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Silicon Roundabout

The hottest place for the coolest cats at the moment is Silicon Roundabout.

I was fortunate enough to be in the Dopplr office the other day when Matt Biddulph had a eureka moment. "Silicon Roundabout!" he exclaimed. How we laughed.

But look! He's made a Google map of all the cool Boom 2.0 companies working off Silicon Roundabout and he's started a social networking site (that's what they do after all...) for Silicon Roundabout residents.

But the meme isn't just self propagating. The FT featured it on their blog and London's Evening Standard ran a story on page 11 today.

Silly season? You must be joking.

In other logo related news; whilst I was at Dopplr, Russell and I dropped off a present of some mugs.

Been meaning to do that for a while.

Oh just piss off*

* I've not been as "punchy" recently as I should have been.

Wii

Sigh. Nintendo have announced that their new console is going to be called Wii.

Yep, Wii.

No one seems to like it, for obvious reasons. The FT don't like it. Seth doesn't like it. But funniest of all are the people at the Triforce who, quite correctly take Nintendo to task when they say the name is distinctive and easy to remember.

Nintendo say,

"Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii."

The Triforce say,

"Seriously, when has *anyone* forgotten the name of a console they’re playing? Are you blaming the poor sales of your previous home systems down to the fact people can’t remember them?

“Mum, what I really want for Christmas is that console that plays Mario 64 and Wave Race 64, please?”
“Certainly, little Timmy; what’s it called?”
“Um… um… um… Fuck it, I can’t remember. Just get me a fucking PlayStation.”

Nice animation though.

NoOne, SomeOne

NoOne have split from their parent company (United London) and renamed themselves SomeOne.

Wow look at that, I never thought I'd get 3 Ridiculous Company Names in one post.

What's your url?

Had a very interesting chat with one of the Design Council directors last night.

He asked what the company I worked for was called. Then he asked for the url. "Oh that's unusual, a design company where the url is the same as the company name."

Deep breath.

I launched into a big speech about stupid fucking design company names, StrawberryFrog, Nude Brand Creation, Dave, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, An Agency Called England et al.

Then he asked if I thought it was important that your company was easy to find on Google.

Deep breath.

I launched into a big speech about stupid fucking design company names, StrawberryFrog, Nude Brand Creation, Dave, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, An Agency Called England et al.

While we're on the subject, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies. Every time I hear that I want to cry. "Good morning, Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, Tracey speaking, how can I help you this morning?" All the fucking drugs in the world couldn't make this sound like a good idea.

In my dreams I imagine some ballsy CEO listening to a presentation about how his brand doesn't fit in with todays "Web 2.0" age. How his "brandscape" is losing him money. How he needs to spend some sizeable cash to rebrand. CEO listens quietly, pours a glass of water. Leans back in chair.

"But you're called Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies, so what the fuck do you know about branding?"

Engine

Engine used to be WCRS. To be honest Engine isn't that bad, but it's so much worse than WCRS.

BR&Me

The latest copy of Marketing has landed on my desk. Which has reminded me of something I wanted to discuss last week, but forgot.

Brewer Riddiford have rebranded themselves. I want to preface this by saying I have nothing against Brewer Riddiford, they are obviously successful and I’m sure they are all really nice people. But...

Brewer Riddiford have been going for 15 years. They work with loads of massive brands and together with Design Bridge and JKR kind of have that “add more steam” packaging design market cornered. They are a big player.

Last week I saw this ad in Marketing.

Hmmmm. What are they called now? BR&Me. How do I say that? BR and me? BR ampersand me? Brewer Riddiford and me? Brand Me?

I thought I’d take a look at the website. I wondered what the url would be, especially as you can’t have ampersands in a url. The url is www.brandme.co.uk. Which is fine, borderline clever. (The reason I didn’t write about this last week is that the url was just a coming soon page. The website is up now but, chaps if you’re gonna take out a full page colour ad in Marketing make sure the bloody website is up...)

So is the company called Brand Me? Maybe, but would you honestly read BR&Me as Brand Me? No you wouldn’t.

BR and Me – that’s Ok but it’s a strapline
Brand Me – interesting and I do like the Brewer Riddiford and Me connection
BR&Me – but that’s your logo and that’s on the letterheads and no one is going to read that as Brand Me.

Does all this matter? Yes it does, you are a fucking branding consultancy for God’s sake. I think this is a mess, some good ideas badly executed. What was wrong with Brewer Riddiford? I don’t really like the name, but it made sense.

What do you all think?

England Brand Experts

I listened to a great little piece on You and Yours this morning.

It's about Manchester and their current branding exercise (remember Peter Saville was appointed Creative Director). Apparently they have decided against a strap line. Which is a very good idea.

The programme points out loads of crap straps for towns and counties, like "Live it, Love it" for Leeds. Although they miss out my favourite "Staffordshire - The Creative County'. Pointed out by Russell Davies.

They interview Saville and he makes coherent and decent points. For all his faults, he does know what he's doing. They also interviewed this idiot from a branding company called England. Yes, ladies and gentlemen there is a branding consultancy called England. Try searching for that on Google. I did, and I couldn't find anything.

So let's recap. You're a branding "expert", but your brand isn't strong enough for people to find after you've been on national radio. Therefore my friend, you are a complete and utter nincompoop. And certainly no expert. I've been on Radio 4 before and the phone was ringing like crazy all day at the office.

Have a listen, it's only 8 minutes long.

Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies

Thee is a networks of WPP agencies called Voluntary United Group of Creative Agencies.

Which is the worst name for anything, ever.

Find out more here.

July

For one reason or another I was looking at the website belonging to a company called Igor Consulting yesterday.

Igor Consulting think up names, brand names, company names. And they thought of this little stunner, July. Yes, July, it's for a financial services firm.

Apparently, "one of the key positioning points the name had to capture is "the freedom to focus on your core business." The name also needed to be fresh and different, yet fall within the parameters of the types of names associated with the financial services sector. The name had to be both intuitive and interesting".

Remember we're talking about July. It gets worse.

"July is much more than the name of the month that Julius Caesar named after himself. It is the one name that covers all the established financial services cues, is fresh and different, and infers -- rather than shouts -- "Freedom," making it infinitely engaging."

No, July is a fucking month. Not a financial services company.

There is also a hilarious story about the thinking behind calling Steve Wynn's new Las Vegas hotel, er, Wynn Las Vegas.

Beattie McGuinness Bungay (again)

I thought you might like to know that Beattie McGuinness Bungay have updated their website.

It's better (there are some really nice photographs) but it's not great.

I'm not stalking them or anything, but loads of people arrive at this site having searched for Beattie McGuinness Bungay on Google. So if that's the case you'll find the new website here: http://www.bmbagency.com/ Glad I could help.

And if you're reading this Trevor, you say that you'd like to "make the wheels turn a little bit faster" and then you call your agency BMB. Couldn't you have started with a mould breaking name? You managed it for FCUK, why couldn't you do it with your own agency?

Dave

WCRS have a graphic design off shoot called Dave.

Yes, that's right, Dave. Here is the website.

Nude Brand Creation

This is the first in an occasional series.

There is a branding company called Nude Brand Creation. What a ridiculous name.

This might be their website nudebrandcreation.com/ but then again it might not be.

StrawberryFrog

"Hi Mum, yeah I'm doing really well. I got a job with a company called StrawberryFrog."

Beattie McGuinness Bungay

I was just reading that Trevor Beattie's new outfit, Beattie McGuinness Bungay, has won a £7M ad campaign for OK. This raises several points.

1. Like football transfers, media budgets are almost always overstated. An accountant for Man U once told me that all transfers are actually a third of the price quoted. So it's probably a £2M account.

2. Trevor, love him or hate him is one of the most creative people in the UK. And the best name he could come up with for his new firm is Beattie McGuinness Bungay. He's either;
a) not very creative at all
b) incredibly vain
c) brow beaten by his peers.
You decide.

3. Again, for what pomises to be an exciting start up by some very creative people the website is awful. A holding page simply isn't good enough, it looks like a student project online.