So an old naming project warmup exercise was to ask your audience:

• Why is it called Rhode Island if it is not an island?
• Why is it called junk food, when it is not junk and not food?

To which today we can add:

• Why is it called Facebook when it is not a book of faces?

Regardless, Facebook deserves their mega success as they go public this week. My only concern is if they have become the platform of choice for many businesses in place of websites. A clean, simple, almost boring name without any hot logo is the story at Facebook… but not really.. because it is a book of everyone’s personal stories and pictures.

Talking of which – did an interesting sign/name catch your eye? Why not post it on Brighter Naming’s Facebook page with a brief comment and help us build the biggest Fun Name Signs album in the world?

This has been a growing problem for some time now, and it appears Splunk has moved to the head of the pack in addressing these problems. Google and others have had some half hearted attempts before, but now it shows that a real concentrated set of special tools are needed.

But why such a friendly name as Splunk?  Almost sounds like summer and the pool. On the other hand, why not? Short, sweet and simple it cuts through the noise, is very memorable, and even has a good story behind it. How do I know? Because they tell the story on their website – smart as they are. See sidebar here and enjoy, even though their graphics logo is as plain as sawdust.

While their three star logo is a little bland, it too is a registered trademark. And it sure is hard to come up with any unique icon nowadays for a travel firm.

But their little roaming gnome character is sheer genius. Talk about putting a face on a service. One you don’t have to pay royalties too. One so popular it has its own online shop. One that plays its own starring role in a popular TV series: In at least one episode of each season of The Amazing Race competitors have to find a gnome and take it along to the next stop.

What better way to market and promote your service? What a clever way to do product placement right in a major series when you are an invisible service company that has no product! Yes, we hear the leg winners getting prizes compliments of Travelocity. But our heart reacts to the little gnome and makes us believe we will have support with us wherever we travel the world – a very, very important factor for most of us discount shoppers.

Travelocity  is thus awarded our top 3 star gold award for naming and branding.

This leads to two big problems: (1) They can’t get a trademark as they are generic, and (2) They can’t be found on the internet because we drown in results from Google and Bing when we search on their name.

And often it leads to a third problem too – when the company grows up it outgrows its own name, just when you want to start building a broader brand without ignoring your existing brand equity. Look at the logo statement here from Plastic Engineering (a nice generic)!  They do metals! Bet you never would have guessed that from their name.

Meanwhile the US Federal Trade Commission that was brought into the debate by the US Ad Council, now is only crying that it will make it harder for them to catch the bad guys. Well isn’t that the case everyday that the internet grows?

And I don’t notice the French, German or Russian, not to mention the Asian and Arabic Ad Councils, complaining because they might finally be able to properly handle the correct names of their valid companies with the proper spellings.. even if they use more than the English character set alphabet.

As for the often-touted, but even stupider idea, that it will cost the big brands a lot of money to claim all their domains, who are you really crying for?  Coca Cola could probably afford the $5,000 or so. Or they might just do what most companies are doing right now – ignore all the other domains.

For example, does your company use a telephone? Do your execs travel? Are there professional consultants in your company? Do you have an office in Barcelona? Do you have a US presence? Do you have job vacancies? Do you supply a lot of information to your clients? Why then have you not yet claimed your .tel, .travel, .pro, .cat, .us, .jobs and .info domain names already? Of course, you probably have the .xxx domain to stop your execs getting caught with their pants down!  All of these have been out for a while and most will take years to catch on. So the real action for new domains is going to be in foreign lands and might just be a big yawn stateside.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that they are a unique company and they took the trouble to find themselves a unique name.  Always makes me wonder why so few creative agencies have creative names? (I may even be guilty of this myself with this blog and with my own company names).

Which got me to thinking about their name. What if I wanted to compete with them and start a separate business certification service? Could we then be Best Business Bureau? Not likely.. sounds awkward and may even trigger a law suit as being “confusingly similar”. So this is a name that has both first mover advantage and is also a good blocking move.

But if you run into a situation like this, do not despair. The trick is to just go a completely different way. In fact, in many areas now a better certification is to be a Diamond Certified Business.

Are they all so young and naive at Google on this project that they don’t know Microsoft and others have already tried and failed with the Wallet name? Plus Google, on their own homepage for it, can’t decide whether it is written with a capital W or not. What on earth is that scooby do scribble logo all about?

But far worse, a wallet is something you store cash and credit cards in. You don’t pay with your wallet. And if you live outside the USA and are a lady, you don’t even own a wallet. Elsewhere ladies keep their money in their purse, which they then keep in their handbags. I wonder if Google programming geeks know the power women have shopping. Why cut them out from the get go?

Of course, this is an effort to fix a problem they have had since its inception with Google Checkout. What a dumb restrictive name that is. Didn’t even their basic market research tell them that Paypal is used for so much more than checking out? In fact it has become a major money transfer and online services payment system, in many cases without there being a shopping cart checkout procedure involved at all.

Oh well, when Paypal was young and poor and every dollar counted, they spent a few thousand on a naming consultant and now have this powerful brand name. At the time they were not owned by the big corporate eBay, which was probably to their advantage. They had to brand and position themselves correctly. And they didn’t have the big egos like Googleites who know it all.. but then make stupid mistakes and think they are invincible. No wonder so many products at Google don’t take off and 95% or more of revenue is still from their basic search ad revenues.

PS Wallets are from the pilgrims days.. to carry your coins in. Modern payment systems will be all electronic or smart card based… no leather needed. Maybe they can call it Google Silver, since they already have Google Chrome!

PPS Not quite as bad a name as Google+ though. See what the naming critic had to say about that over at Brighter Naming.

An excellent example of why color matters is the recent Coca-Cola strategy.  For the first time in 125 years, Coca-Cola decided to change the color of their cans from red to white as part of a temporary and seasonal marketing campaign in the US.  Making the most of their iconic Christmas polar bear image, Coke launched the cans in October 2011 and planned to run them until February 2012.  Public uproar, for a variety of reasons, saw the plan come to an abrupt and premature end.  Coke was even accused by the Twitterati of changing the recipe and it wasn’t long before the red cans were back on shelves.

So what should we take into consideration when choosing the color?

Science And Psychology

Colors are meaningful to people, fact.  Green is eco-friendly, red is danger or passion, pink is more girl and blue is more boy.  Just some very obvious illustrations of a few of the associations we instinctively make through color.  Here are several other examples of this based on the analysis of marketing experts and strategists on the way we formulate opinions on colors:

YELLOW

We associate yellow mainly with sunshine, warmth and happiness.  It is frequently used in combination with the color red, bringing together the warmth and happiness of the yellow with the strength and energy of the red – DHL postal service, for example. MasterCard and Shell Oil are two other strong examples of this combination.

GREEN

Green is the color of grass and leaves and we therefore link it heavily with nature and an earthy freshness.  By visual association alone it tells us a company or organization cares about us and our planet – even if on further investigation that appears less likely.  The recycling logo, the universal symbol for Greenpeace, BP and Starbucks are all heavy on the color green.

BLUE

You don’t have to look much further than the emergency services’ uniforms to realize that blue is the color of trust and reliability.  Manufacturers of computer software and their parts (IBM, Intel, Microsoft) rely on our trust and, in turn, rely predominantly on this color to win it.

RED

Red is the color of strength, energy and vitality as well as speed, danger and passion.  Because it covers such a wide variety of associations it’s an incredibly popular logo color which makes it almost impossible to stand out against competitors.

PINK

Pink is one of the colors that seems to be constantly evolving.  Its natural leaning is toward feminine associations and is often used with perfumes and cosmetics.  Historically more masculine brands have avoided the color due to its adoption by the gay community but recent times have seen it go beyond that, particularly with the youth market.  Companies such as T-Mobile are leading the way with their bold use of the color which while vibrant and striking isn’t visually overpowering.

Color Blind

So you can see just how strongly consumers can associate with logos and their colors, which makes it important to get it right.  A US consumer study carried out by the University of Loyola, Maryland found that the color of a brand or logo increased visual product association by up to eighty percent.  When done properly it can bring a whole different feel to your business or product and even stand you out from the competition.

Choose a color that represents the aims of your product or service and where possible use a completely contrasting color to that of your leading competitor.  If appropriate, mix a number of colors to reflect variety, similarly to Ebay and Google.  If you’re exporting internationally, consider how other cultures interpret the meaning of colors and do your research to avoid giving the wrong impression.  Last but by no means least, consider how the colors will work right across the board – from letter headers and uniforms through to web design and packaging.  Don’t be blinded by all the options but rather embrace all the possibilities.

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Lily Porter is a writer and researcher living in London. Her work allows her to cover many different fields from eCommerce to high end retail, including writing for the buggy brand iCandy. In her spare time she likes to spend time with her young family and play badminton.

Plus we have all heard enough insults about someone being a fat cow, so why not give it a friendly, functional name like Skinny Cow. Then dress it up with a friendly cow with a small waist being confirmed by the tape measure, and you finally have a product that can cut through much of the noise of the traditional sugary brands in the candy aisle.  Thank you Nestle.