The name game

Good interview with David Placek, of product-naming company Lexicon, on the CIO blog. They're the people who dreamed up, amongst others, Blackberry, Pentium, Azure, Powerbook and the perhaps less-appealing Febreze for companies prepared to pay for their services. And apparently there's never a quick, Eureka moment - they take typically four months before they're satisfied they've got a winner.

David says most companies come to Lexicon "when they have tried to name the new product internally or tried to work with their ad agency, and then they run into trademark problems or language roadblocks, where it's just not easily pronounced in certain languages, or it means something negative.

"Also, they can't seem to get that internal support—people aren't rallying around. So they're a little bit behind the 8 ball, and now they've lost time. It's no longer fun, and they're frustrated. So they'll say, we'll send you the list of what we've done, and now it's up to you."

Five Live was the work of a British company engaged by the BBC - I remember the day it was revealed to the core team of launch editors; we looked furtively at each other and mouthed "Fruit juice ?"