— Mark Prus, Principal Nameflash
About two and a half years ago, Brandless was launched. The company sold “unbranded” household, personal care, baby, and pet products on the cheap and was viewed as a breakthrough in the “anti-branding” movement.
Today, Brandless is dead.
LOS ANGELES, CA – APRIL 30: A
Last week, we saw the latest installment in the “trademark bullying” saga. But this time was different. Instead of lawyers fighting amongst themselves, DuetsBlog brought out the big gun: Seth Godin. You can read the entire piece here. I like Seth Godin, and so do lots of other people (hence, the
It’s not good marketing and I’m pretty sure it’s not good law, either.
It seems as though Entrepreneur magazine (who should know better) is working with Latham and Watkins (who should certainly know better) to persist in their relentless efforts to bully entrepreneurs to stop using the word ‘entrepreneur’.
And yes, it’s
– Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash
It’s that time of year! Baseball Spring Training is here! In honor of this, I’m looking at the fun names in Minor League Baseball. Some of them demonstrate the key principles of name development!
Minor League Baseball team names can be dull and boring. For example, there are some
–James Mahoney, Razor’s Edge Communications
Every now and then, lightning strikes where a creative team sees a terrific, fast-turn opportunity to have a little fun. I think of them as targets of opportunity.
We had one some years ago when we were in the midst of creating a series of mailers for a search-technology client.
— Jessica Gutierrez Alm, Attorney
No one does the Carlton quite like Carlton Banks. (Queue Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual.) Since actor Alfonso Ribeiro first performed the unique dance on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it has been readily associated with him. When the dance move recently appeared as a purchasable avatar dance
– Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash
In a recent article in The New York Times, John Williams discussed the evolution of our language through the “vowel dropping” trend.
He mentions the use of vowel dropping in naming tech companies, as tech companies like Tumblr and Flickr dropped vowels “…both for distinctiveness and because the altered
–James Mahoney, Razor’s Edge Communications
Back in the ’70s, National Geographic ran a story on Boston firefighters.
The writer mentioned a barb that a fireman tossed his way. “Ya gonna do another silver jets piece, huh?” Adding sarcastically, “Ya know: silver jets of water piercing the dark sky as they bravely battle the inferno…”
I
–James Mahoney, Razor’s Edge Communications
I try to focus my commentary on good creative work. Otherwise, I’d be posting multiple times a day because there’s so much mediocre or outright poor work.
But today, I can’t resist
Moen’s running full-page ads for its new Flo product. On a field of irregularly scattered, different-size circles filled
– Mark Prus, Principal, NameFlash
Mastercard has become the latest company to shift to a “no name” approach to branding.
Of course, they aren’t the first to do this (see Nike, Starbucks, Apple, Target, etc.). We are living in an image-driven world (e.g., Instagram) so this trend is not surprising.
A Mastercard spokesperson said: “As