'What's the game of the name?' How some brands got their names...

By Michael.

I don’t know about you but I find some of the stories of how companies or brands got their names ever so interesting.

Not so much the obvious tales behind eponymous businesses like Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury or er… Freeman, Hardy and Willis, but others that might have more of a ‘did you know’ factor.

Let me give a couple of examples. Everyone knows Persil. But did you know the name comes from a fusion of two of the washing powder’s original ingredients ‘perbate’ and ‘silicate’?

Or that Smart, as in the stumpy little cars, comes from a blend of Swatch + Mercedes (the two companies behind the project), mixed together with ‘Art’?

Now something you might not know is that leading mobile phone network O₂ was nearly called ‘Bob’.

I know this because the naming and branding came from BT’s brand team who I happened to work with and know quite well in the early 2000s, the same time as when O₂ (then a division called BT Wireless) demerged from BT.

I can’t recall exactly why ‘Bob’ was given the old heave-ho, but I was told that the name O₂ derives from the idea that oxygen is an entity that individuals always need around them. It’s something they’d never leave home without – like their purse/wallet or their keys.



The thinking was that a mobile phone should always be with you just like oxygen. Which subsequently became ‘O₂’.

Keep the faith

Our company’s name, Fides (pronounced Fie-deez) Media comes from the Latin word for ‘faith’. It was the brainchild of our associate and friend Jonathan Lambeth. I say brainchild, but it wasn’t really that considered.

Three of us spent ages trying to think of a name. In the end we had a conference call with each of us suggesting a trio of potential candidates. On the call we opted for a Eurovision Song Contest voting system to pick the best of the nine put forward – and no quibbling. My strongest suggestion was ‘Flourish’. That, disappointingly at the time, received nil points.

The name ‘Ellipses’ – which is the term used to describe those three dots that sometimes follow a word (see paragraph number two above), was well in the running. But it turned out to be the ‘Cliff Richard’ – i.e. it came second – and we were left with the jury’s favourite, ‘Fides’.

And I for one am glad because in my experience, it’s an incredibly tricky job choosing a name, especially one that does the job, and somehow ours seems to work. Mind you, I still like ‘flourish’…

'A first class gaffe.' The need for media awareness...

By Tim. 

Media training is in high demand because dealing with the media can be a risky business. And quite right. If you’re going to speak to the press, you need to be trained. But for the majority of people, it’s far more important to be media aware.

This conversation was overheard on a train and published in the Evening Standard’s City Spy.

"We can charge them £500 a day, or we could pitch in at £750 and see if we can get a bit extra on top. Let's face it, we're only going to spend between £30 and £60 on coffee...”

The potential customer, in this case, was banking giant RBS.

Oh dear, what an embarrassing blunder. Thing is, we’re all guilty of doing it. Most of the time, though, it doesn’t end up in print. But I’m not so sure. With Facebook, Twitter and all the other social media outlets, we’re all journalists now. Something said on 5.32pm from Waterloo could be making the digital headlines by the time you alight at 6.17pm.

'Corporate reputations on the rope' by Tim Richardson

If you’ve ever wondered about the power of social media, then just ask Tesco what it feels like to be collared by Nancy Atkinson Turner. This mum of two was doing here weekly shop in Tesco in Havant, Hampshire, when she was wrongly accused of shoplifting.

She wrote on her blog Not Now Nancy: “Accused of shop lifting. Kids upset. No apology. I was humiliated by a company I had been loyal to for three years. I left the store feeling angry, belittled, confused and with two children in floods of tears, visibly shaken by the whole ordeal.”

Her response was to pen such a powerful polemic that she became an overnight hit in the blogosphere.

“It took my blog post, and 60,000 people reading it in 24 hours, to extract an apology from Tesco,” she wrote.  “It has left a bitter taste in my mouth that as 1 voice I was ignored but as 60,000 voices I became important. My children no longer want to shop with me. They no longer feel comfortable in super markets.”


  Her story hit a chord with so many people that it was picked up by traditional media – the Telegraph, Mail, the BBC and a string of local papers all covered the story.

As Nancy’s stock rose, Tesco’s reputation was taking a hammering.

At this point, perhaps I should state that I know Nancy – have done for years. Heck, we even sang in the same band many years ago. While I’m interested in her tale, I’m also fascinated by Tesco’s plight. With the explosion in social media, everyone has a voice. The task of protecting reputations is getting harder. The ‘little guy’ can take on the ‘big boys’. Nancy is proof of that.

'Meetings dumped = productivity pumped' by Michael.

There was a really terrific article in the Sunday Telegraph business section a while back which argued that by eliminating meetings, workers like you or I, could boost our productivity.

The author, business management thinker Josh Kaufmann, laid out his argument citing the contents of a provocative book entitled Read this before our next meeting by Al Pittampalli.

The book says that meetings, “Kill our productivity, jeopardise our results and drain our souls.”

Meanwhile Kaufmann’s article says that a day packed with meetings is a day where there’s, “not enough time to create anything that requires any sort of sustained concentration.”

He then goes on to suggest ways to help businesses and employees to keep meetings sane and productive such as keeping project teams small and autonomous, scheduling critical work first and meetings last, and implementing what he calls ‘zero meeting mornings’.

All of these ideas are well thought out and crisply articulated plus they seem entirely sensible to me.

Except.

Except I’d go that little bit further than guru Josh or expert Al.

 

 

You see I think meetings are mostly time-wasting sessions where too many people gather (for whatever reason) to tell each other things they already know. Meetings create very little of value. In fact they provide a hindrance service that could be easily costed up and invoiced to UK plc, no danger. And for that reason, they should be banned like fox-hunting or Bombay duck.

No, that’s going too far obviously.  But how about adhering to the following golden rules?

• ·       No meetings to last more than 30 minutes
• ·       No more than four people in a meeting
• ·       Meetings can take place only on a day that’s got an ‘r’ in it. As per Oysters.

In truth, we don’t do many meetings at Fides because we kind of already get the ‘meetings are not so cool’ message. Still, maybe these guidelines would have a positive effect if they became ‘official’.

Think I’ll propose them at the next management meeting.....