When clicked, it takes you to the same Twitter Search (internal) view for that keyword phrase as any other Trending Topic would, only now the top tweet is the “Sponsored Tweet”, which presumably also comes up if you were to type in the search yourself.

So far, so good, as this set-up folds in the ad as unobtrusively as possible into the user experience, a feat that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore called ingenious in a CNN.com post he wrote about the new system.

I’d point out that while it may be necessary to do things this way, there is likely a reduction in response, i.e. the click-through on the actual ad, which represents the second click already. As a rule of thumb, assume 50% drop in response for any additional step in your Web efforts).

And Twitter will likely play things close to the vest as far as additional click results from the Retweets that can happen around the Sponsored Tweet, so we won’t know whether that alone can make the considerable cost of the promoted trends/sponsored tweets worthwhile.

But the real problem is this. Look at what can show up right below the promoted tweet, based on Twitter’s own Retweet-count-based popularity surfacing:

Probably NOT the brand experience that Pixar was aiming for. The tweet by movie critic Roger Ebert might only cost some 3D revenue, but the 4th tweet is slightly reminiscent of the PR disaster (around larbor/fair trade) for Nestle on Facebook some weeks back.

As you can see, that tweet may very well have gone nearly as viral as the promoted one! Definitely food for thought as brands shift more and more advertising online and into social media.

One bonus oddity I recorded from Twitter yesterday: Due to the instability of the platform during the massive World Cup server and internal data center network loads, Twitter has shut down the Profile Cards, and Geo-Location pop-up functionality to lighten that load. As well as intermittently, the Trending Topics…so that only the “promoted trend” was left in the sidebar:

Harmless for now, but user annoyance might grow if this were to continue. Either way, we can say that Twitter’s Status Blog has been busy again…

iPad/iSlate/iTablet/etc., heir to the iPhone, destroyer of lesser technology gadgets?!

The name is not the only thing that has been a closely, and purposefully guarded secret:

The blogosphere and assorted Old Media outlets have over the last few months progressively worked themselves into a tizzy over the key questions surrounding Steve Job’s next mysterious, almost Grail-like product.

Like, how big will it be? How much will it cost? How many men died during its construction?

Kidding on that last one, though not by much…

All of this is of course utterly predictable in light of Apple’s tightly constructed Archetype Branding strategy that I’ve been writing about since the iPhone wave. Secrecy is such that the Tablet so far as only appeared indirectly, as a quasi digital ghost.

Pairing Steve Job’s “Wizard of Oz” character (The Wizard archetype, coming out from behind the curtains – i.e. secrecy – with the newest technological marvel), with The Enigma archetype inherent in this elaborate charade, is creating a launch atmosphere unlike just about anything else in current business, or show business for that matter.

Of Wizards, Grails, And Zeigarnik Effects?!

Not only does mystery draw on this powerful archetype, but, just in case you prefer more scientific approaches, the so-called Zeigarnik Effect also explains the draw of an unresolved, “open” loop that has entered your consciousness. Somewhat dependent upon personality, you are likely to feel a strong urge of just having to know.

This explains why even many months ago, bloggers and journalists alike could seemingly not help themselves but to write about the mystical Tablet. And of course from the very beginning, that is just how Apple wanted it.

Even now, well after midnight in the U.S., there are thousands of tweets on Twitter every few minutes expounding one rumored aspect or the next:

Some have even argued that Apple will deliberately sprinkle out little bits of information mixed with misinformation to stoke the fire.

Whatever Jobs will be presenting on Wednesday, and by whatever name it will be called, all eyes will be simultaneously oriented toward “The Great Unveiling”. Compare this natural feeding frenzy to the rather humdrum affairs that Google or Microsoft had given us of late.

Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone launch a few weeks ago was hardly the stuff of legend with its persistent minimalism. And by the time Windows 7 was finally officially launched, so many public Alpha, Beta, and minor tech celebrity testers had already rummaged through every nook and cranny of the operating system AND written about their findings, that it was hardly news anymore.

Now, a sheer endless parade of blog posts and articles has already been written about the Apple Tablet. But those have all been speculation, rumor, and innuendo! (“Will it be a Kindle killer?” “Will it be a Play Station Portable (PSP) killer?” etc. etc.)

The open loop was NEVER closed!

As if any more titillation were necessary, the issue of Jobs’ ongoing illness/recovery and speculation that this may well be his last new product launch as Master of Ceremonies… I mean CEO. And that he therefore will have brought all of his human and, some would speculate, super-human powers of invention, design obsession, and stage craft to bear in this his final Magnum Opus.

Even now we hear whispers: Did he really say that this Tablet “will Be The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Done.” Did he? Would he? Can the poor computer thing possibly live up to this level of hype?

Robert Scoble indeed asks if the event can even still be covered in ways that news media, journalists, and bloggers have become accustomed to over the years. Or if we need an entirely new, “curated”, meta-experience to fully appreciate the unfolding of this new reality.

And therein lies the only drawback and potential danger of such a tightly choreographed affair:

All of the pieces have to be in place (when Jobs got sick and was absent from one of these launches, the magic was clearly lacking). And when they are, a deep connection and expectation is formed in people’s psyches that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to live up to.

Beware the pitfalls of this form of powerful Archetype Branding!

I wrote a while ago that the attempt at humor had fallen flat precisely because Microsoft’s “The Powerbroker” archetype had been so deeply entrenched, almost literally burned into the mind of the consumer for decades. Did things get any easier from there?

The next salvo a few months ago featured the “I’m a PC” ads which cast Microsoft (by way of its supposed users) as a strange mixture of proud/aggressive and defiant/sulking. It was pointed out then that “Microsoft as Victim” just doesn’t really work. And again, the archetype branding explains why: You cannot be “The Powerbroker” and still garner much sympathy for supposedly having been wronged.

This same theme was picked up once more recently with the “not cool enough for a Mac” ad featuring a girl named Lauren, which really was meant to focus on price as an angle to attack the notoriously premium-priced “Mac” products. In theory the idea of highlighting one of your competitor’s weaknesses (price) is workable, especially during a severe recession. But you cannot do it while violating your core archetypes.

If Microsoft had said something like, “we are the largest software company on the planet, and because of that we can create economies of scale in the production of PCs and their loading with software that much smaller competitors like Apple just cannot match, thus saving you money”, it would have made some sense.

But not with this passive-aggressive jabbing built in. It confuses people. Instinctively, no one takes it seriously when the 800 pound gorilla complains about having “unfairly” been called “not cool enough”.

And then Microsoft recently launched another ad in the series that went all wrong yet again. Silicon Alley Insider explains why:

Jackson [the kid] mentions offhand he wants “a good gaming computer.” This is a fantastic line of attack for Microsoft: The Mac has a tiny library of professionally produced games compared to what’s on PCs [...] But Microsoft fumbles the ball, and doesn’t follow through with what’s arguably their best anti-Mac selling point after “PCs are cheaper.”

Instead, Jackson’s mom makes an incredibly off-target anti-Apple smear: Checking out the Macs, she says “they’re kind of popular with this age.” Umm, no. Kids can’t afford Mac prices or appreciate Mac build quality. Far better for Microsoft to stick with [...] Macs are kind of popular with hip adults, but expensive.

So the theme of hurt feelings clouding Microsoft’s positioning and marketing continues. In truth, as the incumbent and still near monopolist (85-90% share despite Apple’s recent inroads) in the personal computer market, Microsoft would do better not to mention “Mac” at all.

“The Powerbroker” archetype by definition can choose to ignore the much smaller competitor. Reacting to any perceived slight only makes people wonder what is going on.

But the branding confusion gets even more pronounced with the recent launch of a new series of Microsoft ads featuring a strange mixture of low key scrap-booking and CEO interview voice-overs, punctuated by a slogan of “Microsoft – The People Ready Business”:

First, scrap-booking is not exactly associated with CEOs. And the overall informal tone of the ads only heightens the confusion. While we can understand in principle where they were trying to go with this, softening up the image, making CEOs cool somehow as they are buying into the “people ready business” message, it just doesn’t work.

Why? Again because it violates “The Powerbroker” archetype attributions of which our mental image of a CEO is a prime example. It will never really fit with “The Loyalist” archetype (buddy/friendship/etc.) that is being angled for here. Your CEO will never quite be your buddy, unless you are on the board of directors or something like that (or maybe work at Zappos).

What’s the end result? Ads that don’t work, that don’t “stick” in your or anyone else’s mind, because they are just too confusing. Microsoft has tried a number of times in the past to bring “The Loyalist” archetype into its marketing (MS Office as your buddy brand at work, etc.), and it never really worked too well then either.

So what’s the solution? 1) Figure out who you are first, what archetypes make sense for you, what you truly want to stand for. 2) Communicate that consistently, without fail. If you did your homework in step 1), it should in fact be HARD to get step 2) wrong.

In Microsoft’s case, it should simply embrace that which it already is, “The Powerbroker”. It has served it exceedingly well in the B2B (Business-To-Business) realm, because “The Powerbroker” is something virtually every business person understands and intuitively respects.

Notice that most of its software has been sold to other BUSINESSES first, even if it ends up on the consumer’s home PC, or their computer at work. Why mess with that out of a sense of hurt corporate ego?

While the competition is fun to follow, especially if your favorite team or alma mater is still in the running, I’d like to draw your attention to some factors in play, hidden in plain sight if you will, that add to the excitement:

While there are countless multi-round tournaments in any number of sports, only the NCAA has evolved a truly outstanding "portfolio" of brand names surrounding the tournamant and its stages, each of which make use of the principles of good brand names (first discussed here), foremost of the principle of "rhythm, rhyme, and speakability" including by way of alliteration:

First there is the already mentioned "March Madness" to describe the entire procedure. Then there are the named tournament rounds, the "Sweet Sixteen" (what is sometimes called a 1/8 final), the "Elite Eight" quarter-final, and the lastly the "Final Four" semi-final.

Note that in large part due to the alliterations, the NCAA terms roll of the tongue much more so than the traditional, generic terms.

Now you may be saying, "why does this matter so much, I don’t even care about basketball…"

It matters because enjoyment derived from saying a brand name is a strong predictor of the both the viral success as well as the depth of imprint in the consumer’s mental real estate of that name. Making it enjoyable to repeat, to say or think more often, will accelerate the spread of a meme through a population, and embed it more thoroughly in the individual.

Rhythm and rhyme, including alliteration (which you could see as a form of front-loaded rhyme), are pleasant and also more memorable to our unconscious minds (that is the reason why you still remember most advertising jingles to this day).

It doesn’t hurt that each NCAA "brand name" is reasonably short, while also still being sufficiently descriptive/evocative of the things they are referring to.

In fact, they even take out some of the complexity of having to think of the somewhat confusing traditional "quarter-final", asf. terminology (number of teams left devided by 2), in favor of simply counting the number of teams still in the tournament. Simplicity is typically good. Simplicity wins.

Yet none of the names are too generic to hurt differentiation in your mental real estate. And they all are easily understood, requiring no spelling out (unlike this massive brand name failure). But the alliterations providing a certain rhythm and rhyme are ultimately the most important drivers in this case.

The end result is, more people talk about March Madness and its rounds, more often.

It is very likely that you were already familiar with these NCAA Tournament "brand names" EVEN IF you’re not particularly following basketball. Now that’s strong branding. You would do well to apply these powerful principles to your own brand naming.

If you can’t get all of them lined up for a given name, apply as many as you can. One thing we do know is, "March Madness" is a winner…

I consider this a must-read to get yourself back up-to-date on everything that has transpired over the past 3+ months behind the scenes, while we were all busy watching something else, the global financial melt-down, say.

It is almost precisely 1 year and 1 month to the day that Microsoft first launched its unsolicited buy-out bid, and you know the endless back-and-forth that ensued. What stands out is that as of today, while Yahoo’s stock has fallen from its pre-offer price of about $19 on 2/1/2008 to about $12 (and Jerry Yang was so maligned for not taking Ballmer’s offer that he ultimately resigned a few months ago), Microsoft’s stock has gone from $32 to now around $17 during that time!

If you do the math, that’s worse than Yahoo’s stock has done. So who still wants to argue that Ballmer would have really been much better at steering Yahoo (or really worse: the combined Micro-hoo “Franken-carrier”)? Which brings me back to the headline, and this quote from Blodget’s post that sums it all up very neatly:

Another six months of Microsoft Internet futility.  Last summer, Microsoft had been struggling to succeed online for 13 years, and it had only managed to run a distant third.  Now it has been struggling for 13 and a half years.  The company’s Internet branding, strategy, and organization is in its usual chaotic disarray.  Perhaps the new search head, stolen from Yahoo, can cut through the bureaucracy and fix everything.  After 13.5 years of a lot of talent and money being thrown at this problem, however, we wouldn’t hold our breath.

So the saga continues. The patient (Micro-hoo) indeed isn’t completely dead yet… but Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz now appears to have the upper hand in any negotiations from here on…

Note: In case you don’t recall how badly Microsoft’s branding in particular has been going, refresh your memory here. Branding is where it all begins, after all, how can you know what you should be doing if you don’t know who you are?! And hoping that an engineer like Lu, however talented, is going to fix branding and related woes is simply delusional.

You might also enjoy this post on complexity, and why even the 800 Pound Gorilla such as Microsoft cannot avoid it’s pernicious effects.

Pownce never reached the critical mass of Twitter despite having arguably better technology (though at the much lower user numbers a true load testing crucible like experienced by Twitter this year never happened), which prompted me to look into the branding aspects of this "failure to thrive":

While "Pownce" is by no means the worst Web 2.0 start-up name out there, it’s also far from ideal. The name SOUNDS good, but presents spelling problems. You don’t want your early adopter users and everyone else to have to spell your company or site name every time it is passed on. You may think that this seems like a minor detail, but for almost any Web start-up concerned with mass services, velocity of the spread of the idea is paramount.

Pownce also likely fell prey to what I call the "too cute by half syndrome", in that the name may relate to the posture/spelling of the hacker term "pwned", which means to "own a computer by root access through password hacking", and by extension just to "own someone or something" as in beating them thoroughly in a contest. So the name may have made for a cute geeky insider joke, but either way did little to advance the mission of the company to spread their micro-blogging service faster than its competitors (of which some like Twitter had a head-start).

The name also does little to describe or even merely allude to what the service was doing for its users, unlike Twitter, which with its name and bird imagery created a story in people’s minds that Twitter was about super short, rapid, distance-independent messages, which came to be known as "Tweets": The image of birds hectically twittering away to each other in a dizzying symphony of missives was concrete enough that more people hearing about and/or testing out Twitter almost instantly got the point.

Even though there are large numbers of people who test Twitter and subsequently think that Twitter is, well, for the birds, the point is not about a potential user ultimately liking the service, just whether the brand name immediately helped them get what was going on or not. This is the kind of thing that ultimately gets you awareness saturation, like being mentioned NIGHTLY on CNN, etc. (you can’t buy something as good as Anderson Cooper constantly mentioning your service, as in "check out our account on Twitter…").

(By the way, I am in the process of updating an original "Twitter for Business" private forum post of mine to put up on the blog, which explains about a dozen ways in which Twitter can be used advantageously for your business. Stay tuned.)

The English language already has the idiom of "the place was all atwitter with the news of the …" and similar constructions, further helping the meme of fast, rumor-like spreading of news to stick. "Pownce" evokes no such allusions, instead it at best brings up ideas of "pouncing" on prey. Not something that seems to have much to do with the goal of the service, which their slogan stated was: "We send stuff to our friends."

Again, I repeat, Pownce had some superior technology features compared to Twitter (including allowing the sending of image, audio, and video files, and several other value added features), but it failed to capitalize on it and grab mind and user share. This branding stuff really does matter!

The MacBooks’ launch did contain the familiar elements of Steve Jobs’ magician stagecraft, though there was a clear attempt to build up several other high-ranking Apple managers in the process, due to recent concerns and rumors regarding Jobs’ health.

But the biggest overall focus in this difficult economic environment seemed to be expected price-cuts and the overall pricing strategy. Specifically, whether the lowest-end MacBook would go below $1,000, or even down to $899.

While the latter hope didn’t materialize, the most entry level "old" MacBook (in white) was indeed lowered to $999, but not the new line of anodized aluminum housing, all-around-upgraded MacBooks. However, you shouldn’t underestimate what Apple has done here:

1) They have now "Air-ized" (after the aluminum housing of the ground-breaking MacBook Air) the entire MacBook/MacBook Pro line except for the close-out model "MacBook White". As Steve Jobs said, they should see some cost reductions from ramping up the novel unibody aluminum frame production in the next few quarters. So taking the entry-level Alu MacBook to $999 might happen sooner than some think.

2) While the cost for the new entry-level MacBooks for now has been kept at $1299, there is a lot of new technology that got pumped into it: iPod Touch multi-touch glass touchpad, led-backlit screen and longer battery life from the MacBook Air, a high-end graphics accelerator, etc. etc. So they’re establishing it as the "must-have-this-thing" item FIRST, in line with their branding as "The Creator/Innovator" archetype among other things, plus their high-end image.

3) The new MacBook line thereby becomes "aspirational", so that even if you can’t afford one right now, you still know you want one (if you were ever open to it at all). Then, when the prices get dropped further (see the iPhone price point development), everyone will think it’s a bargain by comparison.

But to do this you have to first credibly build it up at the higher price levels. I would NEVER expect Apple to forgo their brand equity and introduce brand new technology PLUS lower prices for that new technology at the same time.

With a consumer recession already going on or imminent, the 60+% of people who are truly affected by affordability aren’t Apple’s primary target market. AND they would be likely to delay purchase of ANYTHING right now regardless of price point (ask yourself if they all would buy the new aluminum MacBooks at $999 this instant – I doubt it).

Apple doesn’t need to be in the $400-700 notebook market for now, and if they want to be down the road, it is still advantageous for them to have established the higher price point value proposition. The price "anchor" this creates in the consumer’s mind is worth the somewhat reduced volume now. Then when you "drop in" the price cut at the point of maximum desirability (again, as was done with the iPhone), you are likely to create a feeding frenzy.

Rather than add to this imbroglio, I’ve decided to "take a time out" (though I’ll admit I have been an avid participant in debates on various related blogs over the last few weeks to keep on top of this), and focus solely on the psychological aspects of all this. Things that should largely be beyond the realm of political and economical opinion (I am not an economics expert, nor do I believe that infusing politics into this is helpful at this point).

To borrow a well-worn metaphor, if you cannot see the forest for the trees, maybe you can at least create some clarity for yourself as to what types of trees you are dealing with:

1) The fractional reserve banking system that most of the world has used for many decades is fundamentally based on confidence and trust between the parties involved. That is what we mean when we use phrases such as "the full faith and credit of the U.S. goverment".

Since the Bear Stearns "forced sale" in March, trust has been evaporating at ever faster rates. So much so that at this point, nobody trusts their counter-parties anymore, and hoards cash positions wherever they can.

2) In the absence of confidence and trust, there is only fear and uncertainty. Fear tends to attract more fear, such that there is a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Hence the words we use and think do matter.

You see, terms such as "melt-down, toxic assets, fire sale, depression, collapse," asf. all have a tendency to incite further fear, because they draw on metaphors of real and direct physical harm rather than the hardly comprehensible yet comparatively boring transfer of blips of numbers on computer screens and piles of paper between various complex corporate entities (themselves largely purely abstract and based on further piles of paper).

After initially due to form going overboard with such language, the mainstream media has now largely pulled back from its usage, after apparently scaring ITSELF with the precipitous stock market "dives" last week.

Lesson: I would advise you to do the same. Stop using misleading and inflammatory language for the sake of your own sanity during a time of challenge.

3) Back to the issue of trust, since it is a purely psychological state, all elements of long term forming of associations in our mental real estate – in other words "branding" – come into play. The best example of this I could find is the fact that last week, the brand of "Warren Buffett" – shrewd yet kindly investor and economic wise man, the "Oracle of Omaha" – commanded a tidy premium when lending money to Goldman Sachs and General Electric well beyond that which the U.S. government would charge.

In other words, Warren Buffett has built up a brand that made him more trustworthy in the minds of many than even the "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government. Now while this is of course illogical on its face, it is nevertheless true at a deeper psychological level:

The inherent endorsement those two companies got from having Buffett invest a total of about $8 Billion was worth the premium to them, given his well-known penchant for strict value investing and abhorrence of leverage (investing with borrowed money). It was somewhat like say Michael Jordan endorsing Wheaties.

Lesson: Continue to build your own brand as a haven of sober analysis, rational balance, and calm, in ANY interaction with customers, clients, and even just your friends and family. You simply can’t go wrong.

4) Being reminded of prior warnings by Buffett against an impending housing bubble, let’s quickly look as to how this sort of thing can develop (and repeatedly so). Why would otherwise supposedly largely rational people act in ways that would turn out to be so problematic, even ruinous longer-term?

The answer is twofold: First, there is denial.

It is considered one of the nearly inevitable responses that occur in the so-called "Five Stages of Grief" in situations involving any kind of loss. While first conceived regarding the loss of the "dearly departed", it was soon realized that the stages apply to losses such as divorce, loss of job, and even what I like to call "merely cherished ideas".

Such that once an asset bubble like the run-away housing market is forming, the time from the first warning signs and occasional warning messengers to acceptance of the new reality is greatly expanded because of denial. When things were going so well, nobody wanted to start to think that their homes were not going to be ever-appreciating, supposedly almost risk-less assets anymore.

The truth is, everyone becomes complicit: Buyers (both "regular", as well as "investors" AKA flippers), realtors, appraisers, mortgage brokers, bankers, derivative creators, the Fed, the government, asf. When you mentioned "price-to-rent ratios" circa 2005, people would look at you askance and practically call you an unpatriotic nay-sayer.

I saw the same thing shortly before the 2000 Dotcom bubble bursting: Working at a Telecom company at the time, I remember a supervisor of mine saying something like – "If anyone is taking their yearly bonus in any form other than company stock options, they are simply goofy…".

People hate to let go off cherished ideas, no matter how mistaken or irrational they may be.

Lesson: Learn to detect denial as quickly as possible, and then move trough it.

5) The second cause is what is called "relativity" in behavioral economics. People not only want what is best for them in a purely rational sense, they want what is best relative to everyone else (primarily their peer group) due to the value placed on status within a group. So we get a social-status-cum-economics heuristics (this is sometimes called "neuro-economics"):

In one study, 56 percent of participants preferred a job paying $50,000 per year while everyone else earned $25,000, rather than a job paying $100,000 per year while others made $200,000 – forgoing $50,000 per year simply to maintain a position of relative affluence. Other similar studies have showed much the same thing.

If everyone else seems to be making a presumptive killing in the housing market, we want to be in on the deal, even if it doesn’t make economic sense anymore (that’s where those price-to-rent multiples come into play, they could have told you pretty reliably).

Lesson: Forget what everyone else is doing. "Social proof" is rarely any sort of proof at all, because by rule of the 80/20 Principle, the vast majority of people tend to be doing things wrong, or at least inefficiently/ineffectively.

6) Once denial and other distorting effects have worn off, and the truth is staring us in the face, yet another psychological dynamic takes over. Similar to the second of the Five Stages of Grief, Anger, we find a tendency toward scapegoating.

Scapegoating is an ancient ritual founded in the agreed-upon sacrifice of one (or a few) member(s) of the tribe, for the good of the (mental health of) all, by means of a form of catharsis.

In our case, pretty much the entire nation should be mad at itself, but people individually tend not to like to do this for longer than a moment. Instead "scapegoatism" of what are mostly red herrings is the order of the day: Short sellers did it, minority "sub-prime" borrowers and their HUD enablers did it, a handful of greedy Wall Street CEO’s did it, rocket surgeon wizards creating incomprehensible financial derivatives did it, etc.

As I said, I don’t wish to inject politics into this post, so I am not going to argue about the relative weightedness of any of the above-mentioned possible contributing factors (though I have seen very persuasive evidence that short sellers and minority sub-prime borrowers had overall very little to do with it). But the simple truth is that there were many causes.

Yet we have a reflexive aversion to thinking less of ourselves, and thus may feel compelled to find a convenient stand-in.

In closing, I hope you found this elucidating. FDR was likely right in saying that "we have nothing to fear [more] than fear itself." My instinct is to say that, if we take more control of our own often less-than-rational mental processes, think things through, and act with decency and good will towards our fellow (wo)man, this too shall pass.

We will get through these "interesting times."

And one thing appears to be clear: Regardless of the merits of the technology and features behind the platform, Wallop never had much of a chance of succeeding during the same time frame in which first MySpace and then Facebook rose to massive prominence.

Why? Because the “Wallop” brand name that the new owners (presumably voluntarily) took over from Microsoft Research Labs is simply a horrible idea branding-wise.

One can almost see how a group of middle aged techies thought it sounded sort of cool. But as reality has proven, there are a number of things wrong with the name:

1) It is a generic noun/verb and as such creates little differentiation in the mental real estate of consumers.

2) It is confusing in terms of giving no indication what “Wallop” is supposed to do for its users. Brand names like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook on the other hand give a reasonable hint. When you are free to choose, when in doubt opt for something that makes a modicum of sense, and actually helps make your case as a company.

(Granted that a number of very successful companies have used “non-sequitur” names – Google, Amazon, and Yahoo come to mind. But that was during the Web 1.0 era when it was a lot easier to break through the noise, and get your share of attention to imprint your brand on the mental real estate of consumers. Also, back then everything Web was still so new and wondrous…)

3) Worst of all, the only association it does have is with something negative and somewhat archaic sounding, per the American Heritage Dictionary, “Wallop – v. tr. 1. To beat soundly; thrash. 2. To strike with a hard blow.”

Given that Wallop apparently started out as a photo sharing site at Microsoft Research, the name makes even less sense. But one should NEVER use a name in branding that conjures up potentially negative associations. Unless you know exactly what you are doing (as in some youth slang were “bad”, “ill”, etc. actually means “good” – or at least has in the past), and know your target market audience to a T.

Not so good if your 15-30 year-old target market for a social networking site associates your brand name (even if more or less unconsciously) with spankings they may have received by their parents, or on the playground.

4) It is missing any kind of pleasantness in sound, rhythm, or rhyme that would make it more likely to be repeated by people (to themselves or to others), which may seem trite, but in reality can make a huge difference in the adoption of your brand name “meme”.

Wallop rolls of the tongue like a sack of potatoes. Its particular combination of consonants and vowels leaves it oddly unpleasant to say (maybe that’s because the word originally denotes an unpleasant event). Just try it out-loud to yourself a few times: “Hey dude, go check out that party invite I put up on Wallop.”

5) There could be spelling issues in terms of people hearing it word-of-mouth (if it weren’t for the fact that people are already less likely to repeat it very often), as to the number of L’s and P’s, also never an advantage in getting something to spread “virally”.

Do your homework…

In regards to both 4) and 5), do your homework people: It’s easy enough to bounce names off of friends and family, and see what they think, and more importantly, if they can’t stop saying the new name – or not. See if people spell it right in writing each time without you spelling it out for them (the recent “Cuil” launch has become infamous in this regard).

Why am I kicking Wallop in such detail when they are already down? Only for this reason: To demonstrate that despite what I actually believe may have been some reasonably innovative technology, these good folks were never even close to helping their business venture from a branding perspective.

In this regard, it is very telling that they apparently neglected to hire a branding firm or other similar assistance when they spun-off Wallop from Microsoft Research, and kept the name (needlessly, as there likely was next to zero brand equity accrued to the name at that point).

There is always the danger/trap that as a business founder you become attached to a name created during an incubation phase that has simply grown on you. Or appears clever TO YOU in one way or another (and is often too-cute-by-half). None of which guarantees that anyone else will think so, which is why you need to ideally test such names with your target market (of course some simply get lucky, such as Facebook).

And when you are trying to launch a social network, something that almost by definition needs to make use of “viral” network effects, the above factors, and hence the rate and speed with which your brand spreads, do indeed matter.

Just ask the guys who got it right almost accidentally, like Facebook. Ignore these principles in your own small business branding at your peril.

Can two or more reasonably goofy and self-deprecating ads, which someone on a Silicon Alley Insider comment thread had smartly termed a "branding palate cleanser", overturn years of Windows support frustrations, forced upgrade paths, and general Microsoft bullying of all and sundry?

I’d say it’s doubtful:

1) Microsoft is seen as stodgy and corporate because, well, they are…

Analysts such as Henry Blodget had argued recently that Microsoft should simply acknowledge that they are much better at selling to the corporate world (after all even their Windows OS has been mostly sold to the PC Manufacturers rather than directly to the consumer), and concentrate on B2B while letting go off most of the comsumer space aspirations that have so far proved massively unprofitable to them (Zune, Live Search, etc.).

2) Microsoft has tried before to bring in "The Loyalist" archetype in its marketing (MS Office as your buddy brand at work, etc.), and it never really worked too well, because their association with "The Powerbroker" archetype is so entrenched. This latter fact BTW explains why they do so well in the B2B (Business-To-Business) realm, because "The Powerbroker" is something virtually every business person understands.

3) Trying to bring in "The Buddy" again in the form of "The Adventures of Seinfeld And Gates", alongside of "The Little Trickster" (with humor, irreverence, sleight of hand, etc.) via Seinfeld is ultimately no more likely to stick than before.

Typically companies have been using this archetype to add some delight (your Inner Child likes humor) to their otherwise "boring" products (e.g. insurers, see the GEICO Gecko, etc.). But these companies typically didn’t have strong existing identifications like Microsoft does.

Once again, it’s doubtful that Microsoft can shed the associations that have been forming in the consumers’ minds for about two decades. Just ask IBM: They’ve had a lot of little humorous ads out over the last few years (most recently with Disney characters drawn into corporate server room live action!).

So ask yourself: Do you think of IBM as hip and funny?

Once an imprint is burned in deeply, you’ll have a heck of a time getting it changed. Microsoft is proof that all the money in the world (which it undoubtably has) can’t move the mountain in people’s minds.

Since then, there have been a number of developments that both prove the power of this form of marketing, as well as its potential pitfalls.

Good news first: Apple’s iPhone has been flying off the shelves at a rate of 3 Million in the first month. And the new iPhone App Store has had very healthy downloads of both free and for-pay applications during that same time frame, to the tune of 60 Million downloads and $30 Million in sales (and all despite the launch weekend hiccups that "melted" Apple’s servers).

Apple is proving that there is real money to be made in an add-on app market, something that has eluded most other players so far, be they Google, Facebook, or MySpace.

So the mix of secrecy ("The Enigma" archetype) and The Magician (sometimes also called "The Change Master" archetype), that equals "The Wizard of Oz", clearly has been working for Apple.

A few weeks ago we were predictably fed more grist for the mill, when Apple made several more secretive yet enticing statements during its Q2/2008 financial reporting re: Q3/Q4 earnings projections, specifically the financial dent that an as of yet unnamed new product or product redesign or possibly significant price drop might make in the results for the second half of the year.

Cue the rumor mongering…

But maybe it has been working too well: Besides the launch hiccups already mentioned, there have been issues reported with the iPhone 3G’s battery life in 3G mode, as well as with Apple’s only tangentially related MobileMe storage/synching service that was supposed to replace Apple’s previous .Mac service.

A Bridge Too Far?

This latter change on top of and simultaneous to the 3G launch and the firmware update for the 1st generation iPhones may have proved the proverbial "bridge too far". The new service has been resoundingly panned, including by people that easily qualify as Mac/Apple enthusiasts (such as Walt Mossberg of the WSJ Tech Department).

And while hardware and other issues with the iPhone and other Mac products have been mostly annecdotal (read Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on his experiences here), the MobileMe issues are so universally acknowledged that Apple has been voluntarily adding several months of free service (usually priced at about $100/year) for users, along with strong mea culpa statements.

And therein lies the pitfall of successful Archetype Branding: Once you have "imprinted" your archetype or mix of archetypes upon the mind of John Q Public, you have to deliver on the promise or the associations that where developed at this point. Otherwise, you run the risk of offending more resoundingly, precisely because you bonded with your customers and prospects at a deeper, more meaningful level.

People’s Unconscious Minds (their "Inner Child") may respond with outright indignation or anger when the cherished association is broken up. "You really aren’t a Magician after all… ".

If your success outpaces your ability to deliver (in Apple’s case delivering working marvels of technology to a rapidly growing user base), you have a real problem. One would hope that Apple understands this and avoids too many repeats of this dilemma in the future. Else its stellar brand could be in serious jeopardy.

Then an interview by Silicon Alley Insider’s Peter Kafka with Cuil’s CEO  Tom Costello today reminded us of everything that went wrong with the would-be Google competitor’s lauch, as well as everything that is still wrong with it.

While apparently the outages of the first days have subsided, many of Cuil’s search results are still low on relevancy, and still juxtapose seemingly random images from other websites with a given search result (prompting some cries of copyright violations).

There was much discussion over on FriendFeed involving Robert Scoble and others as to whether this "launch" was done just to position them for a buy-out by e.g. Microsoft for the technology. I tend to agree, given how obviously poorly everything was executed.

They had to have known results weren’t going to be very good, even more so about the sometimes outright embarrassing "false image" issues.

If they didn’t, this would constitute a formidable case of group think, against which one would think there should have been at least some push-back/reality-checking from the venture capitalists that put $33 Million of funding into Cuil.

Then again, they let Mr. "I’m Irish, it seemed natural enough, and works for me" Costello get away with naming the thing "Cuil".

When prompted about the questionable brand naming choice, Mr. Costello attempted a weak defense by saying "[i]t’s hard to find a four letter name…". Why did it need to be a four letter name? Were they trying to defeat Google through shortness of the domain?!?

(Incidentally, very short domain names haven’t really worked out particularly well for anyone, just ask Ask.com, Buy.com, and others.)

Too-cute-by-half "Cuil" comes across like a development code name (like "Longhorn" for Vista, etc.), not like the final product of a well-thought-out branding exercise. Which of course would lend further credence to the idea that this "launch" may have simply been a "buy us already" plea.

It gets even funnier now that a number of sites have posted strong evidence that the Gaelic word "cuil", while leaving the company open to all manner of misspellings and mispronunciations, really doesn’t mean "knowledge" (as still claimed by Costello and Co.) after all.

Given all of these "shenanigans" (sorry, couldn’t resist… and who did these guys have for Gaelic teachers anyway? :), it comes as little surprise that Cuil has now apparently lowered their target from Google slayer to Google backup:

it’s not supposd to be better than Google – just an alternative…

Another similar "crime against branding" name for a start-up recently went to the "deadpool": News personalization site Thoof.com. Their CEO probably also thought that the name was intuitive and "worked for them"…