October 17, 2017
Fashion powerhouse Coach surprised the world by announcing that its parent company — which recently acquired Kate Spade and Stuart Weitzman — will be changing its name to Tapestry. Nary a name change escapes lampooning on Twitter, and after the requisite ridicule, Chief Executive Victor Luis quickly clarified that the Coach brand will not be […]
September 13, 2017
The wheels of time turn and turn. We grow older. Our phones keep telling us we need to upgrade or update our operating systems. Such is the way of life. For those who have neither a sweet tooth nor bluetooth, let me catch you up: Android uses alphabetically sequenced candy names for their major operating […]
December 3, 2015
Many companies offer tiers of products for the customers, but creating a coherent product naming scheme for the various tiers is difficult. The names of a hierarchical product line have to be distinct so as not to be confused, and yet part of an intuitive family so they appear obviously linked to the same product […]
September 24, 2014
“The day the radio’s in trouble is the day you don’t want a friend. As long as you want a friend, you’re gonna love it.” This was Bob Pittman, CEO of iHeartMedia and former CEO of MTV Networks, AOL, and Six Flags Theme Parks. You may know iHeartMedia better by its recently defunct name, Clear […]
September 17, 2014
You may have noticed that breakfast has become the primary battlefield for the fast food heavyweights. Burger King has the Croissan’wich, Taco Bell has been making inroads with the breakfast burritos and waffle tacos they introduced last March, and McDonald’s has been offering the Egg McMuffin for decades. And most recently, along with bolstering their […]
October 30, 2013
The latest airline to offer extreme luxury seating is JetBlue, and they have christened their new sub-brand “Mint.” You know, mint as in pristine, mint as in the sharp, crisp flavor of toothpaste, mint as in what the housekeepers leave on your hotel pillow, mint as in what you need to own to afford the […]
October 22, 2013
Apple surprised the tech world today by naming its new tablet the iPad Air. This gutsy naming choice pulls from the company’s established naming lexicon while emphasizing the product’s main selling point: its thin and light design. However, there are some risks to this naming strategy. It’s a great short-term solution that will work long-term only as part of […]
February 23, 2012
When I first saw the article, Malt-O-Meal Changes Name to MOM Brands to Reflect Growth, my first impression was of the familiar, comforting Malt-O-Meal box now saying something like MOM Cereal instead. Would the imagery change as well? Would packages feature a generic representation of a mom – like the stereotypical characters, Aunt Jemima, Colonel Sanders, […]
January 12, 2012
Following the November sale of its namesake brand, Liz Claiborne has announced it will change its name to Fifth & Pacific, effective May 2012. The company—which retains the brands Kate Spade, Jack Spade, Lucky Brand, and Juicy Couture—proclaims on its new website: Fifth & Pacific is the intersection of our intrinsically American brands. It is […]
December 8, 2011
When it comes to wordplay, I’m as big a fan of the portmanteau as the next person. (For those of you who don’t know, a portmanteau is a word formed by squishing parts of two other words together.) Snapple (snap + apple), smog (smoke + fog), jeggings (jeans + leggings): I love how elegantly these […]