A great post this morning on bladeronner.com (A Valuable Business Lesson from “The Princess Bride”) got me thinking: a) what a brilliant movie Princess Bride is; 2) how relevant the “Dread Pirate Roberts” idea is to branders; and 3) how many other lessons for us are hidden in this great film. Branding lesson 1:  Names matter.  Westley: No [...]

(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 [...]

(Part 3 of a 4-part NOMO series about abbreviated brand names) Right, so this week we’ve dealt with nomonyms, our term for any unhelpful abbreviated names, initialisms like IBM, and whether they can be a brand at all. And later we’ll deal with the 25 worst acronyms of all time. But first: acronyms. And here’s my [...]

Click the photo above or here to read the piece in today’s Ottawa Citizen. Or join our Facebook NOMO Group. 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 [...]

(Part 2 of a series about abbreviated brand names.) Yesterday, I ranted about the use of nomonyms (unhelpful abbreviations) in government. But of course, as you’ll read in this and subsequent posts, the problem of bad abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms goes far beyond government. But the two biggest problems of all are right in the [...]

As an Ottawa naming and brand strategy consultant, I once thought the technology industry was the world’s biggest offender in the realm of unhelpful abbreviations. But then I started working with the Canadian federal government…. alphabet soup everywhere. My answer in one word: NOMO! The problem with acronyms / abbreviations / initialisms / alphabet soup [...]