the art of conversation

QI (Toponymy-cally speaking)

Spending a deal of time ‘on the road’ this week, I was reminded how my Toponymy knowledge from a by-gone university era had eluded me. Attempting to re-educate myself and to add more pazazz to fieldwork-related travelling, I have dusted off my old notes and looked again into meanings behind names of places where us reseachers (and the like) spend time on our travels. Hopefully, yours will become more illuminated as a result.

Three good major 'toponyms' to start with are:

Manchester from ‘Mamm’ meaning ‘breast-like hill’ and ‘ceaster’ meaning ‘Roman town’
Birmingham: Split into three parts: 'Beormund' as a name, 'ingas' as 'people,' and 'ham' as 'farm/homestead’ i.e. Beormund's people’s farm
London: "place belonging to a man named Londinos," a supposed Celtic personal name meaning "the wild one,"

And here is a light sprinkling of suffixes that should help decode other place-name meanings:

Borough/Bury (a fort of fortified place); By (village); Caster, Chester, Cester (Roman fort or town); Den (pasture for pigs); Don (hill); Ea/ey (island or promontory); Ham (village or estate); Holt  (wood); Hurst  (Meant a wooded hill); Ing (the people of somewhere); Mere (meant a pond); Stoke (hamlet or little settlement dependent on a nearby, larger settlement); Ton (farm or hamlet); Wick (vicinity, trading place, specialised farm e.g. Gatwick was a goat farm, Chiswick a cheese farm); Worth (enclosure or an enclosed settlement enclosed by a wall of wooden stakes).

Although, scratching the toponymical surface, may your travels now be more curious and less cryptic.

Simon

KISS

Pepsi have recently undergone a redesign that makes their packaging look more sleek and airbrushed, with the logo slightly altered. It would appear a great deal of 'over-thinking' has accompanied this re-design.

The Guardian featured Pepsi's 27 page document about the redesign, and describing it as 'an elaborate 27-page long spoof'. The Guardian also featured an article on the failure of much management theory over recent years, which has suffered from over-intellectualisation (how 2012) and little applicability .

On the other hand, there are enough examples of 'under-thinking' that made us wonder 'is strategy dead?' - two notable advertising examples being Cadbury's Gorilla and Sony's large plasticine rabbits.

This made us wonder if we (researchers, planners, brand consultants etc) may be suffering from a case of ivory-tower-itis. Perhaps it serves to mark territories and thought leadership within this industry, but it may be having an adverse affect on brands as a result.

It's difficult for brands to strike the right balance between seeking innovation and staying relevant and meaningful to consumers. But with people being increasingly 'brand savvy' is Pepsi jeopardising the connection between its brands/products and their consumers?

Helping people 'get it' is surely more important than losing them by being too clever by half. And when government bodies now prefer us to use baffling terminology of 'thought shower' (instead of brainstorm) or 'centre of learning' (instead of school), we could take some heed and K.I.S.S. some more.

A great K.I.S.S example is this latest ad from Dyson:

Post-identity politics

That’s funny. The day we send in our report to a prominent think tank on ‘post-identity politics in contemporary Britain’ (Discuss) is Red Nose Day.

The research we did looked into questions such as:

• How do people now express their identity?
• How are people affected by any sense of group identity?

While organisations typically classify people into various ‘boxes’ (marketing services does it all the time, eg male, 35-45, C2D, north), most people reject the idea that who they are as a person is truly reflected in these or any similar categories.

There is a lot of discussion about Britain being a highly diverse, multicultural country and yet there are tensions between the different ‘strands’ of identity, such as religion and belief, race and ethnicity. Some feel there is more segregation in British society nowadays, not less. The BNP is actively campaigning to gain European seats.

So on the day we have been pondering divisions and schisms in society, we can now join in with Red Nose Day in celebrating our common humanity.

Comic Relief has so far raised £600m since its inception in 1985. The idea of using a red nose as a visual symbol was a last-minute idea from marketing executive Peter Crossing, which Richard Curtis and Co initially thought would never work.

But the red nose and Red Nose Day are strokes of genius and give us all a chance to augment our identities and share in a common cause.

Tasting the Digital Rainbow

As part of Skittles' latest 'Taste the Rainbow campaign’, a web application has been developed that has been described by its enthusiasts as a ‘social media maker-over’. It is a straightforward, online tool design that links to Skittles themed pages, existing on the social media sites YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Wiki and Facebook. 

A few comments on BrandRepulic and a few blog posts view this as damaging to a brand in releasing control and abandoning it to abuse in the swirling Twittersphere; but for the world of the digital consumer at least, it appears to be starting quite a buzz (at least if the responses to the Twitter feed and the 590, 638 Facebook Fans are to go by).

In my view, Skittles has to be applauded for their bravery in taking brands further in the social media world – it’s certainly more interesting than a typical microsite. It allows Skittles to appear informative about their product, relevant to the wider online masses, (a copied but) innovative application, community- building, and conversation provoking.

Skittles is also brave leaving itself open to spamming without the ability to moderate comments on the real time Twitter feed (as can be done on the YouTube, Flickr and Facebook pages). Having observed the Twitter feed intermittently, there are occasional negative comments; but there appears to be more upbeat Twitterers who are participating in the Skittles conversation: posting up links to their blog posts on the Skittles topic or simply self-promoting on the main Twitter feed (by crowbaring the word ‘Skittles’ into  their Tweets).

Although buzz does not guarantee increased sales, it seems that it will do a lot to raise the profile and consideration of a brand that has kept relatively silent in recent times. Supported by a kooky but memorable TV ad, this work from Agency.com is a brave piece of communication whose success (or failure) will be worth learning from for companies concerned about relinquishing their brands to online social media.