version. And then there’s even a “space up!“…

The exclamation in this sentence is also intentional!

Image from Cornell University Chronicle Online

Have you ever needed that perfect term to refer to the two chairs that sit side by side in a large space? If so, rescue comes in the form of Professor Jan Jennings and his colleagues at Cornell (hint: it’s Lonely Couple). They’ve created a searchable, online database of specific terms to describe “design practices that had been used throughout history and across cultures”. Terms, it seems, that have gone undocumented and unnamed for decades.

As quoted in Cornell University’s Chronicle Online: “We had to invent a naming practice, a vocabulary, for students to use in talking about design,” Jennings said. “Interior design had borrowed language from architecture and visual arts, but when you came down to it, we didn’t have a typology for contemporary design practices that have been occurring across history, style and culture.”

It appears that taxonomy may be as important in interior design as it is in the principles of scientific classification. It comes in handy when you want to explain exactly what you want a column, wall or chair to do.

Now you can easily tell a Wunderkammer from a Marching Order, and know exactly what to say when those two chairs sit – specifically – side by side in a large open space. But if you, like me, live in a miniscule, cramped Manhattan apartment, the two chairs may simply be a couple on the verge of a divorce.

Image from Wired Science

It appears there’s much more to a hurricane than the destruction it can wreak. According to the National Hurricane Center “experience shows that the use of short, distinctive given names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error than the older more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods.”

In a recent Wired Science article (What’s in a Hurricane Name?), however, it seems that naming a hurricane is just as complicated, sensitive and pressing an issue – especially when it comes to the sensitivity that can surround associations.

In his recent “Tall, Dark and Chicano” HBO special, George Lopez ranted against blaming “El Niño” for all the weather issues, due to the Hispanic association. But – according to the article – since the 1950s there’s been push back for many, many reasons: names were first too arbitrary, but when alphabetized they then suffered from only using women’s names (like Katrina); then after splitting it with male names, they were accused of being too white…

Names are far more emotional and personal that we often admit. As the NHC tries to create a naming convention that works, it seems this is especially true when it comes to something as hard to control as the weather.

There’s no doubt that fads form around new ideas – especially when it comes to naming. Think about the flood of i-inspired names after Apple introduced iMac and iPhone, or how many online brands mimicked Google by using as many vowels as a name can hold.  So it’s no surprise that the advent of Twitter would do the same.

Twitter has created its own lexicon, its own dialect. Personally, I get a kick out of  some of the twitter (tw-) terms and definitions that appear on the site. (What, you don’t like twestival?) And this is regardless of the name possessing the term “twit”. But it’s disappointing when you see good brands – ones that have great equity in their own brands names – fall prey to another brand’s quirks.

Best Buy’s Twelpforce is one such name. Despite generally positive feedback on the actual service provided through Twitter (check out the TechCrunch post), the company famously known for bringing us Geek Squad creates a name that bears little resemblance to the Best Buy brand. So we go from Geek Squad “agents” to a force that’s going to twelp you with your concerns…

If a customer is connecting with a brand on Twitter, they get the connection. They don’t need the reminder in the name.

winesofsubstance.com

Time Magazine highlighted – in their What’s Next 2008, 10 Ideas That Are Changing The World – the application of scientific principles to cooking (Kitchen Chemistry). But, slow or fast, we’re seeing scientific principles appear in naming and design as well.

Take the examples recently highlighted in Food & Wine, Science-nerd Style by Megan Krigbaum. Science-inspired names are appearing in food and drink. From restaurants like Lab Gastropub in Los Angeles (featuring beakers for beer and bookshelves full of science textbooks), to Mexico-city based D.F.C’s Science Series glassware. Even Wines of Substance’s “Periodic Table of Wines” using element-inspired names and symbols.

Yum.

(On the flip side, this last March the Australian Marine Conservation Society auctioned the chance for someone to name a new species – a small, spotted shrimp. While not for consumption, the winning bidder of the charity online auction hosted on eBay was offered the opportunity to have “your name go down in scientific history”.)