Would you want this place on your Visa bill?

Over the next weeks, Beg to Differ will be presenting some examples of brand names that are just bad – for a number of reasons. Today’s example is something we spotted over the weekend…

The Hav-A-Nap Motel

This bad brand – which, yes, also has a web site – is one that a friend pointed out to me in the Eastern part of metro Toronto, and it’s a classic. It’s one of those unintentional landmarks that everyone seems to know about (but no one will admit being a customer of).

And actually, while I usually criticize brand names that are un-helpful, this bad name is actually a customer service because it’s so bad. That is, because the name is so tone-deaf and slimy sounding, most respectable consumers will know better than to stay there.

This review from an Italian visitor on Trip Advisor pretty well  sums up the experience I’d expect to have from any motel called the “Hav A Nap”:

Sorry for my english… It was a very terrible experience… the room was very dirty, the bedsheets were full of spots (I think there were spots of previous sexual performances…), the bedcover had holes by cigarette… I left my cup of coffee in the room and when I came back I have found also mouse’s excrements… It was very very cheap, but I slept all dressed because of the disgust…

Funny, but when you don’t have enough energy to spell “HAVE” correctly, it’s not surprising that you don’t sweat little details like laundry, customer satisfaction, or human health for that matter.

Enough said.

I’d love to get more of your favourite bad brand names, so please leave them in the comments!

Part 3 of our series on our favourite posts of 2009″

October and November held a few more pleasant surprises for us here at Beg to Differ – from our Chicken Sandwich series to our first Slideshare cross-over hit, to  a Seussian Twitter phenomena, we continue to be surprised by the enthuisiastic response of our readers – but almosrt never in ways we expect.

What if restaurants charged like creative agencies? The other side

The branding business: we haven’t have a lot of posts about this topic area… yet. But we felt we needed to respond to a viral video which lampooned clients for not “getting” the value of the work creative agencies do. After all, it takes two to tango – or quibble over a giant invoice.

More on the biz: when branding, look outside;

How to name a chicken sandwich: thoughts for branders

Brand naming: When KFC launched a new chicken sandwich with a name developed by Brandvelope, we took the opportunity to toot our own horn a bit and talk about the process of naming a brand. And the results: our biggest single day tally of visitors as branders came by for a taste of what we do.

More on names:Sorry Shakespeare: names matter;  brandscape – a chicken or egg?

American Airlines meets Mr. X – a tragic tale of brand failure

“Whole brand” thinking: This short post on the failure of a giant corporation to understand  effective customer engagement in the social media era marked the first time a SlideShare deck  of ours reached 2000 hits – and climbing (in response to a tip from  Alison Gresik).

More on this:Toronto Web site fail; Human in five steps; the perils of too much choice; one immutable law

Green eggs & spam: a Twitter poem

Social media: Funny to talk about this one as a greatest hit – because we wrote it in the middle of the current “faves” series – and it’s really still going with more than 100 RTs to date. Basically, we wondered a) what @SamEyeEm would be like on Twitter, and b) what Dr. Seuss might think about the new “ReTweet” feature on Twitter.

More on this topic: Twiterloo; branding explained in Twitterese; “Social Media” needs a new name.

More in this series:

• Tuesday: Beg to Differ highlights from June & July
• Wednesday: Beg to Differ highlights from August & September.
• Thursday: Beg to Differ highlights from October & November (this post).

Oh, and another reminder: please sign up for e-mail updates (on the right) or our RSS feed, so you keep track of our future posts.

Humans beat dinosaurs every time.

Yesterday, our post about how American Airlines fired Mr. X – an employee who had the gall to (gasp) engage with a customer – generated a fair bit of engagement of its own. We were also shocked and pleased that our accompanying PowerPoint deck was chosen as one of the features on the SlideShare home page, with more than 950 views and climbing. “Wow,” we thought: “People are actually paying attention! Crap!”

How not to do it: the American Airlines approach to humanzing communications (image from www.dinosaurlive.com)

Why I said “Crap”

Because even though I’d spent an hour and a half yesterday morning putting the deck together, there were a few things I left off at the end – some important stuff about the difference between a) treating people and social media like a lumbering corporate dinosaur (American Airlines, that’s you), or b) like human beings (the un-American Airlines approach).

So we added a few thoughts to the deck, along with 5 simple steps you can follow to make your brand more friendly to humans. Please read on.

Surprised when corporations don’t act human? Don’t be!

Sadly, rumours of mass extinction have been greatly exaggerated: American Airlines isn’t the last dinosaur.

Thousands of others are lurking out there, hiding in hierarchical “Lost Valleys” around the corporate landscape. They’re scary, and they still have big teeth if you get close to them. And they roar, stomp, intimidate, and generally pretend with their pea-sized brains that they can throttle and control communications the same way they did (or thought they could) in the Jurassic era.

But the world has changed.

The new boss has arrived (and it’s us).

And the new masters of the planet have opposable thumbs. And emotions. And big brains. They talk to each other; they form families and tribes.

And they don’t even try to control the message.

Instead, they listen, and build the conversation in ways that are real, helpful, and yes human. Want evidence? You’re reading this aren’t you?

How to humanize your brand in five easy steps:

1) Don’t pretend to be perfect.

You’re lying. We know, because we’re human too. So don’t even bother faking it.

2) Listen (critically) to critics.

They usually see you better than you do. Then conscript the helpful critics as team-mates, or call them out if they’re just snipers.

3) Speak Human.

Because here’s a secret: nobody ever understood “Corporate-ese” in the first place. Just use normal people-friendly words, a helpful tone, and don’t brag about your big accomplishments / hard drives / pointy teeth. If it’s true, other people will say it. If it’s not, you’re just a roaring fossil.

4) Encourage your people to speak Human

But remember that many of your employees think that roaring and stomping is the only way to behave. Gently work with them to show a better way. Give them access to the right tools to speak to customers, and teach them to find the opportunities and boundaries for themselves (oh, and share that learning with everyone).

5) To clobber your competitors, be more human

And this is the great part: all this touchy-feely human stuff is the best way to win in the battle of the brands! So go on big guy: listen harder; be more lethally generous (thanks again Shel Israel); earn some Whuffie (thanks Tara Hunt) and build real human relationships with your customers, influencers, staff, and yes, even the competition.

And if you’re an airline but you’re not American Airlines, congratulations: you’re already ahead!

Click here to see the whole PowerPoint deck on SlideShare

My family and I walk by this tiny church on our way to the grocery store all the time. And while I’d always noticed the odd architecture of the place, it was only recently that I took a second look and was struck by the name.

Big promise + tiny package = big let-down

Now I know that a “cathedral” is technically where the bishop has his headquarters, so in the case of a little splinter denomination like this, this really is their cathedral. But for the neighbours, calling this a “cathedral” stretches the bounds of credibility. As a matter of fact, in referring to this building, I’d never use the term “cathedral” unless I wanted to make someone laugh. Cathedrals are massive, ornate, and architecturally significant features in a cityscape; this is just a little local church on a quiet side street.

But that’s just an example where the descriptive name doesn’t fit…

Why would you choose a descriptive name?

On the plus side, when such a name really does describe your product, you can expend less effort explaining it. So if your company is called “International Ball Bearings” and your competitors are “MMT Inc.” and “ACME Inc.” and your target happens to be in the market for ball bearings, you have a quick leg up on the others, even if they make the same product.

A descriptive name can also convey corporate seriousness and solidity. A company named “American Apparel” will have to go a long way to damage that respectable first impression: although give them credit for trying.

The downside

The problem is: what if all three companies mentioned above also made carriage bolts, and that’s what a customer was looking for? They’d probably assume International Ball Bearings wasn’t for them, right? So while a descriptive name communicates more information faster, it’s also much less flexible. You can’t sell toothpaste if your name is Canada Shipping Lines.

“Purely descriptive” is also a bad word in Trademark law, as it essentially means “cannot be protected”.

But there’s a time and a place for descriptiveness

In my naming work, I have often recommended descriptive names: Canada Business for example as a name for a government service for business. Descriptive product names are also appropriate for companies using a corporate  ”master brand” model. Recently, Bell very wisely dumped its Sympatico and ExpressVU names in favour of “Bell Internet” and “Bell TV”. And the world breathed a sigh of relief.

The trick as always, is balance. So how do you achieve this? The easy answer is hire Brandvelope Consulting. But whatever you do, look at the brand in its complete context, and particularly how it fits into the bigger “brandscape” that your customers are facing.

Ten days ago, I wrote  10 days to Interbrand top 100 brands & 10 reasons to care. Well Friday (three days earlier than adverstised), the results came in. And if you have time, you can read full results and commentary at two sites: 1) Interbrand and 2) Business Week.

But I’ll warn you, it’s a lot of information, and you’ll have to wade through some sections knee-deep in self-congratulatory hype. So as a public service, I’ve distilled 10 aspects of the list that jump out for me (below).

n The past year for the financial industry in one concise picture.
This year, ING crashed right off the list, along with a few other financial industry stalwarts.
(Image from the Dutch-language blog www.molblog.nl/bericht/interbrand-top100-/)

(But first, a slightly bitchy side note to Interbrand: guys, if you’re going to release these three days early, please 1) skip the giant countdown clock , and 2) actually send notices to people that signed up. Okay, my chest is clear, on to…)

10 Highlights of the 2009 Best Global Brands

1) Coke is still it: Top five brands are unchanged

The top five brands on the list are exactly the same brands in the same order as last year, and although Microsoft and GE lost more value than most brands ever have, with the spread in value between the top four, those mega-brands don’t look likely to change anytime soon.

Nokia’s brand is losing steam however, while gaining ground behind it is Google (in a big way) and McDonald’s (growing, but more modestly).

2) Google is the big disruptor

The Google brand shouldered ahead of Toyota, Intel, and Disney, and now is very close to overtaking McDonalds. As a matter of fact, its brand value has almost doubled since 2007, when it was 20th in the rankings.

Think about that for a moment: “Google” has grown from geek-niche-buzzword to #7 brand in the world in just 10 years – growth rates we haven’t seen since, well, Microsoft pulled the same trick for the ten-odd years before that.

But now that Google is starting to look more and more like a big, aggressive company (because they are), can their brand sustain its quirky garage-band appeal? Already their “don’t be evil” internal mantra is attracting more cynicism than praise. And while Googlers are still innovating, and making a lot of feel-good noise with their open source projects, one wonders when critical mass and inertia kick in (see Microsoft?).

3) Other big winners this year

By dollar value gained, H&M, Ikea, and Amazon gained a solid amount of value this year.

But apart from the indominatable Google, Apple grew the most, adding an incredible $1.7 Billion in brand value. Apple is the darling of the branding industry of course and a favourite of mine (see my Steve Jobs tribute), with its creative energy and  focus on human-friendly products and messaging, so it’s heartening to see that doing it right by your customers still pays off during a recession.

4) Surprise! Financial institutions are the biggest losers

Have you heard about this recession thing? Well, if you have, then it should come as no surprise that the industry hardest hit in the brand value bottom line was the same industry that imploded and begged for (and received) massive government  bailouts.

American Express, Morgan Stanley, and HSBC all lost billions of dollars of brand value, while Citi and embattled Swiss giant UBS both lost half of their brand value in one year.  Several others dropped right off the list, including Merryl Lynch, AIG, and ING. Could it be a coincidence that many of these losers also have meaningless nomonyms for names (see my definition here)? Probably just a coincidence, but their names certainly didn’t help them.

5) Automobile brands: losing value

Also not surprising, every automotive or motorized equipment manufacturer on the list except Ferrari lost a significant amount of brand value this year.  Harley Davidson and Lexus lost the largest percentages.

But despite losses, a few brands managed to hold their own or gain ground. Apart from Ferrari, Audi managed to gain, while Ford kept its ranking – the only one of the “Big Three” American manufacturers to have a substantial corporate brand seems to have benefited from its perceived stability as well. Another star: Hyundai:

Hyundai boosted ad spending and aggressively promoted its Assurance program, which allows buyers who lose their jobs to return cars. Hyundai’s brand value slipped 5%, but it moved up three places to No. 69.  - Business Week.

6) Food and clothing: the basics still sell when times are bad

The same pattern held true for clothing brands – although it must be said that the list is incredibly top-heavy with luxury brands – so Gucci, not GAP; Rolex over Timex. I suspect that this is because of a) the weighting given to “brand premium”, that is, the amount consumers are willing to spend over and above competitors, and b) the fact that lower-priced clothing brands for us mere mortals tend to be less global.

7) Adobe: New kids on the branding block

Abode finally made the list after it “recorded record revenue and double-digit growth for the sixth consecutive year. They weren’t immune to the downturn (they lost money overall), but importantly from a brand perspective, they grew strongly in the consumer preference category. And their brand awareness continues to grow through the ubiquity of their consumer-facing products Flash, and the Acrobat / PDF line.

8 ) Brand USA – still the biggest brand builder

We were watching to see if the recession would dent the US dominance in global brands. With 52 brands on the 2o08 global 100, the Yanks are the uncontested branding champs, but those of us who were hoping for a moment of guilty schadenfreude were mostly disappointed that the US claims 51 – still a majority – of the 100.

Note to the rest of the planet: keep working.

9) No new countries

The names of countries in the Global branding club stayed exactly the same this year with only 9 brands coming from outside Europe and North America (Japan 7, Korea 2). Russia, China, India, Brazil, and the rest of the world have yet to break in. But of course, it’s only a matter of time.

10) Brand Canada: maintaining numbers, but losing ground

Both of our two Canadian contender brands Thomson Reuters and Blackberry grew this year, and both made gains in the rankings with Blackberry jumping 10 spots to number 63. But they weren’t joined by any other brands, and what’s worse, we slipped a rank in number of brands-per-capita when the UK added a brand and vaulted ahead of us. On that list, we were 10th; now we’re llth.

This happens to me a few times every week: I’m standing at a store or restaurant, getting customer service by phone, or buying something online, and suddenly I’m faced with a dazzling, badly organized array of choices like this menu board at an Ottawa area Dairy Queen Brazier (no comment on that name for today). And how does it feel? Well, imagine shoving a whole Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Blizzard down your throat all at once…

The THARN Effect: for me, this DQ board was a Brain-Buster Parfait

Basic brain freeze

In the video below from the last Beg to Differ Brand Strategy Boot Camp, I describe what happened when I was faced with this menu board.

Basically, I had walked through the door having already made a number of choices: first I’d chosen between a dozen different food establishments in that neighbourhood; then I’d to choose to ignore my guilt about going with fast food at all; then I chose between ice cream – the product I normally associate with Dairy Queen – and hot food; and finally I had to choose whether to wait when I saw a significant lunch-rush line at the counter.

So by the time I got to the counter, after passing up several opportunities to walk away, you’d think DQ would try to make my life easier. But no, once I got inside the store, I faced a wall of giant posters with exclamation marks and starbursts all over them, and the menu board above that utterly failed to line up my choices in a clear way, filled with cleverly-named products that were all yelling, dancing, and fighting for my attention like a room-full of sugar-buzzed preschoolers whose Ritalin had run out.

Choice: the hidden “THARN”

Richard Adams, in his classic novel Watership Down, coined a great rabbit-language word that I like to use to describe the consumer’s mind-state when faced with too much choice:

THARN: (adj) the helpless, catatonic state a rabbit enters when it is caught in the headlights of a car.

Humans react the same way when you throw too many choices at them: they go “tharn”. Sounds a lot like the headache most people get when they swallow too much ice cream doesn’t it? Like ice cream, small, measured bites are a heavenly experience; too much too fast is physically painful.

But bright headlights & ice cream sundaes are good aren’t they?

Now, you may say, “but that’s just effective consumer marketing”, and perhaps the marketing sages at DQ know something I don’t about what sells sandwiches. Plus, as a 40-year old male, I suspect I’m not at the heart of their target demographic.

I also don’t want to imply that choice is bad, nor is it a bad thing to get your customers to slow down a bit and pay more attention to you while you have their attention.
But remember all the other choices they had to make to get to your “counter”: it’s a delicate balance between deepening their understanding by showing them more and overwhelming them with too much choice.

So ask yourself:

• 1) Are you helping customers quickly scan their options by organizing clear “decision trees” of plainly labelled and named options?
• 2) Are you making them feel confident about your brand - that is, their their end-to-end experience of it , and not just the individual sandwich they buy?
• 3) Are your marketing tactics really deepening their understanding, or just adding to the wall of noise they already face and defeating the point of marketing (to help people decide to buy your products)?
• 4) Are you managing your whole brand including your product portfolio, your decision-making interfaces, and your customer service to remove THARN moments or are you just turning on the high beams and shoving the ice cream down their throats?

The choice is yours. Well, actually, it’s theirs. And that’s the real point isn’t it?

We’ve compiled a list of the 25 worst acronyms, and yesterday we showed you that tag lines need to help people. We’ve also covered more municipal tag lines and other local examples. But now, here’s a list of 25 useless tag lines from brands that should know better.

The city of Stratford Ontario felt compelled to put a random bunch of words on the top of their Web site. We're not sure why...

25 useless taglines

Note: most of these are old – taken from a previous stage in the life of these companies – but all are real as far as we can tell. Please feel free to provide a more current list from brands you may know, and we’ll do another round later.

1. Ames Rubber: Excellence through total quality.
This tag is the ideal example of the “space filler” tag line. Just read it slowly and think about these words. It sounds like it’s supposed to mean something, but when you get right down to it, it’s an empty claim that any company could make about any product.

2. Denny’s: A good place to sit and eat.
Maybe you could use this in a market where people didn’t know that Denny’s was a restaurant? Like Mars?

3. Exxon: We’re Exxon.
Arguing with the simple blunt truth of this would be like denying the reality of a rocky shoreline in Alaska. Although to be fair, the rocks at least had a point.

4. Mobil: We want you to live.
Oh thank heaven. I’m so tired of gas stations that wish death upon me.

5. Holiday Inn: Pleasing people the world over.
“Pleasing people” and “the world over” are pleasant but empty phrases. “Making the world smile” wouldn’t be a great tag, but at least it would provide an image in the mind.

6. Jimmy Dean: Eat Jimmy Dean
Wrong on so many levels – particularly for those of us who think (wrongly) that this brand was named after a dead film star. But we can’t say it’s not memorable.

7. Playtex: Is that a Playtex under there?
This one conjures up a clear sensory image: the image of someone getting smacked hard. And deserving it.

8. Singer: We make it better.
Better than what? What is “it”? And why are you better?

9. ChevronTexaco: Turning partnership into energy.
That’s not true. Energy comes from oil. Dirty, dirty oil. Seriously, it’s great that you merged your companies, but try focusing on your customers.

10. Chrysler: Inspiration comes standard.
Not with my Neon it didn’t… please see Chapter 11 for more on this.

11. E.F. Hutton: When EFHutton talks, people listen.
Never liked this one – and not just because a) the company imploded in a blaze of scandal and b) corny commercials like the one below from the 80s.

Here’s a better ad with Bill Cosby and a much stronger tag line: EF Hutton – “Because it’s my money”.

12. Hallmark: When you care enough to send the very best.
Empty words + guilt trip = Hallmark. Not to mention if you actually cared, you’d make your own. But that’s beside the point.

13. National Cattlemen’s Beef: Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.
How presumptuous of you! You simply stated a fact that you assume to be true, and it’s not even appetizing.

14. Petco: Where the pets go.
Yes. I got that much from your name. Now, tell me more…

15. Quaker Oatmeal: Something to smile about.
I smile about a lot of things. Oatmeal is not one of them.

16. Toshiba: Choose freedom.
I would love to meet the consumer research team that told Toshiba that what their customers are looking for when buying a personal computer is “freedom”.

17. Verizon Wireless: We never stop working for you.
“Your call is very important to us, please stay on the line. We never stop working for you. Your call is very important to us, please…”

18. Zenith: The quality goes in before the name goes on.
See, our competitors put the name on first, then they put the quality in. It just doesn’t work that way.

19. Citibank: Where money lives.
Like a bed and breakfast? Or more of an apartment style?

20. Carlton Cigarettes: If you smoke, please smoke Carlton.
I can’t stop thinking that this must be a Canadian cigarette company – we’d never force you to smoke because its bad for you. But if you do, you might as well smoke ours!

Honorable mentions — the airline industry:

Airlines have been around for a long long time. You can no longer differentiate from your competition by saying, “We fly!”

21. British Airways: The way to fly.

22. Western Airlines: The only way to fly.

23. United Airlines: Time to fly.

24. Delta Airlines: We get you there.

25. Korean Air: Excellence in flight.

• Sources:
  www.chomchomadvertising.com
  www.taglineguru.com
  www.textart.ru

For more on useless taglines and how to do better, see yesterday’s post: Tag lines: if they don’t help people, there’s no point.

When I was in Korea a few years back, I was struck that even in cities where very few people spoke English, “upscale” stores always had an English tagline under an English name. But the words didn’t seem to matter: most were incomprehensible, vague, or with uninteded double entendres (as below). Weirdly, these businesses seemed to have taglines simply for the sake of filling space under their name with letters, not because anyone would get information from them. You know what’s even weirder? It happens here too.

For this Korean tag line, you can at least tell what they were going for. But are they really offering both those services?

A global plague:

Lest we seem to be picking on obscure stores in non-English speaking countries, a couple of weeks ago, we pointed out this tagline from a local real estate agent - and we could have chosen many more from that industry alone.

And size of company doesn’t seem to matter. Check out this bit of tagline vapidity from a major international brand – spotted in July 2009. “Sychronizing the world of commerce” is actually less meaningful than “Fitting & Feeling” – and I imagine UPS has a few more people working on their materials than Teman.

Another space-filler tagline - UPS fails to deliver.

Say something nice… or say nothing at all

Another uncomfortable tagline from a Korean store - but it just looks right to have one doesn't it?

Or rather, just say something useful.
Like every other aspect of your brand, a tag line is supposed to be a tool to help people understand something about your brand - some aspect of your service that will help them make a purchase decision in your favour.

A good tag line needs to inform me or help me differentiate you from your competitors; maybe it will make a leadership claim or offer me a guarantee; at the very least it should give me a clever “hook” to remenber you by; otherwise it’s just filling a space.

Here’s a secret that should never have to be spoken: a tag line isn’t a design element. It’s actually a set of words that happen to be occupying  prime real estate on your sign, page, or Web site. So make sure they ”pay their rent” by actually doing useful things.

Registration has just opened for the August edition of our successful Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Boot Camp – brought to you by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) and Brandvelope Consulting.

Dennis fields questions at the last OCRI Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Bootcamp in May 2009.

Register here at the OCRI Web site.

This  boot camp is for all managers and executives with marketing, PR, or communication responsibility–whether in technology, government, not-for-profit, or other industries.  Basically, if you manage a brand and want to learn how to manage it for maximum connection and value (for your customers and for yourself) this boot camp is for you.

Date:

Thursday August 27, 2009

Location:

Nepean Sailing Club - 3259 Carling Avenue

Two Options:

OPTION 1: Half-Day Bootcamp – morning only

• 8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. – Registration and Coffee
• 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Seminar 

OPTION 2: Full-Day Bootcamp

• Morning seminar (as above), plus:
• 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. – Lunch\
• 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. – Hands-on Workshop

Why you should attend:

Reason 1: morning session

Morning Session provides theory, practical case studies, & tips

This seminar provides a great overview of three important topic areas for all Brand Managers:

Reason 2: afternoon workshop (only for full-day participants)

Afternoon workshop (available only to full-day bootcampers) is more interactive, and involves hands-on critique of your brand.

In this smaller-group setting, you’ll get a chance to apply the theory from the morning to your brand and get help from other participants and the workshop leaders.  The workshop will allow you to do a point-by-point inspection all the aspects of your brand. But note that the afternoon is for active participants only; be ready to give and take constructive feedback.

Reason 3: Take-aways

All participants will receive 1) Beg to DIFFER Brand Strategy Workbook  plus, full-day participants will also get 2) a personalized assesment of your brand strengths and challenges.

Reason 4: Beautiful setting

Nepean Sailing club is at 3259 Carling Avenue, just West of Andrew Haydon Park – only a short drive from downtown and Kanata. This venue offers stunning scenery and a relaxed atmosphere – we took the photo below from just outside the conference room. It’s the perfect place to spend a late August day gearing your brand up for the fall. Google Map here.

Boot Camp will be held at the beautiful Nepean Sailing Club - 3259 Carling Avenue on Lac Deschênes near Andrew Haydon Park

Reason 5: don’t take our word for it

“I thoroughly enjoyed the day and want to thank you and your colleagues for your efforts. I believe this seminar is a definite requirement in the Ottawa area and you have already put in place many of the cornerstones to build on to make this a truly awesome and interactive event for new and seasoned brand management professionals.”

Dan Chaput
Director, Marketing Communications
March Networks

Register here at the OCRI Web site.

(NOMO part 4 of a series of 4) Don’t blame John Mc Cain. Or at least don’t blame him for his problems with “alphabet soup”. Most acronyms are actually “nomonyms” – our word for unhelpful abbreviations, to which we say “NOMO!” We also discussed initialisms like “IBM” – which are also usually a really bad idea. But acronyms are a whole different world of hurt, and some are so truly, and hilariously awful, they are in a class by themselves…

The 25 worst acronyms in the world

1. STUPID – St. Thomas University of Public International Diplomacy
An academic institution in Kenya (we didn’t make this up)

2. MHAAG–Mental Health Awareness and Advocacy Group
Harvard University group (we didn’t make this up)

3. SL**T – Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology:
Name says it all (we didn’t make this up)

4. MOIST - MOntreal Internationalized Software Testing
A tech conference (we didn’t make this up)

5. RUMPS – Renal Unit Management Protocol System
From the Queen Elizabeth Hospital at the University of Birmingham (we didn’t make this up)

6. The PIIGS Group – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain
International diplomacy (we didn’t make this up)

7. SHIN – Saskatchewan Health Information Network
It was almost dubbed Saskatchewan Health Information Technology System! (we didn’t make this up)

8. A*RSE – African Association of Remote Sensing of the Environment
Not-for-profits are guilty too (we didn’t make this up)

9. WinCE – Windows Compact Edition
Wince: to shrink or start involuntarily, as in pain or distress (we didn’t make this up)

10. FATCOLA – First American Trust Company Of Los Angeles:
Its on the side of their building! (we didn’t make this up)

11. NAMWOLF – National Association of Minority & Women Owned Law Firms
“Legal excellence knows no color or gender” (we didn’t make this up)

12. CINCUS – Commander in Chief of the US Fleet (pronounced “sink us”)
The highest rank in the US Navy, circa 1922 – 1945 (we didn’t make this up)

13. SIGTARP – The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program
The guys who are saving the US economy (we didn’t make this up)

14. QAHCAA – Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans
Obama’s 2009 health care plan (we didn’t make this up)

15. SUX – Sioux Gateway Airport
They got the short end of the airport acronym stick – but check out their Web site www.flysux.com to see how they’re making the best of it – possibly even turning it to an advantage? (we didn’t make this up)

16. MILF – Moro Islamic Liberation Front
And don’t forget the political extremist groups (we didn’t make this up)

Some claim that this is the worst acronym ever:

17. PUMCODOXPURSACOMLOPOLAR – Pulse Modulated Coherent Doppler-Effect X-Band Pulse-Repetition Synthetic-Array Pulse Compression Side Lobe Planar Array (we didn’t make this up)

But the Beg to DIFFER grand prize goes to… the US Armed Forces for the sheer quantity of hilarious, and sometimes fitting, acronyms.

US Armed forces – the granddaddies of acronym abuse:

18. MANPADS – Man-portable air-defense systems
(we didn’t make this up)

19. DILD* – Direct Input Limited Duty Officer
(we didn’t make this up)

20. iBOM (“I bomb”) – Ionizing Brownout Mitigation System
(we didn’t make this up)

21. ASRAAM – Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile
(we didn’t make this up)

22. AS*BAG – Airframe Structure Support Boeing Advisory Group
(we didn’t make this up)

23. AARG – Affordable Accurate Robot Guidance
(we didn’t make this up)

24. IPODS – Integrated Precision Ordnance Delivery System
(we didn’t make this up)

25. S*IT – Store High in Transit
(we didn’t make this up)

 The whole NOMO series:

• Part 1: NOMO unhelpful abbreviations in government
• Part 2: an abbreviation is not a brand.
• Brief: NOMO in the Ottawa Citizen
• Part 3: a good acronym is hard to find
• Part 4: the world’s 25 worst acronyms.