What’s Your Brand Peeve?

I am “peeved” by the use of amazing music in car commercials. I get it, but why must an advertising company taint a song by Led Zeppelin or Phoenix by using it to sell cars? Answer me that! It goes against the very idea of some artists….but I guess they ARE the ones selling the royalties aren’t they.

Good point about not using an acronym for your company name in most cases. When you are starting out, it is much better to make it extremely obvious what your company does.

One of my brand peeves is those stupid mac guy commercials. They spend too much time bashing windows’ previous problems instead of concentrating on what actually makes a mac better. In no way does it make me want to switch to a mac.

You made me laugh out load “laptop”. My wife and I love those commercials, but I’,m a dyed in the wool Mac guy. Great to hear another perspective! Thanks for sharing your brand peeve with us.

Anybody else out there want to get something off their chest?

UGH. I hate no-name acronyms. Those companies are so pretentious.

I have another brand peeve–slogans. Especially generic slogans like “Your one-stop shop for —-”. It’s so overused and I hate it.

PCC, I wonder how many of those “one-stop-shops” really are.

Thanks for venting here.

Pt we really do have the artist to blame here. I’m with you – it cheapens my memory.

“One stop shop” was the first thing I also thought of.

On a related note I can’t stand any articles pluggin the next big -killer.

The ipod-killer, gmail-killer, Windows-killer.. ahhhh

You’re right about the killer thing, I never really thought about it – but your right – over-kill

I hate all the products/companies that are now “eProducts” or “eCompanies”.

Speaking of “eProducts”…how about “iProducts” and “iCompanies”? Even if they have nothing to do with Apple.

You know people love to eFollow?

One thing that peeves me is when people name their companies after themselves. It comes off as egotistical. If you are successful in your endeavors, then the company nearly always has to keep that name for the equity built when the person who founded it retires. If you are not successful, then not only did you trash the brand you trash your name too. If you happen to trash a brand that is not your name, you can always launch a new brand and learn from your mistakes.

I despise the word “solutions,” people throw it around so much that it tends not to mean anything to me anymore. I get especially peeved when they put it in the company’s name: “XYZ Solutions.”…I just threw up a little.

Thanks for your input Rebekah and Kika – I’m just doing my part to get these peeves off of our collective chests

I despise the * asterisk – If you need to put this in your advertising then you are not doing a good enough job of marketing/advertising your product. The asterisk is most often paired with terms like, “any” or “unlimited” and the Subway commercial for “Any” Five dollar foot long doesn’t mean that you can go in and buy “any” sub on their menu for $5.

My biggest brand pet peeve is when people try to hop on the Apple bandwagon and name their products with the small letter “i” before the word. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was non-computer related but most of the time it is.

Filipino – you especially see that with products that are related to the Mac product. I guess it’s to build an association to it, but it can be lame at times.

Thanks for your contribution to this discussion.

That’s also one thing I hate right now–the fact that every Apple product right now is called an “i” something. By the way, “iPad” is the WORST name for a product I’ve encountered in the last decade. Which is a shame, because it looks kinda nifty.

I’ve heard lots of people say they dislike the name, oddly I don’t mind it. Because it’s “i” something you certainly know it’s an Apple product.

I’m sorry to respond so late as I was distracted by a tornado hitting our property last Sunday, no injuries but lots of damage.