Helpful words
Entrepreneur article on common naming mistakes featuring our Strategy Director Eli Altman
- About: Naming
You want a name that grabs the consumer’s attention but doesn’t try to cram in too much information, says Eli Altman, Director of Strategy at A Hundred Monkeys, a San Francisco-based branding and naming firm. “A good way to think about a name is that it’s the start of a conversation. It’s not a full encapsulation…
Inkling Habitat Has Launched
- About: Naming
Last night Inkling Founder and CEO Matt MacInnis announced that Inkling Habitat (names by A Hundred Monkeys), a collaborative digital publishing tool, is open for business. Those currently use Inkling Habitat include McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Wolters Kluwer, Elsevier and Wiley. For 2013, HarperCollins, TIME, Inc, DK, Rick Steves, Lonely Planet, and the Wall Street Journal have committed to use Habitat for their publications. Release here
Cult followers: the Twitter numbers game
- About: Branding, Positioning
No one likes a kiss-ass. Mostly because it works. Like other places in life, Twitter is full of kiss-asses. There’s always someone begging for new followers or praying that their favorite popstar smiles down and retweets confirmation of their puny mortal existence. For the most part, it’s all a numbers game. Modern life on the…
Attention young adult: Buy this automobile
- About: Branding, Positioning
Car commercials have been a staple of television advertising for as long as I can remember. The new coupe racing around alpine turns, mom taking the kids to soccer practice, slicked down pavement (or easily surmountable rock formations), definitely no other cars in sight. If you put two and two together, these cliched scenes tell…
Covert action at the Oxford English Dictionary
- About: Branding, Positioning
You may have missed it. There’s been a lot going on this holiday season. But news has emerged of foul play at one of the English speaking world’s most hallowed institutions: The Oxford English Dictionary. Linguist Sarah Ogilvie charges in a new book that Dr. Robert Burchfield, former OED chief editor, covertly deleted thousands of…
Pink gold and plasmaclusters: What Japanese women want in a car
- About: Branding, Positioning
The Japanese auto market is all about specificity, where products are tailored towards discrete niche markets. With a UV coating on the windshield to prevent premature skin aging, a “Plasmacluster” air filtration system to improve skin quality, and a pink gold paint job, Honda’s “Fit She’s” is a car made for the female motorist. Honda…
Retrofit becomes the official weight loss program for NFL Players Assn.
- About: Naming
Losing weight is about the mental thing. Ask any 300lb ex NFL linebacker. Watch Retrofit (naming & strategy by 100M) CEO Jeff Hyman explain this to a very funny Chicago version of Jim Cramer. video here
‘Tis the season: A short history of holiday branding
- About: Branding, Naming, Positioning
Now that the first of this season’s feasts is behind us, let’s take a look back at the origins of the frenzy that follows. In 1939, FDR moved the official day of Thanksgiving from the last Thursday of the month to the fourth Thursday to boost holiday retail sales during the final years of the…
Snakes On A Plane: The hilarious horrors of SkyMall Magazine
- About: Branding, Naming, Positioning
SkyMall magazine is where bad ideas go to die … and then crawl back to feed on the brains of innocent air travelers. A criminal line-up of infomercials, the magazine takes mankind’s worst ideas and puts them in your seat-back compartment. In a pressure-sealed cabin. At 30,000 feet. At home you can change the channel…
It surely wins: Kit Kat’s supremacy in Japan
- About: Branding, Positioning
Go to the corner store. You’ll find some Kit Kat bars populating the middle shelves below the Watermelon Bubblicious and above the Sour Punch Straws. Maybe you’ll chance on a box of King Size, or if the stars are aligned: Big Kat and White Chocolate. Ok, your work here is done. Now go to Japan….