Christenings

Unless you’re one of the enlightened promo readers who starts by opening the back cover and reading this column first (bless you, kind sir or madam), you will have noticed by now that all is different with your favorite marketing mag, save our logo with its trademark orange “O.” That was the one thing that expressed so simply and elegantly what we’re about, that still felt so right, that no one involved in our makeover felt any turn-of-the-century urge to change it.

Promotion agencies are better positioned with names for the 21st century than their advertising counterparts. The denizens of Madison Ave., who’ve been around a lot longer, can be forgiven for feeling the need to add the air of legitimacy that a row of Waspy-sounding names imparts. Promo shops came into their own in a more modern era, and could afford to sound less like law firms. Witness Flair Communications, Marketing Continuum, Gage Marketing.

To be sure, there are more than a few of those Anglo-combo letterheads in the promotion business, and one we’ve always liked the sound of is McCracken Brooks. It has a staccato rhythm that denotes action, and a definitive punctuation conjuring decisiveness. But what does an agency with a great-sounding, well-respected name do when one of the guys on the nameplate jumps to a competitor, as Keith McCracken just did in going to Dugan Valva Contess? (Another pleasing surname melange, with just a hint of ethnic tang.) We’ll shortly see.

Promotional Marketing, Inc. had one of those functional, institutional names, and changed it to reflect the creative renaissance undertaken by its new and iconoclastic young owners. Overnight, PMI was transformed into Upshot. “We definitely did not want our own names to be the name of the agency,” says chief management officer Carol Griseto. “We labored over it and fought over it and came up with Upshot. It means result.” Indeedy-do. Five years later, the agency’s net revenue is 20 times that of the old PMI, and it is the 1999 Agency of the Year.

What better name for a shop headquartered in Evergreen, CO, than Aspen Marketing? Fresh, clean ideas blowing through dusty corridors like a Rocky Mountain breeze, right? Rumor has it, however, that Aspen’s holding company, Universal Alliance, is moving its HQ to L.A. We strongly urge Universal to consider retaining the geographical integrity of this promotional product giant’s name by rechristening it “La-La Pro-Pro.”

Far be it from us to belittle b. little, the e. e. cummings of the promotion business. The agency came out of nowhere to nab a Super Reggie and some large-scale kids’ campaigns. But alphabetic minimalism has adverse p.r consequences. Much as it irks us editors, we give you your lower-case letters. But we will jump over semicolons to deposit you in the middle of a sentence. Ye of the lower-case names will never find yourselves at the beginning of a paragraph.

In another take on self-deprecation, Scott Ballin proposed “Plan B” as the new name for the merged Milton Samuels Advertising and Sukon Marketing. “No one calls us first; they call us when they have a problem. So I thought that name summed up our core value,” says Ballin. “The rest of the staff wouldn’t go for it.”

Inspired by the C-4 explosive, he settled on the name B-12. “It’s after the vitamin that gives you an energy boost,” he says. “Plus, names combining letters and numbers are going to be big in the new century. Parents are going to start naming kids ‘C-5.'” Probably so, but please, no R2D2 or C3P0.

And let’s hope our American promo shops don’t follow the troubling agency-naming trend afoot in Belgium. That nation’s leading award-winners of late go by the monikers Karamba and Promo Sapiens. Who wants an agency that sounds like a failed nightclub?

Our personal favorite agency name, however, belongs to an advertising concern: Partners & Shevack. Entering their headquarters, we picture walking past an office crammed with papers and art boards, where a disheveled little fellow in glasses and a flannel shirt cranks out copy on a computer. Down the hall, we enter an oak-paneled lair, where the “Partners” sip cognac and smoke Cubans. “Who is the nebbishy worker-bee?” we ask. “Oh, that’s Shevack,” comes the response. “He’s come up with every great idea we’ve had for the past 10 years, but he just refuses to join the clubs it takes to make partner.”