April 25, 2013
Quick: What do Gucci, Yves St. Laurent, Balenciaga, Puma and Bottega Venetta have in common? If you’ve been following the marketing news, you’ll know that they’re all subsidiaries of the French holding company formerly known as PPR (an initialism for Pinault-Printemps-Redoute), which was recently renamed Kering (pronounced “caring”). The rename was triggered when the company […]
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 […]
April 9, 2009
I’m sure by now most of you have seen the announcement of the new product from Segway and GM, the PUMA. The naming consultant in me is of two minds. On the one hand, I love the name. It’s short, punchy, and relatively easy on any non-native-English speakers they may want to sell to. Furthermore, […]