Brand Name Poetry

In 1955, a consultant to Ford Motor Company asked poet Marianne Moore to come up with a name for the company's new car.

He told the poet his list of 300 names was an "embarrassing pedestrianism," and that Ford needed a name to convey "some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design."

Moore supplied these names:

Accipiter, Aero Faire, Aerofee, Aeroterre, Andante con Moto, Anticipator, Arcenciel, Bullet Cloisoné, Bullet Lavolta, Comme Il Faire, Fée Aiglette, Fée Rapide, Ford Faberge, Hurricane, Impeccable, Intelligent Bullet, Intelligent Whale, Mongoose Civique, Pastelogram, Regna Racer, Resilient Bullet, Symmechromatic, Thunderblender, Thunder Crester, Utopian Turtletop, and Varsity Stroke.

In the end, Ford didn't choose any of Moore's names; nor any of the 18,000 supplied by its ad agency. The company launched instead with its original in-house name: Edsel.

With my partner David James, I recently went through a similar exercise to name our new agency. 

With help from a third writer, our list of names included:

Benchmark Marketing, Cranium Marketing, Criteria Marketing, Dive Team Marketing, Fearless Marketing, Fresh Face Marketing, Gutsy Marketing, Jungle Cat Marketing, Lean Mean Marketing, Lucky Dog Marketing, Marketing Engine, Marketing Maniacs, Noir Marketing, Outcome Marketing, Playbook Marketing, Rampant Marketing, Road Runner Marketing, Rugged Marketing, Runaway Marketing, Solutions Marketing, Stalwart Marketing, Touchstone Marketing, Trained Minds Marketing, Untamed Marketing, Venturesome Marketing, and Wildcat Marketing.

Like Ford, in the end we launched with the a "pedestrianism," Bob & David James.

Let's hope we have better success than Ford did with Edsel.

Idiocy is Baked In

The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses
for execution by idiots.

― Herman Wouk

In a thematic scene in The Caine Mutiny, the worldly Lieutenant Keefer explains how the Navy works to a fresh-faced ensign:

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them."

Most 21st century businesses are, of course, designed in the same fashion.

"After nearly a century of effort, the industrial system has created the worker-proof factory," Seth Godin says in The Icarus Deception.

"It’s okay if the person assembling your Domino’s pizza or Apple iPhone doesn’t care. The system cares. The system measures every movement, every bit of output, so all the tolerances are in order.

"It’s okay if the person at the bank doesn’t care—the real work is done by an ATM or a spreadsheet.

"We’ve systematized and mechanized every step of every process.

"By eliminating 'personal' from frontline labor, the industrial system ensures that it can both maintain quality and use ever-cheaper (and ever-fewer) workers."

At this moment, while "surprise and delight" are on every executive's tongue at large businesses, truth be told, the system can't tolerate them.

They cut down too much on productivity.

That threatens shareholder value.

Those master plans "designed by geniuses for execution by idiots" that we call corporations spell opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Because if today's customers really crave "surprise and delight," they'll never find them when they do business with large businesses.

Idiocy is baked in.

La La Land

PricewaterhouseCoopers has owned up to this week's flub at the Oscars, "one of the most infamous gaffes in the show's history."

Call it my confirmation bias, but I take it as proof we live in the post-competence era.

Americans are living in the disengaged state of La La Land.

That low-low bar spells opportunity for entrepreneurs.

In the post-competence era, customers can buy services with impunity from overseas providers. From graphic designers in Poland, copywriters in Thailand, telemarketers in Ireland, web developers in Swaziland.

Their work isn't great, but it works: more than you can say about the work of providers in La La Land.

"There’s an abundance of things to buy and people to hire," says Seth Godin in The Icarus Deception. "What’s scarce is trust, connection, and surprise."

If you deliver those three things—trust, connection, and surprise—customers will flock to you, stick with you, and pay a premium.

Because they're underwhelmed by providers in faraway lands, and sick of the ones in La La Land.

Check Your Sources

Bubbie: The National Institutes of Health has never studied the attention spans of goldfish.

This is one of those "alternative facts" cited almost hourly by lazy writers.

Take your pick: You can blame perpetuation of the factoid on the marketer who fabricated the statement; or on Microsoft, which once cited it in an e-book; or on all the thousands of writers who have since recirculated it.

Enough with the attention-starved goldfish, already.

"Strong research is the backbone of strong copy," says copywriter Tom Wall. Strong copy requires writers to stop sourcing:

• Personal blogs and Tweets (particularly the president's)
• Unregulated contributor websites
• Wikipedia
• Unauthorized biographies

Without strong research, Wall says, "there is nothing anchoring your words to the truth."



NOTE: While truth isn't, opinions are my own.

Young at Art

This world is a dream within a dream; and as we grow older, each step is an awakening.

— Sir Walter Scott

We don't appreciate how formative youthful pursuits can be. They can shape not only the adult, but whole industries—even the whole world.

William Hogarth at 16 apprenticed to a London engraver, who taught him to design business cards and invitations. Whenever he had time off, Hogarth would amuse himself by wandering the nearby streets and sketching the odd characters he saw there. Within seven years, he was able to open his own business, engraving coats of arms, advertising handbills, and plates for booksellers.

Beatrix Potter at 14 began to keep a diary in which she wrote short stories, recorded impressions, and sketched pictures of her favorite pets, including rabbits, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes and bats. Although she never attended school, she learned to develop her skills in observation and draftsmanship from a private art teacher, Miss Cameron. 

Alfred Hitchcock at 15 enrolled in engineering school, but quit when his father suddenly died to take a job at a company that manufactured electric cables. Hitchcock worked in the advertising department there, writing copy and designing ads, all the while moonlighting as a title-card designer for the local silent-film studios. Within six years, he landed a full-time job with one of them.

Woody Allen at 16 held an after-school job with a New York ad agency. Every weekday, he would ride the subway into Manhattan from his high school in Brooklyn, all the while scribbling jokes onto pieces of paper. The agency's executives would place the jokes in the newspapers, attributing them to their clients. Woody's daily output of 50 jokes quickly landed him his first job as a comedy writer, for the TV personality Herb Shriner.

Bob Dylan at 12 would stay up every night until 3 am listening to Southern radio stations that played Muddy Waters, Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed and fingering their tunes on his guitar. While at summer camp in 1954, Dylan met a kid with his own high school doo-wop group. He formed a double act with the kid and, not long after, Dylan wrote his first song, a homage to Brigitte Bardot.

Roger Deakins at 18 enrolled in art school to study graphic design, but quickly discovered he preferred photography, and transferred to film and television school. After graduation, he found work as a cameraman, landing within seven years in the hot, new field of music videos. His music videos eventually earned the attention of the Coen Brothers, who asked him to shoot Barton Fink.

Steve Jobs at 18 audited a college course on calligraphy in which he learned about type design. He became so obsessed with typography, he began to look for a way to build a computer capable of printing multiple, variable fonts. He said of the course 22 years later, “It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. Ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me."

HAT TIP to Ann Ramsey and Lucy Smith for inspiring today's post.