In 1915, California farmers banded together to rename the ahuacate, a pear-shaped fruit with pebbly skin and an oversized pit inside. They knew this Aztec word was hard for Americans to pronounce, and the Spanish version of the name, aguacate, was just as difficult for them. The new made-up name they agreed upon, avocado, sounds [...]
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You’re starting a new company, launching a new product or trying to inject pizzazz into an existing company or product that seems way too boring and ordinary. Try these 7 techniques to shape the basic facts about your business into a name with energy and zing. The examples we’ll use to illustrate the techniques are [...]
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“Reach out and touch someone.” “The ultimate driving machine.” “Finger lickin’ good.” Chances are, you not only know immediately that those slogans come from AT&T, BMW and KFC, in that order. Those catchphrases may also very well have persuaded someone you know to place more long-distance calls, purchase a particular brand of car and decide [...]
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When I interviewed a gardening specialist years ago for a story unrelated to gardening, she used a phrase to illustrate one of her points that I just couldn’t understand. It sounded like “squash vine bores,” and I had to ask her to repeat it three times because I couldn’t settle the unfamiliar sounds in “vine [...]
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Increasingly popular, “crowdsourcing” involves inviting a large number of people to perform a task, with a prize promised to the person or team whose work is selected as the winner. Specialized web sites now exist where you can ask people to compete by creating designs for T-shirts, logos or ads. Not long ago, crowdsourcing was [...]
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Image via Wikipedia Business owners and corporate namers often get stuck naming a new product because they don’t use powerful brainstorming methods. Simply waiting for inspiration to strike doesn’t work as well as systematically generating dozens of words, syllables and ideas, then combining and tweaking them in all sorts of ways. Use the following nine [...]
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