Posts tagged “naming”

Campbell’s Gardennay


I realize I’d been away from Canada quite a while when I saw Campbell’s Gardennay on the grocery store shelves (of course, you know I’m into that stuff). It just seemed like the worst, most awkward faux-Euro brand name. I’m amused to see American DiGiorno appear in Canada as Delicio, but mostly, this Campbell’s soup name just seems weird and strange. But then, I don’t live in the target region. Anymore.

A brand journey at the 5hotel in Calgary

Last month we stayed in Calgary for a few days to attend the Calgary International Film Festival. We stayed at the 5, a newly remodeled hotel that used to be the Hawthorn. Most info about hotels in downtown Calgary referenced the Hawthorn, and we found the website through a redirect. The website seemed pretty nice.
5 Five Calgary Downtown Suites Hotel, Alberta, Canada - Inside 5 10 21 2005 12 52 30 PM1.jpg
Kinda cool design, palette, nifty logo. Seemed like they were doing the JetBlue/IKEA thing of taking a commodity and adding design and more thoughtfulness to the overall experience, and finding a way to charge less for it. There were photos of the rooms (not currently available on the updated website), descriptions of all the amenities (free WiFi, breakfast), and the price was good. We decided to stay there.

When we booked our shuttle from the Calgary airport, the woman behind the counter growled in an intense Scottish brogue “Yeah, that used to the Hawthorn, and before that the Prince Rupert. I was finally getting used to calling it the Hawthorn and they changed the name. What a stupid name!”

The shuttle drops us off around the corner from the front door (which is not exactly door-to-door service that we paid for, but that’s a complaint for elsewhere). It doesn’t look like it’s the Five.
what1.jpg
It looks like the Hawthorn.

handles.jpg
The front door, at least, is a little more clear what hotel we’re at.

what.jpg
Unless you happen to look up. Serious naming/branding confusion!

A few days later I find a card in the lobby. The card has the new brand scheme and reads, in part “Over the coming months, Hawthorn Hotel & Suites will transform into 5 Calgary Downtown Suites.” Okay, so this is an ongoing project. But the entire experience is confusing; it doesn’t suggest transition, it is just a mishmash of radically different brands. This card was sorta hidden; one had to be poking around to stumble across it. It’s the only place they acknowledge the transition; the rest of the time the hotel presents all this as if it’s normal. But really, it was just odd.

num.jpg
The room number says we’re at the Hawthorn.

apple.jpg
But the apples say we’re at the five. Apples? They took the trouble to order brand stickers for apples, but they couldn’t change the door numbers? I was really surprised.

Finally, I was a total sucker for the website branding, like I said, expecting JetBlue. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was like when we’d visit a distant great aunt in an apartment building in Winnipeg in the 70s. It was seriously dated, and not well-kept.

stove.jpg
The kitchen featured a stove from the Mesozoic era.

cupboards.jpg
And really cheesy cupboards.

panel.jpg
An access panel in the bathroom was old, dirty, and loose.

vent.jpg
Not to mention this disgusting vent in the bathroom.

living.jpg
The living room was typical of the “suite” – outdated, poorly maintained. I think we found some remnants of painter’s tape from whatever remodeling they had done. Who knows how long it had been there.

Anyway, it worked out fine (although their free breakfast was disgusting and they never had enough staff or food to handle the traffic flow even on a weekday), but I was struck by how different the hotel experience was from what the branding had led me to believe – or what I had let myself believe based on that.

palmOne to change name to Palm Inc.

You can read all details in this story but basically

palmOne, Inc. has announced an agreement with PalmSource, Inc. for palmOne to acquire full rights to the brand name Palm. The brand had been co-owned by the two companies since the October 2003 spin-off of PalmSource from Palm, Inc. palmOne will pay PalmSource US$30 million for PalmSource’s 55 percent share of the Palm Trademark Holding Company. Payment will be made in installments over 3.5 years. palmOne will change its company name to Palm, Inc. later this year.

Yeah, that’s clear. Because they’ve had such great success in the past with their names. I think people still refer to the entire category as the Palm Pilot (which could be a success, except that they dropped the Pilot name about 6 years ago), but then it became Palm, but then the company split into PalmOne and PalmSource (although I guess Palm was still an umbrella organization) – but really I was never able to tell which one was which, and mostly that just meant that the email addresses of contacts who were employees of Palm were suddenly no longer usable. Now, they are switching again.

And me, I’ve still got my Handspring Visor Edge, a spin-off from the Palm empire that they got brought back in and then dropped. I don’t think they make any Handspring products any more, let alone a Visor model, let alone the rare Edge sub-model category.

One would need a PDA to organize all of this information!
photo_gallery_edge_01_lrg.jpg

The Name Game

Here’s a story from the SF Chronicle about a naming consultant.

In working with his clients, Cecil adopts the persona of ‘Ranger Steve’ and takes turns with various hats while giving his in-person presentations. The 6-foot-4, 270-pound master of neology (a newly invented word or phrase) said that his work is akin to being a docent in leading corporate clients to a better understanding of words and meaning.

‘I wear different hats, like the Nike hat, and tell great fable-like stories,’ Cecil said. ‘We explore where good names come from. There are one, or two, of 40 different ways to name things. There are alphanumeric names and products that are named after people. Starbucks came from the book ‘Moby Dick. ‘ Listerine was named after (founder) Joseph Lister. You couldn’t name a product with your own names these days.’

Cecil said that companies often come to him with a narrow idea, and they want him to be more descriptive.

‘The namer is a verbal chemist,’ Cecil said. ‘We combine and recombine words — looking for just the right nuance, or glancing blow. I do this in real time — and sometimes I talk the group into a cul-de-sac.’

I find the idea of a goofy-ass guy as namer to stand in marked contrast to the larger naming firms who are often positioned on language-as-science (a la the “chemist” spin here) but with more rigor than creativity. This entry on a Snark Hunting, a naming blog illustrates some of the other companies (we all know Landor, right?) and what they’ve done.
(See all naming process posts on Snark Hunting here including a NYT article about big clients and boutique (naming) agencies

So here’s a category of service that is not design or innovation but is right next door in the branding and marketing world, and here’s at least one example where making the choice between a small provider and a larger provider is presumably going to offer a very different type of relationship, service, and presumably result. Maybe that’s not true and maybe I’m just recycling the biases against small businesses that don’t seem “professional” along more traditional terms.

What do you think? Is this a goofy, cheaper alternative, or am I biased based on some semiotics of competency that I haven’t articulated yet?

Series

About Steve