Alexandra is off to Ghana to adopt a baby monkey, bang some tribal drums, and eat every meal with her hands. The whole Eat My Words crew is taking off to recharge our batteries so we can start 2008 with a bang. We'll be back the week of January 5th, 2008. Thanks to all of you who have made this such a fantastic year for Eat My Words. We couldn't do it without loyal clients and cheerleaders like you.
Warm regards and happy holidays,
Alexandra and The Team
San Francisco's newest 4-letter word is SPQR, a trendy restaurant, which gets gushing reviews for food, but like TCHO (see below), falls dreadfully short in the vowel department. SPQR is a little too much like SPOR. Eat My Words wouldn't go near the word "spor" for one of our clients. It's not something we want to taste. Plus, we're not sure how to pronounce it. The dyslexic version, "SPRQ," might sound little bit like "Spork." According to sources, SPQR is actually an acronym for "Senatus Populusque Romanus," which means "the senate and the Roman people." Okay, is it just us, or wouldn't the acroynm for Senatus Populusque Romanus simply be SPR? (Still sounds like SPOR.) We're not crazy about the names "Senatus," "Populusque," or "Romanus" on their own as a name of the restaurant either, but at least they have vowels.
I don't know about you, but I like to be able to pronounce the things I put in my mouth. (You know, that whole "eat my words" thing.) And if two consumer product namers can't pronounce a $4 chocolate bar named T-C-H-O, that spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Designer chocolate begs for a hip name. The product is in "Beta" right now, so maybe it's just a code name during testing. Here are some other theories about the origin of the name...
Talk about a name that makes people smile.... even the $69 price fits the brand.
TIP: Even though the "i" in Mi is cute and a wink at iPod, Eat My Words would have spelled "OhMi Bod with a "y" instead because any time you spell a name differently than it sounds, it's a huge strike against you, especially when people "hear" your name then type it into their web browser. OhMyBod.com is a clothing store. Oops. (At least it's not porn.) We would have suggested that the client call the company OhMyBod (spelled correctly) and simply used a domain like OhMyBodOnline or OhMyBodGirl, which is perfectly acceptable in this case.
Names should make people smile instead of scratch their head. Especially invented names, which are often mangled gobbldygook. Start-ups and old-school naming firms fall in love with invented names for three reasons: 1) They sail through trademarking; 2) the domain names are always available; 3) they want the ego boost of coining a word. It's the easy way out. But the results are usually disastrous. Most invented names are forced and unnatural sounding. Some of our favorite offenders: Doostang, Motiva, Ziizoo, Fragranza, Advogato, Mathnasium, and our #1 head-scratcher, Xobni. Eat My Words first heard about Xobni when one of their investors wisely suggested we rename them. This internet start-up fails on so many levels: It's difficult to spell, impossible to pronounce, and evocative of absolutely nothing. What is Xobni? It's inbox spelled backwards. Cute to the founders. Dumbfounding to customers. If you have to explain a name to someone, it's a bad name. And if there is a hidden meaning in your name, make it a bonus instead of a brain grinder. For instance, our friends created a cool do-it-yourself ringtone software named DJ Nitrogen. Great name. What's even better is that NITROGEN is an anagram for RINGTONE. Super cool and fun to know. But the name doesn't depend on people "getting" the hidden meaning. For more on the subject of invented website names (and a few more jabs at Xobni), read "How Do You Tell a Web Name From a Typo?" in the Washington Post and David Pouge's "The Dr. Seuss Jumble: Naming Web Sites" from The New York Times.
You may have met the our new office manager Heidi Paul at the blowout Fallapalooza party or had the pleasure of talking to her when you called the Eat My Words idea kitchen. From fielding phone calls, to planning our parties, to chasing down checks, to cataloging the extensive Eat My Words art collection, Heidi is our Super Girl Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and of course, Friday. As a multi-talented textile artist, graphic designer, and gallery manager, Heidi has mastered the art of right brain/left brain thinking. And her boundless curiosity, upbeat attitude, and cool-as-a-cucumber demeanor makes her a welcome addition to the Eat My Words clan. You can learn more about Heidi in her Boastful Bio.
For months we've been waiting to officially let this name out of the vacuum cleaner bag... Eat My Words is pleased to announce, Neato - a sexy little home cleaning robot from Neato Robotics, formerly known as Home Robots. The word "Neato" is fun and playful. The word "Robotics" is serious and sci-fi. They balance each other beautifully. And you thought Roomba was a good name. Ha! We'll let you know when it rolls into a store near you.
Five celebrity chefs armed with kitchen knives and the miracle product we named Glad Simply Cooking Microwave Steaming Bags, are battling for the title of "Steamiest Chef. " Just roll over your favorite bobble-headed chef to "learn their steamy secrets, get their steamy recipe, and then vote for your favorite." Right now, Sam Talbot from Top Chef, is leading the pack but someone else could smoke him out. If only all the things that we named were this interactive. What's next, a Spoon Me spooning contest? Actually, it's already in the works!
We have a lot of food on our plates right now including naming healthy snacks for kids and two new Star-kist products which we have to keep under wraps for now. Sorry, Charlie. About 60% of our current naming gigs are for products that don't make you fat or drunk - like software, schools, and sportswear. We're doing name explorations for sound pioneer THX, Knowledge Learning Corporation, a luxury goods retailer, and lots of Web 2.0 start-ups. We'll let you know when we can let the monkey out of the bag.
Our Spoon Me frozen yogurt client, has opened its doors in Salt Lake City, replacing the cheeky "Spooning Soon" sign out front with hysterical signs on the front door declaring "No Shirt. No Shoes. No Spoon" and "No Spooning on Sundays." The Spoon Me t-shirts are flying off the shelves and owner Ryan Combe is mobbed by teenage girls whenever he wears one in public. (He says he'll retire in 2 years from the merchandise profits alone.) As the first "green store" in Utah (!!!!), they are ultra eco-friendly. Other smart ideas: replacing the tip jar in favor of a donation jar for local charities, discounts to customers who ride public transportation to the store, and a 20-dollar bonus each month to any employee who reads a book. (But not The Book of Mormon.) Spoon Me is already a media darling - here's a video clip from ABC news:
While we are usually annoyed by the obnoxious product placement on our favorite TV show, Top Chef, we freaked out (in a good way) when our new Glad Simply Cooking Microwave Steaming Bags took center stage. These super space age bags are perfect for steaming veggies -- just fill, zap and serve. No waiting for water to boil, no messy pots and pans to clean. And according to the Man from Glad in this painfully cheesy video demo, you can even use them make "tasty omelets and fluffy desserts."
We're continually amazed that people trademark names that are spelled differently than they sound. In today's word-of-mouth world, what you hear is what you type in your browser, so it's imperative that your name is easy and intuitive to spell. Case in point: Takkle.com, a high school sports website. When Jeff says, "Yo Steve, check out Takkle.com," Steve hears "tackle" and when he types it in his browser, he lands at Bass Pro, a fishing tackle website. So Takkle loses a customer and Steve thinks Jeff is a dork. During a panel discussion at the recent MashUp teen marketing conference, Alexandra asked Takkle CEO David Birnbaum if, in hindsight, he would have chosen a name that was easier to spell. He said he would stick with Takkle. Proving Alexandra's point, RockYou.com founder Lance Tokuda jumped in and said that RockYou loses thousands of customers a day who type in "rocku." We wonder how often the Takkle guy has to say "that's Takkle with two K's," when he isn't sporting a Takkle baseball cap that he can point to.
We were asked to create a tagline for a new investing service called Portfolia, which doesn't exactly stand out in a sea of Wall Street websites. So we convinced them to let us rename the company. This easy-to-use site lets you check out the actual portfolios, watchlists and real-time trades of top investors and your family and friends. Plus you can see how you stack up against others, which is fun unless you suck in the market. And you can do it all safely, securely and anonymously. For free. It's cake. And that's what we named it - Cake. If you're an investor, check out the alpha version of this "social investing revolution."
