Odd conversations around the Ure household this weekend…perhaps it had something to do with all the rain passing through East Texas this weekend. Although, come to think of it, that’s not a big deal because we only had a bit over 7-inches in the gauge and around here, that will do little more than keep the dust down.
The comment from Elaine pointed out a news item about how marketers are running out of words to use for new products. To be sure, I hadn’t considered this previously, but a quick look at the problem should dispel all fears.
First, though, a word about the problem – because in some ways, it is already here.
A word that seems to be very high on the marketing-lingo circuit presently is the word “genesis.”
This has been spelled any number of ways now – including with a spurious y and whatever other ways marketers (with limited mental capacity) have in the way of typological trickster moves to make you think there is a new genysis or genesys around.
It’s even worst for pharmaceutical companies because they pour untold billions into getting you to “Tell your doctor” – so there is a market for familiar – yet customized – words. The thinking is they stick in your mind better.
The thing is, though, there are tons of options available to “solve” the problem. It’s just that fear and inertia are the main things slowing human progress.
Breaking words down into brandable name extensions is one way the problem is already being handled. Say you have an electronics company and you’re looking for a branding mascot (seeing as you have been inoculated with the Geico gecko uncountable times). You take the electronics extension “tronics” and add a frog in from of it forming “Frogtronics.”
But, as you can see over here, there are 860 Google hits on ”Frogtronics” so that would not be a good name. More generalized, Petronics has more than 15,000 page references.
Not believing me when I tell you the obvious you go for a cat as your new Catronics logo, only to find there are 11,600 uses of that word ahead of you. Dogtronics has a mere 2,300 hits, which must be telling us that while dogs may be man’s best friend, into today’s world of broad spectrum marketing, dogs are not the marketer’s best friend. Cats are.
We are tying sexual orientation into everything, too. There are many uses of “gaytronics” as well as bitronics. Bitronics is an interesting one because it clearly illustrates the imprecision of modern language. As you can see in our context here, our reference was to “bi” (as in sexual) not “bit” as in computer…but that’s how language rolls over time. Meanings come into vogue and then roll out.
There are more than 7-thousand references to transtronics, too. But again, it’s not the current marketing vogue use of the term “trans” (as in sexual). It’s more like trans as in (transistor) and so on.
Still, the point about running out of name is real and it is becoming more difficult all the time to trademark and protect one’s space in the mass consumersphere.
I’ve bitched uncountable times about all the rip-offs of the www.urbansurvival.com brand, founded in 1996. People at a hyphen or the word “site” and believe that qualifies them to imitate a good, original brand. And the hell of it is, it works.
Still, were not out of naming conventions yet. There are more “last names for words” than “tronics” and “LLc.”
But the change I am waiting for will be when marketers are reduced to using numbers integral to the brand.
This has been around for years – as you can sense from the several million hits for the term “1-a-day.”
Numbers have been big in the auto sector (409, 427, 440, 383, 327) and in consumer electronics (i5, i7, 4K) and so on. But so far, the generic soup at the store is not 6Mushroom, 1221Broth, or any of the like..
But based on the data, eventually here in Babylon, II, we’re going to run out of ways to brand and when that happens, the tower marketing will begin to teeter.
I can hardly wait.
The Bank Between Your Ears
Ramble with me.