Earlier this week they got a great Wave from Google’s Marissa Mayer as reported on The Brand Channel. Endorsements don’t come much better than that.

A break through free software program that is saving the world a lot of electricity and it is called Granola? I can hear the jingle now: “Granola isn’t just for breakfast anymore.” But since a very reputable magazine, BusinessWeek, first alerted me to this name and called it a brandname, I believed it to be real. And once I looked it up on miserware.com which flipped me over to grano.la (yes a website using the Laos country domain, not LA city.. at least not yet) the plot grew deeper. I am sure there is a play on the name somehow, perhaps from granularity. While I am just guessing here I do think that is more likely than someone looking at his breakfast dish or lunch box and going Aha!

And since Businessweek called it a brandname, I had to check and see if it was a registered trademark. Well this turned into a quick lesson on how hard it can be to look up certain names on the USPTO.gov website if you don’t know what you are doing. The first trademark search box I got to, I typed in granola of course.. and got 3076 hits to be precise! Wow. Backup.. let us rather narrow search to a name or partial name in the software category (9) and see what happens. I find an expired trademark for Granola Disk, and nothing else.

Oh well, with such an unusual name and prolific download rate, I suppose no one is going to copy your unique product name, so why pay the small trademark registration fee? Certainly in the food category it is a generic word and therefore not trademarkable, but in software it is unique and I really wanted to properly credit it with the Circle R brand – ®.

P.S. Also a great example of how a product name logo does not have to be boring.

Is this tongue-in-cheek cartoon an unofficial endorsement from the financial media powerhouse that name changes actually are effective?

Others have claimed to have branded milk with their Got Milk campaign, to which I respond they only raised the awareness of milk. I defy you to recite what brand of milk you prefer. But when it comes to sports drinks and bottled water, the brand wars rage with passion. Isn’t it amazing what strong feelings we have for some flavored waters thanks to the miracle of marketing?

So when I see coffee ads while I am watching online video, my cognitive recognition skills kick in. First time or two I saw the Keurig ads I watched them carefully but couldn’t remember the brand. Then I watched more carefully and wrote it down. Today as I sit to write this I discover I can’t find Keuric’s website, but luckily Google helps me out and corrects my spelling (and thanks McAfee for not letting me surf to the infected keuric.com site).

If a professional brand meister of many years standing, when consciously trying, cannot remember your name, then I think you have a problem. Not only is the name difficult to say and remember for English speakers, it just provides us with no associations or meanings. No wonder they have to spend so much money on marketing. What a shame. And they probably have a good product too. Now they need a cure for Keurig.

Silicon Valley Code Camp has been and gone. The programmers are back on their keyboards. Now the business and marketing people can safely show their heads at this function.  Come network at the Mixer hosted by the best tech networker in the Bay Area.

Disclosure: My company is a sponsor and exhibitor again this year. Meet me there. If you visit their site you can see me in the picture… just off center in rumpled black leather jacket but smooth wavy white hair:)

But what about National Geographic? Or The Smithsonian Institute? Or Architectural Digest? Or Wikipedia? For most of these you couldn’t find a better name. And even though many people struggle to spell encyclopaedia, I can’t imagine there is a better name for Wikipedia, even though most people don’t know what a Wiki is or what the Hawaiian word means. Hint: Look it up in Wikipedia – one of the most trusted sources on the internet.

So we must conclude that for every rule about a great name, there is an exception. And, as usual, nothing matters if the boss doesn’t like the name anyway.

UPDATE: Since we no longer spell encyclopedia as encyclopaedia, care needs to be taken with the root tail here, as it is also often used for pediatric or even pedophile names. If it wasn’t better know, Wikipedia could be a list of pedophiles or a list of kid’s problems.

But I am only criticizing because I can’t get away for a trip in short order. Must say I am impressed with how they are using Facebook too. One of the better consumer marketing efforts. Of course I liked the ship christening ceremony.

And, as for the names of the new long boats: Viking Embla, Viking Aegir, Viking Freya, Viking Idun, Viking Njord, Viking Odin. Don’t worry, after one cruise and some wine from their own Viking winery, your ship’s name will roll off the tongue and never be forgotten.

Plus these names really add a touch of Nordic class and separate the boats from their sister Princess Cruises with their English party names.

I was so shocked, I asked him specifically what was the company name, and he slowly said “Law Pee Vo“. If Ihadn’t been in a good mood, I probably would have been pee’d off. But instead, 10 minutes later I called him back. Got the answering service which at first didn’t know which of their many clients had been calling me. But I persuaded the well-spoken young lady to work down the list of her clients with Law at the beginning.

That is when I discovered a company called Law Pivot was actually using telemarketers (on shore incidentally) that were badly mangling their name! I also discovered that they were probably using this marketing tactic because they are not showing up on the first 25 pages of a Google search for Ask a Lawyer a question.  What a pity for an apparently good service that has had some big PR coverage in the past.

Many people use any service they prefer. Me, if I can’t get past the name, I move on to another supplier. And I hope this reminds more of you to listen yourself to the verbal branding messages your hired flunkies are putting out….so they don’t pee all over it.

So now Drobo can go go… not that they appear to need much help from us.. they are already zooming along in the small business add-on storage marketplace.

They featured Juice in the City and their focus on moms and the mom market – probably the biggest market in my humble opinion – of people who more often turn to coupons out of necessity rather than desire. Of course, any of the others could target moms as well, especially if they had a  name that more implied moms rather than one implied teenagers flirting in the city. And what about all the country folks?

USA Today says BuyWithMe, Tippr, CrowdSavings, Yipit, Lashou, CatchofTheDay, Scoopon (love this name) and Plum District, among others, have also received funding. Seems like someone sent the investors a coupon themselves! Catch of the Day sounds kind of fishy to me, and I wonder if former VP Al Gore knows what his wife Tipper is up to? Maybe he should Lashou her!