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Summary: great view to how companies name
Review: After spending more than ten years in the branding and naming industry, it is great to see a good book about how we do what we do. Frankel's book is funny and true to life. Don't approach it expecting to find succint lessons on how to name things but if you pay attention you'll find yourself picking up some insights into the craft along the way.
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Summary: It's official... there's no secret formula.
Review: Alex Frankel, (a true journalist by nature), delves into the murky waters of brand naming to uncover its hidden mysteries. As a former freelance brand namer himself, Frankel set out to interview the top naming firms in the world, to see if there was any systematic method to the madness of naming. What he discovered instead was an odd assortment of colorful characters, each claiming to possess the "gift" or the "method" to creating great brand names. His insights into expensive "top down" umbrella names and viral "bottom up" organic names I found insightful. Some of the quotes by the people he interviews also merit consideration. It was worth the read just to reaffirm that no one can ever corner the naming market with a system or formula; and that good branding requires more than technical, linguistic ability.
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Summary: Author is neither a good wordcrafter nor a good journalist
Review: Frankel gives the impression that the reader will learn (or get an inside view of) how the brandnaming craft works. He fails miserably. He's neither a good wordcrafter nor a good journalist. For example, he spends an entire chapter on how he tried to get the inside story of how Porsche gave its SUV the name Cayenne but that he was unable to because the company was unwilling to discuss the process. Duh!Frankel doesn't even realize that the title of his book is confusing. Is it two words or one? If you look at the book's cover-jacket, it appears that the title is composed of two separate words. If one searches for the book at Google, using two separate words, it's not found - at least not in the first 10-20 results because the title in fact is one word. Moreover, the design of the title is unelegant and unprofessional - each letter is in a different font - sophomoric! The book is useless. Frankel spends many pages worshipping a woman who he says loves playing with words without giving us an insight of how she goes about the process of creating brand names or company names. He doesn't realize that the names need to be trademarked and registered as domainnames. For example, the title of his own book "wordcraft" can't be registered as a domainname because it's already claimed by some other party. A good name is unique enough so that when it is searched on the internet, it naturally comes up at the top of the search list without having to pay search engines, on an ongoing basis, to move the keyword (i.e., the brand name) higher on the search list. A word of wisdom for Frankel: be succinct. It's obvious why he failed as wordscrafter and why he'll fail as a writer / journalist / reporter.
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Summary: Language in the Information Economy
Review: Frankel is a journalist and also an insider. The result is a fascinating and authoritative look into an industry that most people dont realize exists: the naming industry. The output of course surrounds us in the form of the brands that have become the new vocabulary of our society and our economy. Well worth the read!
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Summary: Very insightful
Review: Great book. Fast read and Frankel has a lot of insight into the industry.
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Summary: A fascinating history of some blockbuster brand names
Review: I will never think of "Viagra" the same way again. Frankel is an astute verbal anthropologist; he takes recent brand names ("blackberry") that have become household words and traces them back to their roots -- back to their early beginnings as ideas in a focus group meeting, scribbles in a whiteboard session, a twinkle in the eye of a member of the word-obsessed "naming" community. The world of creating corporate brand names is both thrilling and terrifying. (You learn how Frito-Lay has teams of scientists who have calculated the precise times of day in which people crave salt or sugar, so the company can play their commercials at the right times.) Frankel, a wonderful wordsmith himself, brings each brand's story alive. He has created the year's must-read book for anyone in advertising, marketing, business, or the business of names.
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Summary: A fascinating history of some blockbuster brand names
Review: I will never think of "Viagra" the same way again. Frankel is an astute verbal anthropologist; he takes recent brand names ("blackberry") that have become household words and traces them back to their roots -- back to their early beginnings as ideas in a focus group meeting, scribbles in a whiteboard session, a twinkle in the eye of a member of the word-obsessed "naming" community. The world of creating corporate brand names is both thrilling and terrifying. (You learn how Frito-Lay has teams of scientists who have calculated the precise times of day in which people crave salt or sugar, so the company can play their commercials at the right times.) Frankel, a wonderful wordsmith himself, brings each brand's story alive. He has created the year's must-read book for anyone in advertising, marketing, business, or the business of names.
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Summary: A Way With Words
Review: Shakespeare may have had us wonder "What's in a name?" but though roses named differently might smell as sweet, they don't have millions of dollars riding on how well a name works. Corporations do, and they know it, and they are ready to pay other companies big money to make sure that the names do more than the job of just being handy labels for their products. Alex Frankel is a business journalist who has actually formed a company to name things for business, and in _Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business_ (Crown), he lets us know how this strange and modern facet of global business works. A brand is not just a name but "... an amalgamation of everything that one thinks about when a particular word is uttered." If corporations are spending millions of dollars to make sure that the names that are so familiar (Prozac, Amazon, Cuisinart) can become familiar and can subtly carry extra emotional weight, it is a good idea that consumers get to know a little bit about how we are being influenced (led, manipulated) in this way.
Frankel's book is an analysis of five brand names: BlackBerry, Accenture, Viagra, the Porsche Cayenne, and IBM's e-business, concentrating on the work of the small firms that name the products of big firms for a fee. The world's first naming firm has its own apt name, Lexicon, and it was responsible for naming the BlackBerry, the handheld e-mail device of Research in Motion. "BlackBerry" is a word with an element of fun to it; it is not, by its own nature, tied to e-mail or messages. This represents in some ways a liability; another considered word, "AirWire", might hint of wireless communication, but BlackBerry did not make people think of what the product did. As a result, advertising dollars had to be spent to make the connection, but it proved to be an easy connection to make. BlackBerry was launched in 1999, and every message sent by a BlackBerry was labeled as being sent by BlackBerry, further spreading the name. It became a huge hit at least partially because of the name; some e-mail addicted executives took to calling it the "CrackBerry." The best part of the book is Frankel's depiction of the naming of the products of the pharmaceutical industry, especially the naming of Viagra. Look at that brand name: vigor, vitality, virile are all there. It rhymes with Niagara, the famous destination for newlyweds. (Frankel compares the newer drugs for ED: Cialis doesn't have any particular handle for name interpretation, but Levitra has the "vi" inside it, and it is connected to levitation, getting it up.) Viagra was a made up name that caught on quickly. Phillip Roth lauded it in _The Human Stain_. It got virile spokesmen to say it was a helpful medicine. It even entered the _Oxford English Dictionary_.
Not everything goes so smoothly. One of the chapters here examines the Denver case of the Mile High Stadium, whose naming privileges were sold, so that it is supposed to be known as Invesco Field at Mile High. The public, whose taxes helped pay for the field, didn't like the name, and the editor of the _Denver Post_ refused to allow the "official" name in the sports pages. A bar owner who led a civic protest against the name got elected mayor. There may be larger issues for brand names in the future, as memorable names are manufactured for one product after another; with all that remunerative effort by the naming companies, will we be so inundated with meaning-full brand names that each one will mean less? It is already easy to talk in corporate names; we Xerox documents, or FedEx them, or we Google for them. For now, though, the five different namer-named words examined here are getting business done; they are successfully getting the word out. Frankel has provided an entertaining sidelight on the way corporations do business now, full of juicy anecdotes from executives who take themselves and their naming mission with billion-dollar seriousness.
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Summary: Insiders View of Marketing
Review: What a great look inside the workings of the marketing world, for someone like me, who is not in that profession. The personal insight was very interesting and enticing. I want to know how many job offers Mr. Frankel received from this book. I would hire him to help my business-he is so creative and articulate.
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Summary: Looking beyond the obvious...
Review: What I enjoyed about Wordcraft is the way Frankel examines the everyday, and in many ways, obvious use of "name" in branding and how that effects consumer patterns (and sometimes corporate). That being said, it is more then just the name, but the color, font and movement of the name. This book coupled with a book by Paco Underhill (Why We Buy)should be required reading for first year namers/branders, etc.
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