Skip to main content

Make a name for yourself

I once owned a business called Milk Moustache. (Branded Communications since quarter past two). It was 1991 and I had left my job as creative director at Young & Rubicam in a huff and decided to do my own thing for a while. I needed a business bank account so I needed a business entity. The only name that I ever considered was Milk Moustache. It had no significance, other than conjuring up a feeling of warmth and comfort - or maybe innocence. The internet did not exist so it was not motivated by the 'startup' craze of mad business names developed to create memorable a URL (RedCactus, BlueTuna etc).

I was able to conjure up some business, my former client, Allied Liquor Merchants gave me a premium, boutique beer project, the Foundation for the Blind wanted help to promote Braille Day. There were others but 91 was so long a go I forget. It was a fun time. Metro magazine named me Auckland's 'Hot' Creative Director in their 10th anniversay review of what was 'hot'. The reality was probably that I was not. But it did no harm to awareness of Milk Moustache.

I ran a full page ad in the trade listing magazine (agencies and clients) featuring an image of the Mona Lisa cropped tight. Alvin Pankhurst, the award winning uber-realist painter, painted a milk moustache on her. The headline said: Put your name on everybody's lips. I had post rationalised the name with a spot of post modernist appropriation. I don't remember ever receiving a call from the ad, except from advertising people wanting to come work for Milk Moustache.

Once I was cornered at an industry function by an older gentleman who had one too many glasses of wine, or at least one more than me, he was outraged for some reason that I had the temerity to name my company Milk Moustache. He had spent his life trying to get the business community to take advertising seriously.
"Don't you think Milk Moustache is a silly name?..."
"What and Wight Collins Rutherford Scott Mathews Marcantonio isn't a silly name?" I replied "And, besides, if I had a receptionist it would be easier to say when the phone rang."

The business did quite nicely, making money, winning awards and providing me the sort of freewheeling lifestyle I prefer. At the Axis awards that year (whose name I have always thought awkward - in a sort of Don't Mention the War-ish way) Saatchi & Saatchi were cleaning up. The crowd at the award presentation dinner were past being uncharitably bored. The evening was becoming a shambles as attendees felt the only proper response was to amplify their alcohol uptake dramatically. When the categories my ads were finalists in were announced (A poster for the foundation for the blind - showing a guide dog - or rather not showing a guide dog, instead it was a blind embossed illustration with the headline 'We See Life Differently and a companion TV commercial "You see a cute puppy...we see a world of possibilities...")...the crowd erupted when the winner wasn't Saatchi & Saatchi. It was pandemonium. During the long walk to the podium I felt like Ceaser returning from some conquest. Never underestimate the power of release from the norm. And never underestimate how much fun it is to hear your name being called after the words "...and the winner is..."

Especially if that name is Milk Moustache.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St
Post a Comment
Read more and leave a comment

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse
1 comment
Read more and leave a comment

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer
9 comments
Read more and leave a comment