Brand Death It’s been a long, dismal downhill for tobacco branding. First came the ban on TV and radio ads in 1970. Since then, tobacco companies have been banned from sponsoring sports and cultural events, advertising on billboards in 46 states, and printing their logos on tshirts. Over time, regulatory incursions have made their way
Introducing Deconstruct, a new propaganda venture from A Hundred Monkeys in which we perform close readings of names belonging to companies with large legal teams. With Edge, Microsoft rolled out a browser that boasts newer, leaner software, replacing the dated Internet Explorer. That’s a good thing, cause the IE name needed to go. Like fellow
To name is to swim through the deep order of words. It’s our business, and we keep sharp tools at hand to help us get the job done. Part of making sense of language is in classification. Take a form and examine it, then find all its recorded examples. We might take inspiration from a
Earlier this year, H&M quietly launched a metal-styled clothing line. The collection, featuring band shirts as well as a diligently patched bomber jacket and jeans combo, would be unremarkable save one thing–none of the bands on the patches are real. Perhaps Corporate didn’t want to pay to license real bands, or maybe designers just needed
Have you heard of Spoonrocket? It’s like Uber but for food. Have you heard of YPlan? It’s like Uber but for events. Have you heard of Wolfpack? It’s like Tinder but for friendless straight dudes. Have you heard of Coffee? It’s like Tinder but for job networking and self-loathing. Yes, these are all real things….
Doubters beware: emoji are here to stay. Their Western invasion (or welcomed arrival, depending on your point of view) began in earnest in 2010, when Unicode, the computer industry text standard, released Unicode Standard 6.0. At Google and Apple’s behest, that character set included 722 new symbols that would come to redefine the way we
Let’s start with something really obvious: football (“soccer” for the Americans and Australians) is the most popular sport in the world. Unlike the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB, most professional football leagues allow for sponsorship on their uniforms. Considering all the interest, these sponsorships go for big bucks. Manchester United’s current deal with Chevy is
A name shouldn’t tell people what a business or product does. These names—descriptive names—are everywhere: Microsoft, General Electric, Carfax, Jacksonville Sports Store. The business version of occupational names like Smith, Carpenter, and Miller, they’re united by their flare for generic description. They do little to help the businesses and products they describe. “But that’s counterintuitive!”
Before you start that naming contest, take a deep breath. Choosing a name is a bit like choosing a spouse: you aren’t locked in forever, but it’s better for all concerned if you are. It’s a hell of a lot better to get it right the first time than it is to change midway. That’s
First impressions are pivotal. In one-tenth of a second, we decide how we feel about a person—we form a mental image to build on in the future. That image is unusually tough to change. It takes some doing to override millions of years of biological circuitry. We use that same circuitry when we think about
