Silent brands

I have been talking to a number of people about brands with silent names. Not sure if I am on to something or its a blind ally. The theory is that a number of new companies launched within the web 2.0 world have names that consumers only type or email. These are not spoken word brands, they exist only on keyboards. For example years ago I can remember feeling a complete nob when i described the then new sportsware firm NIKE as 'nick' in public. The current joy in street talk mispronunciation does not help. But who is to say how you pronounce: del.ici.ous or how you speak about; zopa or shozu or etsy or qoop or ziki or notcot.org or so many other companies that in a rush to find a URL didn't think that outside of blogland, some consumers meet up in things called pubs and talk about  the nonsense of life. such conversations are of the non-inhibiting type and there fore something that is going to make me look a tosser is of the menu. I may email you a link to plazes but i'll be buggerd if i'm going to risk social ridicule mispronouncing it in public.

Comments

[jean]

Love your post. On pronunciation: NOTCOT - is pronounced phonetically to sound like "not caught" (although the meaning has nothing to do with that per say)... figure it can't get any easier to say, and would actually be quite a challenge to pronounce otherwise (but i'd love to hear other variations)

And between us - NOTCOT's origin was from the time of free hotbot (the search engine) email addresses and lack of sleep during highschool, where i ended up with notcot@hotbot.com, simply because it rhymed a la dr.seuss styled 1st grade readers. =)