The selection of a tradename is important, especially if it is to be a long lasting one - which you obviously hope when setting up the business.   Many well known companies have names created from acronyms...but did you know?

ASDA is a contraction of Associated Dairies

ODEON is created by the initials of Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation (Oscar Deutsch was the founder)

QANTAS from Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Services

SABENA (now no more) Société Anonyme Belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation Aérienne

3M, slightly differently from Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company

BMi Baby interestingly pronounced be my baby, formed from BMI being the initials of British

Midland and an I, which actually never stood for anything.

Do you have any examples?  Let us know, click here.

Russell Ison | 16 May 2009 | Want to comment?

Hazel Blears quote "You Tube if you want to", in reference to Gordon Brown's use of the You Tube website, has provided her boss with considerable publicity.    Those who follow the news can be only too well aware that the statement on MP's expenses was broadcast using the web rather than other more conventional, or parliamentary, methods.

The BBC managed to make a strange connection on Newswatch this morning, saying that it was an attempt to attract a wide audience in the same way that the TV show Britain's Got Talent had managed to, with more than fifty million views of the show's contestant Susan Boyle.

The one fundamental difference is that people want to see Susan Boyle but they are not that worried about viewing Gordon Brown.    

You Tube does provide a useful gauge of popularity: the number of people who have viewed the clip.   As of 0815hrs this morning:

Susan Boyle singing I dreamed a dream 73,965,101 (aggregated)

Gordon Brown talking about MP expenses 50,847

Gordon Brown picking his nose 399,250

I think politicians have a way to go yet to understand the power of You Tube.

Russell Ison | 8 May 2009 | Want to comment?

This week saw the last parking meter in Central London removed from the streets.   Originally introduced in the UK in Mayfair in 1958, the last one was plucked from the tarmac in nearby Warwick Square on Wednesday.

The story was reported by a writer for the appropriate trade magazine, Parking Review.   This is one of many interesting trade publications I have come across this week which have included Recycling Today Magazine and the rather dubiously titled Worm Digest.

The popular satirical quiz show Have I Got News For You? has given a wide audience to some of the less well-known trade titles and the headline game has promoted many unusual magazines.   The most obscure that I regularly see is Passenger Terminal World.  

Do you know or read a really strange titlled magazines?   Let us know.

Russell Ison | 8 May 2009 | Want to comment?

A letter in Saturday's Daily Telegraph, from a William Hill of Nottingham made me smile and reminded me that, having the basic skills before harnessing the technology available to us (see earlier blog), has a flip side.

Mr Hill had received an unsolicited letter from a potential

supplier of public relations services, wanting to charge him for improving his company's image and how it is perceived by his clients.   The letter started "Dear [First Name]".

The moral of this, and the previous blog is simple.   Modern technology enhances the basic skills we have as well as emphasising our basic ability to get things wrong.   It is insufficient to say the computer got it wrong; it's a human who controls it.   Be careful with technology -It can backfire!

Russell Ison | 5 May 2009 | Want to comment?

Has the public relations department of Transport for London (TfL) upset the BBC?    Whilst product placement is not yet allowed on British television there are some inevitable exceptions.   The BBC soap Eastenders has a London Underground station, Walford East, as part of its set and, unavoidably, there is extensive props and branding which must have been supplied by TfL.   You would have thought

it reasonable that there was a balance between depicting TfL realistically and showing them in a good light.  

Why then, in Monday's episode, in one scene did a whiteboard easel in the booking hall show a service bulletin denoting delays on every line and a handwritten sign showing that the automated ticket machine was out of order?

Or perhaps TfL accepts that this a reasonable depiction of their service these days?

Russell Ison | 3 May 2009 | Want to comment?

The recent appearance by Lush on BBC1's The Apprentice has been seized upon by the Poole-based company for relentless marketing.

Normally on the reality programme, those businesses that become tied up with the, rather poor performing, contestants get at least a name check by "Suralan" himself but oddly not for Lush.  They had to make do with a couple of shots of partially-concealed logos on the outside of the factory.   They have not been so shy with their post-programme marketing with numerous references to it - including "We were hired" signs on billboards outside their stores all over the UK.   They have also introduced some special lines in honour of the programme (based on the sugar pun).  Additionally they did an Apprentice-style exercise by locking their managers in a hotel in Bournemouth to come up with a new product  (it was called Grease Lightning by the way).  

Sadly our quirky retailers are becoming fewer. The Body Shop, perhaps pioneer of quirk, is now a sub-brand of a characterless multi-national business, Innocent drinks has sold out to a superbrand.   Quirky needs supporting.  At least take a look at their website or, when passing one of their stores pop in and pick up a copy of Lush Times.

Russell Ison | 2 May 2009 | Want to comment?

This morning's Times carries a report about a new study by Sir Jim Rose, a former head of Ofsted, which proposes that "Four-year-olds need to play, not write their names".   The study suggests that literacy goals which ask children to write their own names and other things such as labels and captions, and begin to form simple sentences were "overly ambitious".   Children should be able to learn more through "guided play" - whatever that is.

Poppycock, Sir Jim!   Absolute poppycock!

All I can say is I am glad I went to school when I did in the early seventies when strong, basic education was the absolute cornerstone of everything we did at school.   I remember, vividly, one morning when I was five, being kept in from playtime until I understood the difference between "too", "to" and "two".   I remember the sense of achievement when I got it right.   The deprivation of a few minutes of playtime did me no harm.   In fact, far from it.   If it hadn't been

moments like that, and the use of two brilliant English grammar books which are probably out of print now, deemed unfashionable, called Word Perfect and Better English, I would not now be earning my living from communication.   Regular Monday morning spelling tests, feared at the time, but which I prepared for by sitting at the end of the kitchen, while my mum prepared tea, reciting the spelling of words by rote, means I can now spell accommodation and I know the difference between allowed and aloud.

Education is too important to tinker with and to introduce fads.   Basic "three Rs" are essential to whatever else we do in life.    A few moments of lost playtime is a small price to pay for being able to count and communicate.

Russell Ison | 30 April 2009 | Want to comment?

In 1930 my grandfather took the photograph to the left.  It is of the old Palais du Trocadéro, built for the 1878 World's Fair, through the arch formed by the western foot of the Eiffel Tower.  

The old Palais was demolished to make way for the current Palais de Chaillot, built for the Exposition Internationale of 1937.   The Exposition would have been vainly optimistic as the storm clouds of the Second World War gathered over Europe.

In 1930, I imagine my grandfather taking the photograph using the sort of box camera which had a viewfinder in the top that you looked down into to make the composition.   It probably had a well-worn leather case (he was a ubiquitous photographer).  

As an extremely proficient and skilled artist the photograph is of course, beautifully composed.

When in Paris last year, I recreated the photograph.  This time it was taken using a Canon Digital SLR camera.   The definition in the photograph may be much sharper but the composition makes the picture and that is entirely down to the artistic eye of my grandfather nearly eighty years ago.

The two photographs have since been printed on to canvas with great skill and consideration by The Hiscock Gallery, Southsea.   A pair hang in my office and a pair hang in my father's sitting room.   The modern technology which has been used in the creation of the second image and in the reproduction of them on canvas would, I am sure, have amazed my grandfather.    He was a pioneering user of silk screen as an artistic medium; I could not help but think of the similarities between silk screen printing on canvas and the reproduction of his 1930 photograph on canvas in 2009.

The point of all this is simple.   Whatever technology supports our creative abilities, they are worthless without the fundamental skill needed to create the work in the first place.    Digital cameras are great but the composition is the important part; word processors are useful tools for authors, but they need to be able to write something with them for the word processor to be valuable.

Modern technology is useful; skill is more important.

Russell Ison | 29 April 2009 | Want to comment?

In a fantastic seizure of a PR opportunity, do have a look at the report on the BBC News website (by clicking here).   A bull escaped from a local market in Ballinrobe, County Mayo, Ireland and made for Cummins SuperValu supermarket.   He was caught on CCTV, as was the attempt by staff to capture him using a supermarket trolley.

Hot on the bull's tail was its owner, who is seen pursuing it into the supermarket before turning round very quickly and being pursued out of the supermarket by the bull.   Neither human nor bull was injured in the incident.

In an interview, supermarket owner John Cummins comments that there are few other stores which could boast such fresh beef.   Nice one John!

For good measure, and because he deserves it, we give a free link to Cummins Supervalu's website here.   If you ever find yourself in Ballinrobe, pop in and buy something.   They're good at PR!

Russell Ison | 25 April 2009 | Want to comment?

My comments on the Union Jack (see Happy birthday Jack below) has prompted Mark Speed to challenge my comments about the use of Union Jack and Union Flag.   The resplendent BEA livery seen on this BAC One Eleven (left) incorporated part of the national flag of the United Kingdom as its tailfin.   This was referred to as a Speed Jack, (compared to the Speedmarque employed today by BEA's successor British Airways).

And so the question is can an aircraft fly a Union Jack, rather than a Union Flag?  

In 1909, Bleriot, the godfather of aviation, landed near Dover Castle on the first crossing of the English Channel by an aircraft.   On his arrival he was met by a Customs Officer who served him with a declaration for a private yacht, there not yet being any civil service paperwork for use by aircraft (by the way that has now changed!).   And so the aircraft was treated as an ocean going vessel.   Using that definition, introduced ninety years ago this year by HM Customs and Excise, I think we can agree with Mark Speed that aircraft can indeed fly a Union Jack!

Russell Ison | 20 April 2009 | Want to comment?

Today is the birthday of the Union Flag.   A decree of 12 April 1606 created the flag, a combination of the flags of St George to represent England (and Wales by implication) and the Saltire, the flag of St Andrew, for Scotland.  It was not until the Act of Union in 1801 that the cross of St Patrick was added to represent the Kingdom of Ireland.

The new Union Flag was not used generally for long; King Charles I declared in 1636  that it was only to be flown from ships of his navy.   It received more general use after 1707.

It is of course the Union Flag.   The Union Jack is the name to which it is referred when flying from the jack staff of a ship and at no other time.

Russell Ison | 12 April 2009 | Want to comment?