Igor says enough of the stupid Web 2.0 names

As I’ve commented before, you’re not a real Web 2.0 company if you haven’t invented a non-English word to describe your web application, service or product.

The Times has published an interesting article which documents the trend from Web 1.0 trends – where you took two words and put them together (ideally a colour and an animal, vegetable or fruit) – to Web 2.0 where you string together some vowels and consonants a la Countdown style – preferably unpronounceable and unmemorable, particularly if you’re over the age of 21 – and voila!, you have your new brand.

According to Steve Manning of San Francisco branding agency Igor (huh? a branding agency with an association with a hunchbacked assistant?) this is all a bad idea as the names have no real value and there’s nothing to grab onto mentally. It’s the next wave of banality, apparently.

I agreed in part, until I visited Igor International and saw some of the names they’d ‘invented’ for people: Zeno, MOJO, URGE, Shinola, Tickle, Whisper…

OK some of those are real words, but c’mon: Whisper for a brand and business strategy company? Why would you whisper your brand? Some names require that you have a knowledge of ancient Greek philosophers (maybe you do, I don’t).

Maybe I’m being unnecessarily picky today but some of these names, whilst not being totally random, don’t speak much of the companies’ plan and purpose.

Well, anyway, the Times article leaves us with an amusing example of silly naming: “When Microsoft announced that it would be taking on the iPod with something called Zune, did its branding team realise that the word translated into French slang for genitalia and a Hebrew term meaning getting laid?”

(From The Times)