Cigna, Avnet, and Alcoa are all Fortune 500 companies. Each has what we call an “empty vessel” name—a moniker with little meaning for a given audience. Empty vessels are extraordinarily popular with large companies in most industries. Names are an opportunity to tell the world who you are. Why, then, would anyone choose an empty
“No one inputs URLs directly anymore. A magic search bar takes care of that for you,” says Eli Altman, creative director of A Hundred Monkeys, a branding and naming firm. He suggests putting an industry phrase in your URL–recall that Elon Musk’s Tesla is still online at TeslaMotors.com. Or a customer prompt: Dropbox.com was originally
Let’s translate a few common phrases: “You can trust me” means “Don’t trust me.” “This is going to be fun” means “This will definitely suck.” “We care” means “You are a number to us.” Say these, and you’re sending a message that’s the opposite of your intent. Sometimes, saying it outright isn’t enough. You have
It goes like this: Have you ever named food? Yes. Have you ever named frozen food? Sure. Have you ever named frozen peas? No… We’re really looking for someone with specific expertise here. A fictional version of a conversation that’s happened countless times: cookie shops, new-age health products, luxury cruise lines, whatever—people are looking for
Even without Katrina and Audrey, hurricanes with female names are twice as deadly as their masculine counterparts, according to a recent study. The theory: potential victims aren’t as threatened by feminine-sounding storms, don’t prepare as diligently, and suffer the consequences. If a clearer case for the power of the name exists, we’ve yet to hear
So you found a name you love. Then you tried to find a URL. You wanted nameyoulove.com, but the person who parked it is MIA. Now you’re banging your head on the keyboard, digging for a random group of letters and numbers that’s also an available domain. Stop. Save yourself a headache—let us help you figure
On a bad day, the website Upworthy attracts some 1.5 million unique visitors. Good days see 5 million visits. That’s a hell of a lot of ad revenue without much overhead—the site just writes a bit of copy and hosts other people’s content. So, you know, good for them. They’re making money. Because Upworthy gets
How would your brand do on a first date? When we say that we build human brands, we aren’t spouting corporo-speak. We imagine brands as people. Even better, we imagine brands as people doing what people do: hanging out at the park, figuring out which trash bin to use, or—in this case—meeting someone on a
Airbnb’s new logo looks like a vagina. Or balls. Or just about any combination of sex organs. When the company announced an identity redesign, most people said, “Hey, genitalia!” A flurry of tweets, clickbait, and listicles ensued. In the first wave, pundits argued whether the logo did, in fact, resemble a vagina. Tweens squinted and
Technology is easy to recognize. One glance at a coffee shop laptop and you know it’s a Macbook Air – doesn’t matter if it has 12 stickers on it. This is generally applauded as good product design. If you can recognize a laptop in the wild with a sideways glance, the product can practically market
