New: Cynapsus

Once upon a time – oh, about two years ago – Mary Jo Martin went out on her own. She created a company called Knowledge-Based Marketing. You’ve seen some of the joint efforts she and I have created, like the disaster communications research study here.

Presto-Change-O! Knowledge-Based Marketing is now Cynapsus. (Magical, ain’t it?)

Martin’s business model changed. Knowledge-hyphen-Based Marketing seemed right two years ago. Today, Martin doesn’t really do marketing. She has increasingly and successfully concentrated on multi-faceted market research.

At the same time (after two years in business) her organization became successful enough to be confused with another company called “KnowledgeBase (no hyphen, no “D”) Marketing,” a large business unit of the even larger Wunderman international marketing communications agency.

Knowledge-Based Marketing…isn’t.

This Wunderman business unit – it never registered with the Texas Secretary of State. I guess those big agency types figured they didn’t need to. Maybe it’s not too surprising: Wunderman is part of WPP, a hugeous multinational agency group with so many operating units, even the ad mags can’t keep track of them.

Martin’s smaller company passed unnoticed (except by her clients) for a couple dozen months. But then, people started to call Martin instead of Wunderman. They asked Martin about mailing lists, which the Wunderman group sells. Very annoying, specially since Martin doesn’t do lists either.

It’s time for a change and Martin has made it.

The old name was quite serious but boring. Way too much is happening in our marketplaces today to be boring. So first, Mark Rothenburg pitched in to invent a whole new name for her firm. Rothenberg believes (with quite a bit of justification) that arbitrary or fanciful names offer the best choice of protection and securing a trademark.

Now Martin says:

Cynapsus describes the left-brain thinking that we apply to our many market research projects…the analytical thinking that helps our clients move from the research findings to activity. (Hear those synapses firing yet?) Cynapsus is about asking the right questions of the right people at the right time. We even included the question mark in our new logo – because we want people to ask us what we’re all about. Cynapsus moves clients from data to knowledge to action – exactly the way your own synapses move you into action when your brain has assembled all the data you need. Cynapsus is also about connections. That’s what the word “synapse” actually means. We’re the connection between you and your customers, the connection between you and your prospects.

I got the opportunity to counsel Martin on her new logo and color scheme – we aimed for something that combined “distinctive” with “professional.”

When Martin had her new logomark created, this question mark got right to the point of her business, with a dash of sass. The burgundy color scheme makes for a grounded, corporate look.

I’m just as pleased with the new Cynapsus website. Feel free to drop in…and compliment her on the photograph we used: an attractive payoff to the Kurt Vonnegut line, “New knowledge is one of the most valuable commodities on earth.”

A lot of companies frame their first dollar and hang it on their walls. Mary Jo gets a whole new moniker – a nifty and distinctive brand.

Logo Conceited

Certainly you recognize the logo above. Its owner leaps right to the front of your mind, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Perhaps not.

You know I usually steer clear of overt criticism. On the other hand, of the dozens if not hundreds of logo marks for which I have been the Creative Director in the past 30 years, I don’t recall even recommending a candidate and a brand that’s been this…pretentious.

Maybe “arcane” is a kinder word. It’s a cuneiform inscription: the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” That’s the gloss which many scholars have put upon it. It is taken from a clay tablet written about 2300 BC in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

The glyph and the word Amagi also serves as the imprint for all Liberty Fund books: an imprint that brings the past 100 years' classics of liberal economic and political theory to life for today’s college students, according to the website. You can find works that aren’t considered classics. However, the Liberty Fund considers them important to understanding a society of free and responsible individuals.

I won’t cast tablets at the organization’s intention. Based in Indianapolis, The Liberty Fund is a privately held educational foundation founded in 1960 by Pierre F Goodrich. When he died, he left much of his fortune to encourage the study of the ideal of a free society. The foundation develops, supervises and finances activities “to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring issues pertaining to liberty.”

Well and good. But somebody, perhaps Goodrich himself, came up with this cuneiform logo and name. It is more than a little obscure, an academic curiosity that doesn’t transmit anything to the viewer except, “What the heck is that?” So the website helpfully explains it. That’s a body blow for any logo mark.

Yes, I do understand: every logo has to start somewhere. And I haven’t walked a mile in the Amagi logo mark creator’s shoes, especially since the creator is 4,500 years deceased. Passed on. Joined the Choir Invisible back when Sumer ruled supreme in Mesopotamia.

How many people really know that the BMW mark is a spinning white propeller blade against a blue sky? It reflects the origins of BMW as a maker of military aircraft engines for the Germans during World War I – but it’s associated today with outstanding motor vehicles. How about the Nike “swoosh?” It represents the wing of the eponymous Greek goddess. It first appeared in 1971 and has been gradually simplified as its frame increased. “Run fast,” it says.

So I do come from the school that says a logo ought to tell a story, even if it takes a few years for it to catch on (if ever). Most logos never make it to the Big Show: a common, even universal understanding that a particular mark stands for a specific brand like P&G’s moon-and-stars. Coca-Cola’s script. Disney’s Magic Kingdom castle.

Advertising what your logo stands for is really quite an important step, telling its story and wrapping it around your own.

Amagi, however, may just contentedly sit there being obscure. To be fair, the Amagi imprint does come up in the first two Google listings. (Several other listings point out that amagi means “heavenly castle” in Japan, being both the name of a city and a World War II Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier of the Unryū class – never deployed.)

You have to be acquainted with the brand name Amagi before you can look it up. Correct?

I wouldn’t have know about amagi at all save for its particular mention in a superb new book by Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World. It’s a fine, engaging history, let me tell you, with enough interleaved humor to help you realize this is one smart author with wide-ranging interests. I wouldn’t say 777 pages is a quick read although I’m already halfway through it. I recommend it strongly.

In addition to pointing out that the cuneiform marks were snapped up by the Liberty Fund, “simply proving that no good social reform goes unexploited,” (page 93), Bauer also remarks that the term amagi is arguably the first time the idea of “freedom” shows up in human written language. She notes (as does the Liberty Fund site) that amagi literally means “return to the mother.”

That is, the ruler of Lagash intended to return his kingdom to an earlier state, one that is more pure, “the state of justice intended by the gods.”

With this knowledge in mind, we could say that the Liberty Fund logo mark really means, “When you get tired of reading our books, go home to your momma.”

I am exaggerating for effect. Every company has the right to portray itself the way it likes. This cuneiform idea, however, is too precious. Maybe I just don’t have clients who are classically educated enough to appreciate the oddball nature of this brand name and logo mark. On the other hand, who knew what “Google” stood for when it was introduced?

Or maybe my clients recognize that we aren’t playing around outside the walls of academia. The Nike swoosh may have come from the Winged Victory of Samothrace, but it really means “I can beat you with one foot in a cast.”

Free Chocolate

I suppose it’s inevitable that Barbara and I would be exposed as the older-than-Pizza-Hut’s-Market people that we are. We both misunderstood the flyer that came attached to the pizza delivered to our door last night. A bright green oblong was titled thusly in great big red letters: TURN THIS CERTIFICATE INTO A FREE* CHOCOLATETM by LG.

A great big Pizza Hut logo was right underneath, followed by tiny little type with double asterisks that said, “See back for details and restrictions.”

Both of us thought there was some sort of chocolate candy on offer. Being fond of it, I read a bit further and discovered that Pizza Hut was promoting the new cellphone by LG, in conjunction with Verizon Wireless. If you buy a “Cheesy Bites” or any large pizza, and if you activate a two-year customer agreement with the aforesaid wireless service provider, you can get this neat new gizmo.

Two challenges confront me about this. First, I was hoping for chocolate, the real stuff, sweet and likely not good for me. I’m not the only one who misunderstood this offer right off the top of the box:

“I didn't see the Verizon part of the title at first which led me to believe that Pizza Hut was unveiling a new telephone-shaped dessert,” posted by mst3kzz on Fat Wallet.com; and “I thought at first I was getting a chocolate phone I could eat,” posted by BoNg420, same place.

Okay – I’m out of the swim when it comes to new technologies and forgot that “Chocolate” is one of the new, cute brand names that are floating around in the marketplace. (One look at the people pictured on the Pizza Hut website assures me that I am at least 30 years outside Pizza Hut’s demographic.)

Second, though, I wonder about trademark issues. I have always been taught (and have therefore generally practiced) that a trademark is an adjective, to be used when defining a noun. Here, “Chocolate” – even when followed by a TM – is used as a noun. A careful reader would discover the adjectival usage only in the fifth line of extraordinarily tiny type on the back of the flyer: “Get a free LG Chocolate phone…”

“Escalator” and “Cellophane” lost their trademark status because these words became so well known that they were universally used as nouns. Johnson & Johnson almost lost “Band-Aid” the same way, and went to extraordinary lengths to begin protecting the trademark, even changing its wonderful jingle at the time.

Today, J&J carefully refers to its product as BAND-AID® BRAND ADHESIVE BANDAGES.

J&J does it; Coca-Cola doesn’t. Neither does LG or even Pizza Hut, itself a registered trademark. Who’s right? Well – of course it’s the lawyers…whom in 30+ years of advertising experience I’ve never known to be consistent.

The Federal government, which grants trademarks, doesn’t appear to issue a standard in this regard. But the HTML Writers Guild does state, “A trademark or service mark is always an adjective – never a noun or a verb – and always begins with a capital letter.” And the danger of misuse is worth quoting from this website:

While these distinctions may sound like insignificant details, consider the plight of Otis Elevator Company. Years ago, that company produced an advertisement with a similar error in the copy, certainly a detail nobody deemed momentous at the time. However, that one sentence in that one ad helped Otis lose its trademark: Escalator. (See my mention above.) So now any manufacturer of moving staircases can call their products escalators. You’ll want to avoid making this costly mistake with your trademarks, so if in doubt, err on the side of over-protection.

So I ask LG, Pizza Hut and Verizon Wireless: What’s your thinking here? Any answers? I’d appreciate hearing the rationale for presuming that “Chocolate” is anything other than a sweet.