A Wider Net

With all the news about Michael Richards’ (Cosmo Kramer) recent standup comedy freakout, I find myself pointing out that Cramer starts with a ‘C’ far more frequently. You might overhear “no, it’s not spelled like the psycho from Seinfeld” coming from any cube at the office. There are plenty of examples of unfortunate product and company names out there. Some are bizarrely inappropriate homonyms, like the new Nintendo game console named “Wii” and pronounced “wee”, and others have unfavorable meanings in foreign languages, like the infamous Chevy Nova which, if you stretch it to “no va” means, sadly, “does not go” in Spanish.

So, when you set out to name a product or company, you can follow procedures like this from MarketingSherpa, but be sure to check a wide variety of language translations and soundalikes too.

In the meantime, please don’t confuse Cramer with Kramer. We don’t know that dude.