May 8, 2008
V8 Soup: More of a Good Thing
It seems like V8 vegetable juice has been around forever, but it’s actually only been since 1933.
The origin of the name is the 8 different vegetables used to make the drink. Obvious, and yet brilliant.
- It’s descriptive: it tells consumers what this drink has that ordinary tomato juice doesn’t.
- It’s suggestive: the V8 engine powers sportscars and aircraft, making V8 an energy drink long before the likes of Red Bull came along.
- It’s short, simple, and easy to pronounce.
Now V8's parent company Campbell Soup is introducing 5 varieties of V8 soup. This seems like a logical step to me.
As a child, watching the “I coulda had a V8” commercials, I was always skeptical about the idea of drinking vegetable juice instead of fruit juice. Okay, I was skeptical about vegetables in general at that age. Vegetables in soup make sense, even to someone who tried to feed her peas and carrots to the dog under the table.
Admittedly, corn, peppers, squash, and broccoli are not among the ingredients of the original V8, which means “V9” might be a more accurate designation, but this is a solid branding choice for Campbell’s.
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Posted by Diane Prange at 2:28 PM
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Baskin-Robbins Loses Founder, But Great Product Naming Lives On
The passing of Irvine Robbins of Baskin-Robbins fame has me paying tribute to a man who really knew the value of eye catching product naming.
The name Baskin-Robbins was an amalgamation of the names of its founders, Irvine Robbins and Burton Baskin. The two men flipped a coin to see whose name came first, leading later generations to wonder if an ice cream chain called Robbins-Baskin would have done nearly as well.
Robbins discovered as a teenager that he could sell three times the ice cream if he changed the offering from “three scoops of ice cream, a slice of banana, two kinds of toppings” to “Super Banana Treat.” This was the start of a cornucopia of ice cream naming.
There have been over a thousand great flavors over the years like Valley Forge Crunch, for the 1976 Bicentennial, Lunar Cheesecake, to mark the moon landings, and Beatle Nut for Beatlemania.
After his retirement, Robbins named his boat “The 32nd Flavor.” Nice.
The Baskin-Robbins brand name itself is very powerful. The famous 31 flavors (one for every day of the month) grew from the original 21 flavors . The company, owned by Dunkin Brands is gearing up for a major US expansion with a new logo, graphics, web site, store design and of course some new product naming.
Baskin-Robbins was there with some really funky naming before the founders of Ben and Jerry’s were born and before Häagen-Dazs hit the big time (that name means nothing, really, and it invented Nordic consonance)
Basskin-Robbins’s great names for their flavors have always intrigued us and made a trip to the brightly colored stores special. This company, one of the first true franchises in the US and one of the pioneers of the high end ice cream market, probably owes its existence not only to its great ice cream, but also to the foresight of its founders, who understood that great flavors need great names.
RIP, Mr. Robbins.
Technorati Tags: Baskin Robbins, Ice Cream, 31 Flavors, Irvine Robbins, Burton Baskin, New Logo, Ben and Jerry's, Häagen-Dazs
Posted by William Lozito at 8:00 AM
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May 7, 2008
Cold Spring Name Change Not a Hot Idea
On the State of the Brand 2008 blog this week, Jason Voiovich is lamenting the loss of the Gluek’s Brewery brand name, which was replaced by the more pedestrian Cold Spring earlier this year.
The copyright notice on the company’s website still says Gluek Brewing Company, but it appears not to have been changed since 2005.
Not that Cold Spring is meaningless. It’s the name of the city where the brewery is located. And the idea of brewing your beer from cold local spring water is attractive enough. But here in Minnesota, we’ve got Cold Spring This and Cold Spring That all over the place.
There’s nothing really wrong with it, but there’s nothing really right with it, either. Nothing distinctive. And if you brew craft beers, you need distinctive. Likewise if you’re trying to break into a new and already-competitive market. (Cold Spring now produces energy drinks.)
Admittedly, those not from Minnesota might be unsure how to pronounce Gluek (which is Old German for luck), and it’s usually a good idea for new product names to be easy for English-speakers to pronounce. But Gluek is not a new name.
The 1902 Gluek House is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and Gluek’s Restaurant is the oldest in downtown Minneapolis.
Around here, at least, the Gluek’s name has equity. Abandoning the name, and potentially confusing existing loyal customers, seems like a far greater risk than keeping it.
Viel Gluck!
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Posted by Diane Prange at 8:58 AM
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May 1, 2008
Why Did the FDA Object to Merck's Cordaptive Brand Name?
The news that Merck's new Cordaptive drug was unexpectedly torpedoed by the FDA has raised eyebrows across the industry, not least because the FDA
rejected the name as well, leading Derek at In the Pipeline to wonder what Merck will do with "all their promotional freebies."
This seems to be the least of Merck's problems this week.
There are a number of scientific and political reasons that probably doomed Cordaptive, but the FDA has yet to give a specific reason.
I have some thoughts on why Cordaptive may have been given a not-approvable letter.
Cordaptive is a cholesterol reducing drug from Merck that combines niacin, which can cause the unfavorable side affects of flushing and hot flashes, with laropiprant, which mitigates niacin’s side affects.
But Merck also markets Zocor, which also is designed to reduce cholesterol.
Additionally, there is Vytorin, a combination of Zocor and Zetia, which has proven to be no more effective than Zocor alone at reducing heart attaches or strokes.
Perhaps the FDA felt the "cor" prefix in Cordaptive suggested that the new product was an adaptation of Zocor. Or perhaps there were other reasons.
Merck changed the Cordaptive name to Tredaptive, which was approved by EMEA or the European Medicines Agency.
It will be interesting to see what the FDA decides regarding the Tredaptive name and the drug itself.
Technorati Tags: Merck, Cordaptive, Zocor, Tredaptive, Cholesterol, Drug Names, Vytorin, Facial Flushing, FDA
Posted by William Lozito at 8:22 AM
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