Cuil review from a linguistic point of view…

 

I picked up a thread by Mashable on Twitter this morning talking about the new search engine Cuil, packed with ex-Googlers in their team. Cuil claim to be the world’s biggest search engine, with an index of 120 billion websites in the world. Rather than relying on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. The odd name Cuil is an Irish word for knowledge. 

Well dear Cuillers (cuillère in French means spoon), I have something to tell you… If you’re claiming to be the largest search engine in the world, you should think global and act local. And here I am talking about your brand name. Cuil sounds like ‘couilles’ (balls/bollocks) or cul (arse) in French! Not exactly enticing…

Despite such poor branding taste, I decided it was time to check out Cuil in more depth but sadly got the following message:

Due to overwhelming interest, our Cuil servers are running a bit hot right now. The search engine is momentarily unavailable as we add more capacity.

Thanks for your patience.

When I did finally manage to take a look at their homepage, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the search results, although graphically speaking the site does look good and categorises information in an interesting way.

 

I have just done a quick Twitter search and the feedback so far isn’t particularly positive.

 

I am not quite sure how they’ll overcome so much bad publicity on their launch date but everyone is talking about them at the end of the day! 

So what do you think of Cuil? Am I being to harsh? Fire your comments away!

What consumers really think about your logo

First impressions count - it’s a well known fact that in the first five minutes of a meeting you can have possibly landed the job or blown it! The same applies to brands; with increased used of the Internet and consumers becoming increasingly marketing-savvy, corporate image is of utmost importance.

 

I have recently discovered an interesting new website called BrandTags, which could be a very powerful tool for businesses wishing to update their logo.

 

BrandTags visitors play a game of word association to sum up their impressions of major brands in one word or phrase — and then the site graphically displays the answers in a tag cloud.

 

Click here to view the answers associated with Virgin

 

I had the opportunity to work on a number of re-branding projects in my qual research career, where we showed respondents new logos and asked for their impressions and feedback, potential improvements.

The only downside of this approach is that, whilst you can certainly get a lot of good qualitative insight, you cannot quantify what people have said… and clients do like robust statistics! Brand Tags offers the chance to provide with both the robustness of quantitative data (I am not sure whether they quantify anything at the mo but that’s something they could easily integrate…) but also the richness and depth of qualitative data.

BrandTags has the support of ad agency Naked. You can also read their blog here.

 

iPod mania

They have made a billion journeys on the Tube (London subway system) bearable and been flourished by the rich, famous and powerful.

The super slim music player with the shuffle function is simply the first indispensable style icon of the 21^st century, and last Tuesday (10^th April), the 100^th millionth iPod was sold.

Apple sold its first iPod in October 2001 and since then has introduced almost a dozen new models, including 5 generations of iPod, 2 generations of iPod Mini, 2 generations of iPod Nano and 2 generations of iPod Shuffle.

 Some cool facts:

•  To listen to all the 7,500 songs on a 30GB iPod can hold non-stop would take 375 days

• And if all the iPods were stood end to end, they would stretch roughly 10,000 km, from London to New York and back again – that would make a pretty cool bridge

• Even The Queen owns a silver iPod!

More Apple news over here.

What are you doing on Wednesday?

Earlier this year Wanadoo ditched its logo and was rebranded under the Orange livery as part of a ‘simplified brand architecture’.

The name change came a little over a year after France Telecom decided to ditch the name Freeserve, its ISP in the UK, and replace it with Wanadoo. This means that the mobile phone outfit have become the umbrella brand for all mobile, broadband and other converged telecoms services.

So, is this rebranding creating consumer confusion or is it a fantastic deal for UK consumers?

Well actually I think we got a pretty good deal out of this, and I believe that Orange now offers the best value for money: if you get a mobile phone tariff @ £35 per month, you also get free Orange broadband + 2 cinema tickets for the price of 1 every Wednesday with Orange Wednesdays – check out the cool leaflet I recently received from Orange broadband – not cheap…

Orange has certainly raised the bar and other mobile phone providers will have to change their offer if they want to retain their customers.

 Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic…

A study commissioned by Carphone Warehouse in July 2006 reports the finding that more than 90% of UK mobile users can’t get through the day without using their phone. ‘My whole life is in there’ - incidentally this is a line used by Nokia in the US, one of the few markets where people are less enamoured with mobiles.

Despite Americans’ techno-friendliness and ease with technology the US (and to an extent Canada) were latecomers to ‘cell phones’ and today seem to be the only developed countries in the world which haven’t developed a deep, multi-dimensional relationship with them. Yes, to some extent ‘cells’ are techno-hubs there too, but in a much diminished way.

In the US, a cellphone is a tool. In Europe, a mobile phone is a lifestyle.

I remember having a conversation about mobile phones and mobile phone suppliers with Chris Brown who was on business in London a couple of weeks ago. Chris told me that in the US, consumers pay more attention to the provider than the actual brand of mobile phone. I would say it’d the opposite in the UK – correct me if I am wrong.

Both mobile phones manufacturers and mobile phone suppliers advertise heavily in the UK. Take a look at the Orange ad broadcast in cinemas to promote Orange Wednesdays featuring Patrick Swayze – pretty cool, huh?  

ABSOLUT(ely) fabulous!

 

I went to the ABSOLUT ICEBAR in London last night and what an experience! One piece of advice – make sure you wear big woolly socks if you don’t want to freeze! It’s a bit pricey to get in but definitely worth it!   The Ice Bar opened a few years ago and has been a real success – a premium bar sponsored by a trendy and innovative brand to create a once in life-time experience.  

Believe it or not, ABSOLUT was introduced in 1879 in Sweden and is the third largest brands of alcoholic spirits after Bacardi and Smirnoff, marketed in 126 countries.  Much of ABSOLUT’s fame is down to its clever marketing. The distinctive bottle is rather old-fashioned, some would even say medicine-like, while the brand name and art-work on the bottle is trendy and modern – I simply love this combination!  

The versatile brand name has also allowed versatile, ‘think global, act local’, advertisements, and with more than 1500 ads, the campaign is the longest running ever. Let’s take a look at a few examples: ABSOLUT London, ABSOLUT Naples, ABSOLUT Paris but to name a few. In addition, ABSOLUT was one of the first consumer brands to embrace gay advertising, reaching an important segment of the market. In fact, very few brands have achieved this without offending gay or straight communities.  

What should ABSOLUT do next?

It’s often difficult when launching an extremely successful campaign do find a good follow-up. For instance, the 2006 French Connection Campaign was heavily criticised.

Firstly, I think that they should try to engage and reach their community via the www. For instance, I particularly liked the different cocktails recipes, where the site’s visitors can rank their favourite drink. 

I think that ABSOLUT were very clever by getting the consumer to design adverts for other consumers via their ABSOLUT LOMO contest. I also like the way they cleverly used the word contest rather than competition. The mission: to shoot one or a series of images capturing the spirit of ABSOLUT. Check out the ABSOLUT website for further details.