I have written about inflationary job titles and inflationary language before but it just gets worse and worse. And perhaps I’m sitting in a glass house throwing stones because I call myself CEO and Writer-in-chief but now the BBC has given us a delightful list of ridiculous titles, including: Director of first impressions (= Receptionist) Environmental [...]
Archive | How to name things RSS feed for this section
What name should I use for my business?
Dear Uncle Matthew, I notice you trade under Articulate Marketing – and what a great name that is, by the way – rather than Matthew Stibbe. Just wondering what you think the pros and cons are. I imagine that the Stibbe brand was well known when you left journalism, so you must have been sacrificing [...]
Scientifically proven marketing
A well placed scientific fact or useful statistic can make a huge difference to the credibility of your marketing. My pet hate is bad science in writing – especially marketing that masquerades as science. One of the worst offenders are the moisturising creams that fall under the broad heading of ‘cosmeceuticals’. Cosmeceutical is a marketing [...]
The title for your next book
Naming things is hard so Russell Davies has come up with this helpful guide to picking a title for your next book. It’s bound to be a bestseller. (Hat tip: IO9 the site with the best tagline – ‘we come from the future’.)
What’s in a name? Is it whiskey or whisky?
My other blog, GolfHotelWhiskey.com, is a free online magazine and airport guide for pilots. I worked long and hard to come up with the name. It replaced earlier sites of mine, including HappyLandings.net (which sort of worked but I didn’t have the .com domain name) and ModernPilot.com (which was supposed to be a magazine but [...]
Monkey-picked iron goddess of mercy tea
I just got back from a wonderful week in San Francisco. I have a lot of new things to think about (which is why I love going there). But the first thing that comes to mind is the challenge and fun of picking a good product name. I visited the Samovar Tea Lounge in Zen [...]
Version numbers 2.0
Great article on Technologizer about the history of version numbers in product names. Ever wondered why Windows 7 is so called? What is the best version number ever? Read and find out. (More posts soon – I just have to finish my book!)
How to name your space station
NASA ran into problems with a public competition to name a new module on the International Space Station. It offered website visitors a shortlist of names to choose between but allowed them to write in their own choices. According to Space.com, comedian Stephen Colbert encouraged viewers to write in his own name. When voting ended [...]
Trademark guidelines make for unclear copy
In many big companies, intellectual property protection – trademarks and registered marks – drive product naming. I’ve worked on several projects in November that suffered from overwrought names. Some examples (not necessarily from my work): Intel® Centrino® Pro™ processor technology The 2007 Microsoft Office system Adobe® Acrobat® 8 Professional software The problem is that there [...]
Hey, let’s write a book
I talked to a few publishers this year about doing a book of Badlangauge.net. I even wrote a few pitches. The problem is that the book I wanted to write was different from the book editors wanted to publish. I couldn’t put my finger on the problem except that they kept on referencing titles like [...]
About
Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing, Articulate Training and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He writes about flying on Golf Hotel Whiskey and Forbes.
