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Keeping It Simple – WhiteyBoard Peel-and-Stick Whiteboards

December 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I was reading the the December/January issue of Inc. Magazine and came across an article by Issie Lapowsky that highlighted a great tool for those of us who need to draw our ideas out — peel-and-stick whiteboards.  I have never had enough whiteboard surface around to scribble on so hats off to the founders of WhiteyBoards – Saachi Cywinski, Jason Wilk, and Sherwin Kim.  Being astute at leveraging social media, the WhiteyBoards.com team had placed a Facebook “Like” button on their website which I clicked to share the delight of my find with my Facebook friends.  My friends comments in response were positive about the product but all questioned the common sense of the company name — WhiteyBoard.

So I reached out to the company and asked the question, “Would you share how you came up with the name?”  I received a response from founder Saachi Cywinski within minutes – “Our name WhiteyBoard is derived from Whiteboard, and we just added a Y. Then we thought about changing our name to AngloBoard, however we thought we may get some negative feedback if we called it that.”

So what do you think of the name WhiteyBoard? Can it pass muster in our hypersensitive politically correct world?

By the way, I ordered several of the 2′ X 3′ “Alice” versions of their product — perfect for my home office and my son’s dorm room at Caltech. Click on over to WhiteyBoard.com and order a few for yourself!

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What’s in a Name?

November 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Magnifying GlassHave you ever wondered what the origin of  your favorite Brand name is?  What was behind the naming of Starbucks, Oracle, or 3M?  There are a number of resources that can help you.  First stop, the Wikipedia “List of Company Name Etymologies” .  Many companies list that tidbit in the company history section of their website.  For example, Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”.

What interesting parts of your Brand history are you leaving to other outside sources such as websites, bloggers or authors?  Does your company name have an interesting origin — leave me a comment and tell us a brief story.

By the way, Starbucks was name for the character Starbuck from a Herman Melville novel, Oracle was the code name for a consulting project Larry Ellison, Ed Oates and Bob Miner were working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and 3M comes from the company’s original name, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.

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BrandPilgrim.com – For the Visual Thinker in All of Us

October 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

BrandPilgrim.com BlogSuma Mandagiri authors the blog, BrandPilgrim.com .  Rather than trying to describe it, here is an extract from her “About” page:

My name is Suma Mandagiri.  I live in Mumbai, India and work as an independent strategic branding consultant.

Brandpilgrim.com is a visual thinking blog that attempts to illustrate complex concepts in a simple manner.  As humans, we ideate in pictures, linkages and patterns.  It is only later that we weave our seemingly disjointed impressions into a vocal framework that is presented in neat rows as evidence of our organised thinking.  In the process, we sacrifice emotive expressions and sensorial engagement.

Brandpilgrim.com is an attempt to return us to the quirky thinking that takes the form of doodles, scribbles and caricatures on our notepads.  I believe, what we classify as ‘doodle  scrap’  are powerful repositories of knowledge and inspiration.  Beneath the quirkiness lies an organic thought process that does not need the crutch of a long-winded explanation.  And if you are like me, you respond to colours, forms and shapes with primitive glee.

With this blog, I hope to encourage you to unwrap those balls of paper that you usually reserve for your trash bin and share those precious nuggets of information with the rest of us.

Suma Mandagiri

I especially liked her Oct 17, 2010 post – Why Brands Can’t Ignore Social Media Mavens.  Click on over and check it out!  You will be glad you did.

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