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Get it right!

Why do companies insist on changing the names of reputable products? Do people really refuse to buy something because the name is so bad? Yes. Here's an example : Snickers. Were lazy fat people refusing to buy the sporty-named Marathon? No. Are there people refusing to buy the rediculously-named Snickers? Yes.>

Of course, sometimes the opposite is true. MasterCard symbols had been on Access for years. When you took your Access abroad, the Access name meant nothing. MasterCard is what did the business. Only a few places even issued the things in the first place. Most other places gave straight Visa or MasterCard.

It could be argued that it's the same for the other brand names; in other countries they have different names. But Coca Cola has no trouble with such things. If there was a Coke sign written in Martian, then just as many Coke drinkers would recognise it as an English one. It's the same with anything else. If the packaging says Snickers by design, that's great. Was there a big problem with this? People going on holiday and being unable to buy a Marathon?

What's much more likley to annoy people is pointless change. Supermarkets that constantly move stock around seem to think people will buy more as they have to go down every aisle. What it does is annoy people. It's the same with bad advertising. Werther's Original adverts are so bad, I know of people who refuse to buy them because of the adverts. I can only think of Hi! as a name that's put me off a product.

It's when advertisers think they know what's cool that makes me hate a product even more. They seem to be constantly doing stuff which was never cool, but in the adveriser's warped minds represents it. They pick out words which were either never cool to say, or ones your great-grandmother can remember going out of fashion. Tip to advertisers: cool is the universal constant. Cool is always cool. Yoghurt drinks, pencil cases etc are NOT cool, if

1. They say how cool they are all over them
2. They are advertised by cartoon skateboarders
3. They are just another clone of the competitor's product
4. You use the word "Yo!"
5. You say so, but have no reason why

If you need to see a cool product that's described as cool, see Cool Edit. This is the rare exception that proves the rule. Cool Edit is cool because

1. If you're working with sound, it's as essential as Paint Shop Pro is to images
2. The effects it has are quite cool
3. It doesn't overdo the cool factor. It's called Cool Edit. It doesn't keep reminding you how cool it is, except through performing cool functions
4. It doesn't try to have a "cool" user interface, pretending to be something it's not.

Not that there's anything wrong with a genuinely cool interface. MetaCreations do it all the time. Their only crime of coolness is their Dance Studio, or whatever. That claims to be "really cool software" and isn't. Their other stuff is exceptionally cool (I did my 3D with it) and does not say it.

In conclusion, it's all Marketing's fault and they should be eliminated.