Tuesday, December 15, 2009

What's in a name?

What's a good name for a yacht manufacturer? I was thinking this as read December's Yachting World and there was an article about a Wally doing the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC).

That was all very fine and good but the inner school boy in me never stops having a silent snigger as the phrase "what a wally!" echoes through the head. Maybe its just me.

It clearly doesn't have the same ring as (say) Oyster, as in pearls, fine food, or the world is your.

Does it matter? Clearly not as they are a hugely successful company, and as Juliet - or rather Shakespeare - once said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".

However the bard hadn't heard of word association marketing strategies (lucky chap). I once saw in Germany a tour company with their name along the side of the bus, namely "F**kers". Clearly there would be a certain difficulty in bringing that brand to the UK market.

But maybe it isn't important to those that matter. Those who can afford to buy and run a Wally probably don't feel they have anything to prove.

2 comments:

Allan S said...

Here in Canada we have a clothing store called 'Roots'. They clothed our Olympic team for the games in Austalia.....their clothing logo was a huge hit and our athletes had a hard time keeping their 'Roots' for themselves.....Allan

JP said...

Roots is a good name for a brand - much better than Wally let alone F**kers.