Tuesday, 13 August, 2002, 12:26 GMT 13:26 UK

Hunt is on for world's worst rebranding

By Maggie Shiels

The fact that "D'oh!" is part of our everyday lexicon is proof of the constantly changing nature of language.

While this exclamation that Homer Simpson constantly utters is embraced with some affection, the same probably could not be said for a word like "droxies", which is not the name of some toxic substance but is, in fact, an American biscuit.

It's names like "droxies" that inspired, or perhaps incited, the setting up of the Shinola Awards.

They're the brainchild of Danny Altman, a man well qualified to comment on the monikers that assault us everyday.

Danny is the creative director of A Hundred Monkeys, a consultancy which is in the business of helping people name things from cars to magazines and from companies to cans of soup.

"It was an idea I was sitting on for a long time. Every industry has its own awards but there has never been any for naming."

One of Danny's cohorts in the Shinolas is his business partner Steve Manning who says part of what they are doing is a reaction to some of the names coming out over the last couple of years.

"We started the Shinolas to talk about the effect of all these names on the language because we're forced to use them.

"We wanted to address how these corporations were making these decisions and putting words in our mouths and how it was changing the language and the way we think about things.

"I mean suddenly you are forced to say things like 'Consignia', and they have taken away the Royal Mail and I think that is a very interesting point."

New upcoming categories will include water and mystery ingredients.

"So often what happens is that names that have no meaning get pushed through by large committees.

"That's why you end up with companies called Mirant and Agilent. The most recent example of that was Deloitte Touche Consulting changing to Braxton and putting out a 10-point list of justifications about the name.

"So basically we wanted to point that out and moreover try to get people to have a conversation within our culture rather than just sitting back and having to take it."

Steve has dubbed this bugbear "morpheme addiction" and the Shinolas include such names as "Achieva" (an Oldsmobile car) "Cruex" (a cream to soothe itching).

"The problem today is focus groups and the easiest way to get consensus is to take part of a word from Greek and part of a word from Latin and modify it and say to the boardroom oh this part represents power and the other part means cutting edge.

Are we gonna have conversations like: 'Honey? Did you order anything from a company called 6o#LRft?' 'That depends. Is the question mark at the end of your sentence or part of the name?'

Doug Byrnes, Shinolas

When it comes to the old Shakespearean question of "what's in a name", the title of these offbeat awards is also something that should be held up to scrutiny. It was chosen by Danny.

"There was a shoe polish called Shinola and during World War II there was an expression among American servicemen that 'you don't know s..t from shinola'. In other words, 'you don't know your ass from your elbow'.

"So basically it's being able to sort out what's good and what's not good and that's why we picked the name.

"It had a lot of colour, a story and it was spot on in terms of what we are trying to do to sort out names that have some sense, some intelligence from all of the other names which pretty much follow the herd."

While Danny, Steve and Jay may be seen to have something of a vested interest in commenting on the whole naming issue they have roped in a diverse panel of judges to ensure the award of a Shinola is fair and above board.

The judges include Ben Cohen, one half of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Jerry Harrison, co-founder of the Talking Heads, Bob Camp, co-creator of Ren & Stimpy, and Penny Arcade a performance artist.

Alas the efforts of this illustrious group is rarely welcomed by Shinola winners. Jay says while they don't actually have any statuettes to hand out, they do sometimes contact companies to let them know about their award.

"The reaction tends to be a letter months later saying something like 'Thank you for contacting Bloggs's foods. We have forwarded your interesting comments onto the appropriate people who will ignore it for perpetuity.'"