I love making up words. Most of the time it’s to annoy the crap out of people, especially my wife who is an editor. While I’m not sure how I got into this irraus* hobby, I suspect it has something to do with the Simpsons. Way back when The Simpsons were first aired on TV3, one of the promo snippets involved Bart playing Scrabble and declaring his winning word as “Gwigiborous”. I was completely knocked off the floor and making up words started to make sense!
Over time, I honed this hobby into a skill and manage to put it into some real use for the real world. I developed a knack for coming up with some good names for brands, shops, businesses, magazines, etc. An example is “markethink”, a magazine that reports and examines marketing news and issues in a more critical and intellectual kinda way - a Fast Company meets Wired-ish type magazine, if you like, for marketers. Another brand I created was meant for a new shoe retailer who brings in various branded shoes under one roof targeting the middle-upper income group of female consumers: “Feetish”. Anyway, a few nights back I finished the Alex Fankel book “Wordcraft”, which talks about brand names and their origins. Five brands were studied: BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra, Porche Cayenne, and IBM e-Business. It was a real eye opener. The business, culture and sophistication that goes into the process of creating brand-names was just awesome. I guess it has to be. After all, how else would a client justify paying six figure fees to someone to come up with a single noun?
Ultimately though, what makes a brand-name powerful will be its ability to transcend beyond its noun form into verb form and assimilate into our everyday lives, completely defined in its own purpose with the fullest conviction.
*Irraus = Irreverent and useless
*Irraus = Irreverent and useless
