Tuesday 17 March 2015

I'll put a Spell on Yoo

Now don't get me wrong, I love a good play on words and am very happy to see commercial enterprises do the same. In fact, they always bring a smile to my face and build a confidence that the business is being run by a real human being.

I'd be very happy to pop in here for my 5-yearly groom. I think they are based in Higher Barnett.

And I'd be happy to entrust Mr Spruce's Company to clean the upholstery knowing they weren't "Born to Ruin".

Or get some heavy lifting done by the muscles from Brussels.
Mind you, sometimes the pun may not be intentional and I was once stuck behind this local driving instructor:



Anyway, be that as it may. What I DO find infuriating is when Companies pick brand names which are simply mis-spelt on purpose using the theory that a badly-spelt name is a memorable name. They don't have the elegance or wit of the pun - just a lazy and annoying transposition of a letter or two which some 22 year old creative in London on £165,000 per annum has "blue skied" to a focus group.





In the olden days, people used to use the name "AAA Taxis" or "Aarvaark Security" to come up on the first page of the telephone directory. Now the Global internet market has made things so much more complicated the desire to stand out from the crowd involves eye-wateringly complex Search Engine Optimization algorithms. This results in a plethora of annoying brand names such as "Tumbr", "flickr" and "reddit" plus daft messing with capitalisation such as "iPhone" or "eBay". About as creative as tipping over a Scabble board.

In My Glorious Rule the use of silly spelling will be illegal (along with the non-use of indicators to change lane or writing the words "inbox me"). 

However, my theory is that this practice will knock itself out through over-use and it is the correctly spelled names which will stand out in the future. Two or three generations have now been born into a World where "CU Mund arvo hun lol xx" is a meaningful sentence and switching a "C" to a "K" or sticking a random capital in the miDdle of a wOrd will look positively dull. Then they'll be F.C.U.K'd.


11 comments:

Tim said...

'Curl up & Dye' is good, although it doesn't necessarily send the best message. Similarly, we have a local glazier called 'Pane in the Glass'.

Rog said...

That's a cracker Tim!

Unknown said...

Good blog RDHP

Anonymous said...

I remember as students we always giggled when we saw the van marked "Erection Supervisor".

Unknown said...

Some years ago we saw an office in a Norfolk town (I think it was a firm of accountants) which called itself Diss Services.
My youngsters then invented a car game, which relied on the same device. The football team of the town, which had never really mastered the team spirit was called Diss United. Etc, etc.

Martin said...

Did you deliberately misspell "Tumblr" Rog?

Anonymous said...

too funny :D

Rog said...

Al: Cheers Mr T.!

Sablon: Honi sois qui mal y pense!

Mike: I hunted back for my blog entry which included 150 Diss puns but fortunately couldn't find it!

Martin: No but I should claim credit for double layer punning.

Gab: G:D ! (=G'Day)

Nota Bene said...

There's an office seating showroom here called Assmann...but I'm not sure that's deliberate. Anyway, just off to buy some Stiglets in memory of Top Gear...

Z said...

Could you ban 'diarise' as well, please? As well as a few other unwisely verbed nouns.

Pat said...

A hairdresser I once knew - posh stylist really - told me about a fellow stylist trying to find a name for the salon and hesuggested 'ackem at Zackam's.
Mr Zackham was not amused.