I received this email from The Grove, a local “lifestyle” center in Los Angeles, offering to enter me into a $50 gift card drawing simply for “liking” them on Facebook. I realized that over the past couple months, I’d been receiving similar emails with increased frequency.

Apparently, buying friends has now become an accepted strategy. And while our parents might scoff at the idea of purchasing relationships, it makes good business sense for a number of reasons.

1. As marketers, buying leads is something we have been doing for generations. Long before the Internet and Facebook, we have purchased lists and given away trips as the price for getting people to listen to a timeshare pitch.
2. Much of the time, the people you’re asking to “like” you are those with whom you already have a relationship. Take The Grove example; I’m already on their email list. So, since I’m open to receiving messages from The Grove, I’m a good candidate for “liking” them.
3. It’s an inexpensive way to augment your social media presence and strengthen your online reputation. One or two $50 gift cards is a small price to pay to add hundreds of new people to your Facebook community.

So regardless of what the Beatles and  your parents told you, it might be time to consider offering an incentive to get prospects to like you on Facebook.

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For a more detailed look at the findings, the survey can be downloaded here, free of charge.

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Why? Because that’s how vanilla is made. And who pays attention to vanilla?

No knock against vanilla (unless it’s in candles), but great marketing does not start with a strategy position that reads, “I hope every single person likes it”. Great marketing, and I’m talking about the kind that gets results, not just awards, is provocative. It challenges people to think differently about something.

Not everyone is going to like that. But you have to ask yourself, who are you trying to impress, everyone or your target? Then the question becomes, will this offend my target? If so, perhaps you should rethink the creative. Otherwise, go bold and don’t worry about ruffling a few feathers.

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This should a big no-brainer. But my experience  tells me that the lines of communication are not as clear as they should be.

A little background first. I once had a boss who told me I had to “manage up” better. I had been working on my projects in a vacuum, not sharing progress or giving heads ups about potential obstacles. As a result, my boss would get nervous that things weren’t happening as they should be. Clients are like that too.

Personally, if a client has to ask how things are coming along, I know I’ve dropped the communication ball.  So why not go out of the way to make sure that doesn’t happen? This is especially important with new clients who are just getting to know you. To start with, at the beginning of an assignment set the proper expectations  in terms of timing and deliverables. Let them know what they’ll be receiving and when. Be clear about how many revisions they get before going into change order mode.

Once your client knows what to expect, keep the lines of communication open. Let them know that later in the day they’ll be receiving the first look at that new landing page. Or, if there’s been a delay, let them know why and how it will impact the overall time line.

I’ve found that a bit more effort on the communication front pays large dividends in two key areas:

1. It puts the client at ease and lets them know you’re managing their time, money and brand in a professional and accountable manner.
2. In the event that things do go a bit sideways, the client is usually more forgiving if they’ve been part of the process from the beginning. They’ll also be less surprised since they’ve been kept in the loop and were likely aware of potential issues.

Granted, these are not breakthrough insights, and successful marketers have been doing this for years. These are best practice basics that, in today’s fast paced world, we sometimes forget to do. And that’s a shame, because  the extra effort required to ensure that your clients are well informed goes a long way toward keeping them happy, and keeping them as your clients.

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1. Using a weak password Stay away from simple names and obvious choices with a number tacked onto the end. Instead, mix upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. Better still,  add a number or symbol the middle of your password.
2. Providing your full birth date Avoid showing your full birth date in your profile (day, month, year). This info can be used to obtain additional personal info, or access to your bank and credit accounts. Just show only your birth month and day, or nothing at all.
3. Ignoring useful privacy controls Take advantage of Facebooks many options for limiting what private information is seen by who-knows-who.
4. Posting a child’s name in a photo caption Just don’t do it. And, if someone else adds a tag to one of your photos with your child’s name, just delete it by clicking “remove tag”.
5. Mentioning being away from home When you do this, you’re letting everyone know that the house is empty.
6. Being found by a search engine You can stop strangers from accessing a profile by going to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select “Only Friends for Facebook” search results. Be sure the box for Public Search isn’t checked.
7. Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised. If there’s a young child or teenager in the household who uses Facebook, have an adult in the same household  become one of their online friends and use their e-mail as the contact for the account in order to receive notification and monitor activity.

Read the original Los Angeles Times article here.

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Click here to read the Los Angeles Times’ in-depth comparison of the iPad versus the Kindle.

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Tired of carrying around those cumbersome, wallet-busting gift cards? Target wants to ease your burden by allowing you to keep their gift card right in your smartphone. The big box retailer just announced that customers can now  access their gift cards right from their smartphones by presenting the digital bar code to the cashier at time of checkout.

Clearly this is a big step forward in m-commerce (as in mobile commerce) and a likely look at the shape of things to come. “There’s been such rapid growth in m-commerce in the last two years,” Ben Rushlo, senior manager of Internet technologies at Keynote, based in San Mateo, Calif., told Marketing Daily.

Read Sara Mahoney’s article in Marketing Daily for more info.

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Like the internet phenoms they trumpeted, Internet company names of the last decade have been, by turns, wildly inventive, deeply troubled, breathtakingly silly, serviceable (if dull)—and, occasionally, brilliant.

Having christened our share of Internet phenoms, we at Catchword decided to looked back to identify the 10 biggest dot-com naming trends—and their best and worst examples.

(Although, frankly, it was hard to choose just one “worst” in some cases. There were so many Web 2.0 disasters! It was as though the rules of language had ceased to apply.)

Here are the trends and names that rose to the top (and sank to the bottom).

1. The Hookup

But if two words don’t have a discernible relationship with each other—or the brand—it’s a Random Hookup. And we all know how short-lived those are—in this or any realm.

Win: YouTube

Intuitive, catchy, grassroots-y. The retro slang “tube” for TV evokes simpler times and ease of use: clever for a new app that could have been seen as intimidatingly high-tech.

Fail: TalkShoe

Say what? The name is a play on the use of Ed Sullivan’s pronunciation of the word “show” on his long-ago TV show. Like anyone is going to make the connection…

2. The Conjurer

Evocative words can make memorable brand names when they relate to the core of a brand’s story (like Yelp). But the line can be fine between edgy and baffling.

Win: Twitter

Whimsically conjures up users’ sharing short little bursts of information (like birds twittering in a tree)—as well as excitement (”all atwitter”). It’s extendable, too. A whole vocabulary quickly takes flight—from tweet and twitfriend to twipic.

Fail: MOO

Great for cows, milk, cheese, ice cream. Not so great for a site offering printing services.

3. The Letter-Dropper

The problem with this type of coinage is it’s so distinctive you’re almost bound to look like a copycat if you’re not the first out of the gate. And if you drop more than one letter, you’re asking for trouble. (Was Motorola’s SLVR cell phone meant to be Silver or Sliver? And what’s with Scribd?)

Win: Flickr

The image of a camera’s flicker is relevant for photo sharing and reassuringly familiar, while the dropped letter—a new naming convention—suggested cutting-edge technology.

Fail: iStalkr

Creepy.

4. The Assembly Line

Names assembled from word parts with meaningful associations can be rich and unexpected (witness Gizmodo, the gadget blog). But tone and messaging need to be just right.

Win: Wikipedia

The unusualness of the name establishes it as a fresh player, while the evocation of both encyclopedias and speed (”wiki” is Hawaiian for “quick”) is spot on.

Fail: Nupedia

The flatfooted claim of newness sounds dated from day one. Plus it’s risky to stake an identity on newness in internet-land. Before long, this premise is far from “nu.”

5. The Misspeller

This kind of brand name often spells disaster: hard to remember (Ideeli, Scrybe), confusing to pronounce and spell (Myngle, Wotnext, Gravee), and reeking of URL-search desperation (Itzbig, Profilactic, Fairtilizer).

Win: Boku

French word “beaucoup” is on the money for an online payment service—and for many Americans, the misspelling is actually more intuitive and inviting.

Fail: Cuil

Meant to be pronounced “cool,” but who’s gonna get that? Rule No. 1: Your name shouldn’t need to come with a pronunciation guide.

6. The Wordster

Another convention that ages fast. And there’s nothing more pathetic in naming than a transparent attempt to appear cool (cases in point: Dogster, Agester, Talkster).

Win: Friendster

Not exciting, we’ll grant you, but the intuitiveness of the name helped usher in the era of social networking.

Fail: Napster

In light of its ensuing legal woes, to highlight the “kidnapping” of music is probably not the best idea (to put it kindly).

7. The Double or Nothing

Doubling a letter in a real word only works when the word remains recognizable, and the addition of the second letter serves some purpose, other than to complicate spelling (as in Gawwk).

Win: Digg

Intuitive and evocative, the double “g” underscores the digging nature of research and is graphically interesting.

Fail: Diigo

A social bookmarking site, the double “i” destroys the semantic connection and confuses pronunciation. (Is it Dee-go or Dih-go?) Plus, coming on the heels of Digg, it seems hopelessly derivative.

8. The eThing, the iThing, the meThing, the myThing

“e/i” shorthand quickly becomes redundant in the internet space, although it spawns many workhorse names: serviceable, if dull. The me/my thing (as in mySpace) tends to be similarly predictable and unremarkable. (Now, myBad—that would be interesting…)

Win: iContact

For a provider of email marketing, the “i” works on three levels: “I contact,” “eye contact,” and, of course, “Internet contact.”

Fail: eSnailer, eBaum’s World, eXpresso…

9. The Empty Vessel

A word without recognizable semantic roots can be a useful umbrella name for a company that may want to branch out in different directions. But it needs to be pronounceable and have relevant sound symbolism. Otherwise, it’s not an Empty Vessel—it’s Alphabet Soup. Like Disaboom, Xoopit, Yebol, and Goozex. Cover your ears.

Win: Kazaa

Recalls huzzah or hurrah, conveying excitement. (Sample exclamation: “Kazaa! I just downloaded Season One of Six Feet Under, FOR FREE!!!”)

Fail: Eefoof

Vintage Web 2.0: hard to spell, silly—and utterly meaningless.

10. The Foreigner

Words in little-known languages can also make good empty-vessel names, especially if their meaning provides a springboard into their brand story. The trick is to find words that are easy to pronounce and pleasing to the American ear (like Kijiji, a communal website with a Swahili name meaning “village”).

Win: Hulu

Good empty vessel name for an entertainment company that wants to keep its options open. (Interestingly, the word means “empty gourd” in Mandarin.) The rhyming word is playful, and by evoking hula hoops, it suggests fun.

Fail: Jwaala

Talk about a tongue-twister.

The Coming Decade

As for Internet company naming trends of the coming decade: Companies will demand more meaningful brand names, as far from Web 2.0 flights of fancy as possible; they’ll be willing to pay a premium for real-word or lightly coined domain names; and they will be creative in the messages they explore—as long as they’re relevant to the brand.

Like Internet companies themselves, it appears, Internet naming will be coming back down to earth.

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Case in point: I have a friend who can’t spell his way out of a paper bag. One day he asked me to check his spelling on something and I came across the word “braw.” When I told him he spelled “bra” wrong, he replied, “Oh, did I leave off the ‘w’?”

He’s not the only one out there, which is why we need to anticipate how they might misspell our company names when doing a Google search.

For example, if your company is named Lemon Anchovies, we’ll assume your URL is LemonAnchovies.com. But you might also consider registering LemonAnchovees.com and maybe even LeminAnchovies.com.  The cost of registering additional domains is little in comparison to the business potential of grabbing new customers. And really, just because they can’t spell, that doesn’t mean they can’t spend.

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Why did Facebook do this? According to the LA Times, it’s simply good business. For them, not necessarily for you. Read the Op-ed piece here.

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