“Yeah can I see those headphones?”
“Which ones sir?”
“Those .. there on the right .. the umm.bmmm..ymm”
“What? I couldn’t hear you .. do u mean the Bhattacharya ones ?”
“Yeah .. those .. give it to me”
Lucky dog. This guy Amar Bose. Being a electrical engineer would have had no use for him had he been born Amar Bhattacharya. Who in the world would buy a sound system by that name? Can you imagine calling up the service center number of this company and they go “Welcome to Bhattacharya Corporation .. press 1 for technical assistance .. press 2 for placing an order” I would laugh for an hour if I heard that someone did name his company such. And I’am also not saying that Gupta Corp would name a good name. Even if it did manufacture fissile material shielding it would still sounds like a grocery store.
Some brand names just get lucky. If Steve Jobs had worked at a banana plantation and Beatles had not named their record “Apple” (yeah that’s the reason why Jobs called his corporation so) the story of i-Pod and Mac would have been different today. Imagine a white glowing, peeled, half eaten banana shining on the lid of the laptop. Except for monkeys no one would like that. “Hey did u see the i-phone?” “Yeah.. the one that Banana launched right”
No offense to you Banana Republic, your brand name stinks and so do your over-priced clothes.
And what is the deal with the brand- Tom Tom? I wouldn’t care less if they had named it Knock Knock. It sounds like a horse beating the African drums with it’s hoofs. No complaints about the GPS they make. It does a perfect job but couldn’t you think of a better name. Navigator? Path-Trak? Blip? Opto-Route? See, it took me 2 mins to think of four humane names. How hard can that be?
Snickers, it sounds more like a brand of under-wear than a candy bar. 7-up, sounds like 7 naked men surrounding a woman. Subway, unless you are selling turkey and chicken bred in the dark underground alleys, you have no right to retain such a misleading name. Once in Mumbai I asked a guy in the street “Excuse me, do you know where is the nearest Subway?” and his look changed from blank to bewilderment to contempt as if I was trying to make fun of Mumbai and said “Andheri Station is around the corner” but when I elaborated he said “Sorry, I don’t know”.
Axe, nice! For a male range of products you couldn’t think of a more masculine name than that? RPG’s, machete, hombre, sledgehammer huh?
Canon, add another ‘n’ and the camera can blow your mind. Literally. Why such a hostile name?
ASUS, ha ha ha ha ..really? That name?
Even in the automobile industry few names are very credible like General Motors (not that the company is credible anymore!), Ford Motors and even Honda and Toyota to some extent. But what’s with the tongue twisters and acronyms? Volkswagen (voks-va-gun or volk-sva-gun or vaulk-sva-gun or wyaaaa-wyaaaa-barf) and Lamborghini (don’t care how it’s pronounced but what is with the yellow color!) and the king of it all Porsche (phor-sha or por-shey or when I can’t afford one why the hell should I know how it’s pronounced). BMW just makes do with an acronym – Bring Me Woman but Broke My Wallet! and don’t even get me started on Volvo.
Brand names attract a lot of slur but I guess that the acid test they go through make them market-proof but then again the H2SO4 I carry around is of a slightly higher concentration. Skeptical or not, some of these do offer a laugh in the boring aisles of Walmart or HEB.
“Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha”
“What happened there?”
“Nothing. I just found a pack of frozen vegetable called Apetits. If that’s how they call it”
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