We tried to be sexy...

We always get asked if we only create playful names. While those certainly are our favorite kind of names and the ones we feature in the Eat My Words portfolio, we occassionaly do more straight-forward corporate names. For instance, Landor refered Marcus Associates to us to help them rename Areva, a West Coast transformer company. In 3 days. While our recommended name was Tesla, after Nikola Tesla, the wildly popular (and hot!) Serbian inventor (who incidentally was born during an electrical storm), the client chose a more conservative name, Pacific Crest, to reflect their Southern Oregon roots. Sorry, Nikola. Oh well, at least you have a hair band named after you.

New name for Safeway brand

If you shop at Safeway or any of their sister stores, you may have noticed their sexy new house brand, Eating Right, created by the package design geniuses at Anthem. They hired Eat My Words to come up with a phrase for the system of color-coded spots on each package that feature the dietary benefits and nutrition facts. We coined it "Spot Your Needs." We also wrote packaging copy for 150+ SKUs from frozen entrees to cereal. (Don't you ever wonder who writes all the copy on the cereal boxes you read?)

EMW office featured in HOW's Creativity Issue

HOW magazine is a bible of the design industry. Every issue includes a feature on a swanky design studio in their "Workspace" spread. They have never featured a naming firm, but when they saw photos of the wildly colorful Eat My Words office, the editor decided to bend the rules. Look for the spread and gushing article in the June issue pictured here or download it from our Press page. BTW, a key piece of the Eat My Words art collection, Our Lady of the Eternal Double Latte, by Seattle artist Michael Jacobson, was the subject of a full page feature in HOW nearly 15 years ago.

Spotted Dick!

What lucky naming firm got paid $100K to come up with this one? (Yes, it's real. I spotted it at my local Safeway last week.) From Wikipedia: Spotted Dick is a steamed pudding, containing dried fruits, usually currants. The dessert is especially popular in the United Kingdom, usually served either with custard or with butter and brown sugar. Spotted refers to the currants (which resemble spots) and dick may be a corruption of the word dough. It is also known as Spotted Dog, Plum Duff, Figgy Dowdy, as well as Plum Bolster, and Spotted Richard.

The Joy of Lex - more juicy details

As some of you know, our snarky friends at Igor invited me to join them to be filmed for a new documentary for the Discovery Channel, The Joy of Lex. The Hollywood film crew, who camped out for a few days at the Eat My Words client crash pad, told us to watch for it this Fall. In the meantime, I found a description of it online:

The Joy of Lex
A show about words and the people who use them.
Billions of people use words, and so do some apes. (Alexandra's note - huh?) Each and every word has its own story, about how it was created, shaped and changed by the generations who've used it. Every word has a secret life of its own; words are constantly in flux, being lost, found, picked apart, abused, overused, relished and relinquished. The Joy of Lex will explore the surprising stories, passions, obsessions, misunderstandings, humor and sometimes shocking characters associated with words. This two-hour special will focus on the two greatest movements in the world of word "ebb" and "flow." (Why doesn't it focus on the two greatest naming firms, Eat My Words and Igor?) As with all of our TV appearances, I'll let you know when the show airs.