Crapola sounds like something worth saying on the way to Chicago, after discovering the size of your PowerPoint file is too large to get through the recipient’s firewall, and then realizing the USB flash drive containing your inspiring presentation to FUSE conference attendees remains on your desk back in Minneapolis.
Perhaps an even stronger word might be appropriate, if this mishap were true, but thankfully it is only imagined (at least this version). To avoid uttering this word or an even harsher one, my digital presentation (The Intersection of Brands, Design, and the Law) remains in my pocket, so if it doesn’t make it to the stage today, I won’t either.
Let’s just say, I’m all fired up and ready for FUSE 2014 Brand Strategy & Design, again. So, ola FUSE attendees!
Anyway, back to Crapola, as it turns out, there is another meaning of Crapola, as I learned over the weekend, encountering for the first time an interesting granola brand called Crapola! The brains behind this brand are a husband and wife team doing business as Brain Storm Bakery, located in Ely, Minnesota:
Fritinancy traces the history of Granola, perhaps a former brand name, but now very generic. Indeed, the USPTO has recognized “granola” as a generic product name that can be found in the USPTO’s Acceptable Identification of Goods and Services, since at least as early as April 1991. Nancy Friedman knows a lot about the “ola” suffix too, recall her Duets guest post: Shinola 2.0?
In addition to what Nancy has to say, Wiktionary indicates the “ola” suffix is “used to form humorous and pejorative terms.”
Presumably all these federally-registered competing granola brands are intending the humorous, not the pejorative: Ganola, Cranola, Yumola, Crunola, Davola, San Franola, and Gheenola.
No doubt Crapola! has humor in mind too.
Just in case you’re wondering, we don’t do the pejorative “ola” stuff here, like Payola, and by all means, no Blogola, nope, none of that here!