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About Branding

More brand, less celebrity

Brands that could survive without big name backings There’s a special kind of paradox at the intersection of celebrity and branding. Fame, especially when wielded as an endorsement, is a shortcut: a fast-track to relevance, a built-in audience, a persistent spotlight that attracts attention before it might be justified. Brand building, on the other hand,…

Our brand could be your life: A look at why some brands dominate people’s lives

Credit to Michael Azerrad and Mike Watt of Minutemen for the title of this blog, a nod to Azzerad’s book “Our band could be your life” and the opening line of “History Lesson – Part II”, a song written by Mike Watt of Minutemen. What is it about some brands that seem to take over…

We play well with others

We’re lucky to have some talented friends and partners in the branding world—design studios, strategists, consultants, freelance designers—who think of us when their clients have naming needs. Typically, this means working together to figure out how to seamlessly incorporate naming into the rest of their branding work. This is our jam. Working with a longtime…

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Brand equity: a river in reverse

Understanding the flow of brand equity within an ecosystem We have a saying at A Hundred Monkeys that “brand equity flows upstream.” It’s something we remind ourselves whenever we work on naming ecosystem projects. Essentially it means that any sub-brand or branded element (feature, service, tool, etc.) that doesn’t get a name sends the brand…

Is “Lifestyle” A Four Letter Word?

As the saying goes, there are two types of people in the world: those who think lifestyle is a four-letter word and those who don’t. I find myself squarely in the second camp but have never really asked myself why? Perhaps it’s because when I first heard the term lifestyle in the early 2000s, brands…

E-volution: Vehicle naming in the all-electric age

As the hottest summer ever recorded comes to an end, it’s logical to focus our attention more intently on the climate crisis. For many people in wealthier nations that means redressing everything from recreational habits (air travel and gas consumption) to purchasing decisions on appliances, consumer goods, and vehicles. In response to the growing global…

Percentage-wise: Meditating on the 10% Happier Brand

Dan Harris would like a minute of your time. In fact, he would like any amount of time you would be willing to dedicate to the age-old contemplative practice of mindfulness meditation. If you’re using his 10% Happier app, even better. The ABC news anchor turned meditation evangelist has been on a crusade to convince…

Brand chameleons: how ever-changing brands might operate

Hear me out—I have an oddball question: why don’t some brands make a point to change their name, and their brand, regularly? As in, their name (and visual identity) change often to the point of transformation being core to who they are. Newness is the consistency.  I recognize this concept won’t work for most brands…

New word, who dis?

What happens when we see words that are unfamiliar to us — in naming and beyond Ingredients, technologies, viral strains, street names, animal breeds. We see new words constantly—so much so that we don’t always notice when it’s happening. Our brains become accustomed to new words quickly after a bit of language processing, which of…

Brand architecture is a delusional fantasy

As I, a branding professional, understand it, Brand Architecture is the relationship between all of the branded elements within an organization. This could be subsidiaries, sub-brands, products, features, services—really anything branded within an organization. So if we take Nike as an example, they have owned subsidiaries like Hurley and Converse. They have sub-brands like Nike…

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