by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango LLC + former Record Industry Adman

Funny to see all the young ones chattin’ away on the Twitter ’bout this year’s South-by-Southwest festival, aka SXSW.

What used to be just a good ol’ fashioned music fest in the unvarnished heart of Austin is now this slicked-up multimedia shindig known as much — or even more — for its interactive media than its music. Seems to me that the latte-sippers are now outnumbering the Shiner Bock drinkers. The times they sure have a’changed…

Back in ’95, when I was but a pup in the music industry, I got me an assignment to write an ad for MCA Records’ big concert in the middle of the street where no one could miss it. (Helps to have that big corporate concert budget, you know.) Now this ad was gonna run in the Austin Statesman, which would be filled with other ads from other record companies for other concerts all pretty much lookin’ the same, like the opposite sex in a bar after you’ve had one too many.

So I decided to be a little different by making my ad a Texas legend. Hell, I had the space to write all I wanted. And just like many legends and textbooks in Texas, this one was just made up. But I enjoyed writin’ it. And from what I hear, people enjoyed readin’ it.

And you’ll notice way at the bottom a plug for MCA Records’ website, which in 1995 was a new-fangled thing I also wrote. So I kinda like to think that we at MCA (R.I.P.) helped to sow all this multimedia business at SXSW that today’s kids are now reapin’.

So if you got the time and the inkling, give this piece o’ history a click and a read, and pour me another Shiner. I get enough lattes here in L.A.

The good ol' days - click to enlarge...

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango & “Bank Run” Consigliere

Full Disclosure: The following post is about one of my clients at Atomic Tango…

Imagine waking up and finding yourself strapped to a chair. Standing over you is a strange man swinging a large golf club. He keeps asking you menacing questions, but you have no idea what he’s talking about. Frustrated by your lack of answers, he decides to take a massive swing at a spot right between your eyes… How do you escape?

Well, there’s an App for that…

More exactly, there’s an iPhone App and an interactive movie. “Bank Run” is an Apple iPhone game with actual video footage — not CGI characters, but real humans in real locations. In addition, it’s integrated with a free interactive movie at BankRunGame.com.

In “Bank Run,” you play Evan, an office drone caught up in a conspiracy involving hot secret agents, crooked bankers and an army of armed thugs. You have to dodge cars and bullets while deciding whom to trust and whom to kill. Make the wrong choice or the wrong move and Evan eats it — but you can hone your skills and try again.

“Bank Run” is the creation of my client SilkTricky, a Portland, Oregon-based digital agency that launched its first live-action interactive film, “The Outbreak,” in September 2008. (Which I also helped promote.) “The Outbreak” featured rampaging zombies, bloodied characters and viewers in charge. Fueled by reviews on blogs and social media, “The Outbreak” attracted over one million views during its eight-month run online.

“The reaction to ‘The Outbreak’ inspired us to go even further,” said Chris Lund, SilkTricky’s founder and writer/editor/director/effects artist. “Bank Run” was filmed in Portland with local actors. Lund won’t reveal the budget, but noted that “it cost a little less than ‘Avatar.’” He added, “Our goal wasn’t to make a cinematic classic, but to create a fun fantasy experience. There are some cheesy one-liners and over-the-top scenarios, but who wants to play a boring movie?”

Just another day at the evil multinational bank...

SilkTricky is hosting the first part of “Bank Run” online where it can be sampled freely. The experience continues on the iPhone with a $1.99 App that includes the second half of the movie and a couple of arcade-style shooter games. Both the movie and the game contain graphic violence and adult language — or approximately what you’d find at your typical evil multinational bank. And like any bank loan officer, Lund hopes that interest runs high…

Update 3/15/10: “Bank Run” scores Site of the Day honors at the FWA.

Related Article: “The Outbreak”: New Zombie Flick Brings Interactive Films Back From The Dead

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango and Chief Talent Scout

Our clients will be easier to find than ever, ’cause Atomic Tango now has an SEO pro in the house.

Yea, though he walks through the Valley o' Death (about 290 miles northeast of L.A.), the Search Strategist always finds matters of interest...

Search Strategist Jerram Betts joins us from Shopzilla Inc., where he was Director of Search Engine Optimization for both Shopzilla.com and Bizrate.com. Unlike the SEO hacks who simply stuff websites with keywords, Jerram integrates site optimization, blogging, social networking and bookmarking into comprehensive campaigns.

And that integrated marketing communications (IMC) is what Atomic Tango is all about.

IMC coordinates all activities around a central strategy and theme, which eliminates brand disconnects and ensures unity of purpose. I’ve been crafting integrated campaigns since the emergence of the commercial web, and currently teach IMC at UCLA Extension. With Jerram as Atomic Tango’s Search Strategist & Chief Technologist, search engine marketing (SEM) and optimization (SEO) will play more significant roles in our overt-ops. Our new realm of search-related services include:

1. Baseline stats/information analysis
a. Traffic levels from top sources
b. Pages in the indices
c. Backlinks
d. Rankings on key phrases
e. Research of other sites in keyword space

2. Keyword research
a. Understanding types of searches performed by potential customers
b. Keyword expansion

3. Site review
a. Ensuring site crawlability
b. Information architecture review
c. Content review

4. Link building
a. Listings in key directories
b. Content syndication to related sites
c. BizDev/partner opportunities
d. Link bait/viral content creation
e. Social media outreach

5. Other offerings
a. PPC campaign management (building off the keyword research)
b. Display advertising campaign management
c. Affiliate program setup
d. Landing page optimization

Our goal: to create content for our clients that’s not only search-engine friendly, but also worth checking out and linking to. And that, of course, further enhances a site’s search engine page rank.

On a personal note, both Jerram and I were MBA classmates at USC, and for years we’ve talked biz while watching Trojan football or shooting pool. He’s already enlightened me about some SEO practices — more importantly, what not to do. Now it’s time to get serious about search.

Serious in the Atomic Tango way, of course.

Shameless plug: For the full scoop on Atomic Tango’s search and integrated marketing services, simply drop us a line.

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

No, not me on the cover. Really.

Somebody my size with my athletic ability doesn’t play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Picture an over-caffeinated chicken on a greased trampoline. It’s just not in my genetic cards.

So I did the next best thing: I wrote a bad-ass essay about the team. Actually a few essays…

In  2000, my buddy Hiroshi and I launched TURFgeeks, a primitive football blog with approximately 2.5 readers: me, Hiroshi, and an occasional stray surfer. It was a lot harder to hype a blog in those pre-Web 2.0 days — particularly since the word blog didn’t exist — but it didn’t matter. For Hiroshi, it was a refreshing break from his brutally dry gig as an agriculture industry PR guy. For me, it was a way to keep my writing skills honed in the wake of the first dotcom crash. For both of us, it was an opportunity to pretend we were sports writers.

Ancient artifact and proof of early bloggers unveiled. Note: We let our domain registration lapse, and now turfgeeks.com is owned by a lawn maintenance service. Sacrilege!

Being a sports writer was something I had fantasized about for years. In college, I was a photographer for the student paper and shot an occasional sporting event, but I envied the writers and the verbal gymnastics they executed to capture the essence of a game. I then looked into sports writing as a career and learned how much most journalists actually get paid.

Obviously, they do it for the love of sports.

I also learned that most rookie sports writers cover bowling, bass fishing and minor league baseball in some backwoods burg in hopes of making it to the big leagues. My interest was strictly football — indeed, I consider baseball to be slow torture.

So I went into the music industry instead, followed by advertising and the dotcom rollercoaster.

Enter “Sports Night”

Porn for Wannabe Sports Writers

Then, in 1998, the TV series “Sports Night” premiered and aired for two brilliant seasons. Created by Aaron Sorkin (who later produced “The West Wing”), “Sports Night” won three Emmy Awards and approximately 2.5 viewers. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to do a show called “Sports Night” when women dominate primetime viewership. But, wow, this series about life in sports broadcasting had it all: killer writing, high-energy work environments, and sexy creative colleagues who regularly high-fived each other. It was the complete antithesis of my dotcom experience, which was more like “Office Space” without the action sequences. Indeed, “Sports Night” was so idealized and artificially enhanced it was practically pornographic.

So I tried to make it happen. Hiroshi and I wrote TURFgeeks for one glorious season. He went on to become a cop, and I got a job as an assistant on a TV series about a young guy who sees his entire life as a sporting event: “Inside Schwartz.” It sounded perfect — but let’s just say it was no “Sports Night.” We got canceled after nine or ten episodes. I’ve blocked most of it out of my memory, though I remember once finding the producer in his office obsessively tweaking the show’s laugh track.

That’s when I decided to get an MBA so I could produce my own work, but the love of sports writing persevered.

The Blog Age Dawns

A few years ago, Geek-kind entered the Blog Age. I snooped around a few sports sites, commenting here and there, but nothing grabbed me. I usually found myself debating 13-year-old sports runts who had discovered the joy of cursing anonymously at adults.

Paradise for Steelers Fans

Then, last year, I discovered a site that spoke my language: Behind The Steel Curtain. I’m a lifelong, diehard Steelers fan, and here was a thriving site devoted solely to my team, with actual intelligent discussion, not just the usual cheerleading and trash talking. Indeed, Steelers president and co-owner Art Rooney Jr. described BTSC as “Thoughtful discussion with a sense of history.”

The credit goes to Michael “Blitzburgh” Bean, BTSC’s founder and editor, who’s also a grad student in Digital Media at the University of Washington. He runs a tight ship at BTSC, and is also a great writer. He and I started chatting, and he asked if I’d like to write about the Steelers. I said of course, I was happy contributing to his site. He interrupted and asked if I would write for a print publication he was editing — and get paid to do it.

I said I’d think about it.

Yeah, right. I had the article written and on his desk before he even got off the phone — I was that pumped about the opportunity.

Game Time

The article I wrote for Michael is, of course, a marketer’s eye-view of the Steelers. Entitled “Now That’s Steelers Football!: How a Small Market Team Created a Nation,” it breaks down the elements of a “cult brand” and how the Steelers have implemented each element to perfection. Yes, it’s thoroughly TURFgeeky, but it combines Steelers and marketing. What could be better? I won’t say anymore — you’ll have to read it in your own copy of Steelers Annual 2009 just published by Maple Street Press.

By the way, one of my fellow contributing writers on this book is Howard Fineman of MSNBC and Newsweek. Yes, count me psyched.

Now, I didn’t get to cover a game in person for that article. I wrote it mostly at my local Starbucks in West L.A. But it’s a start, right? After all, if ancient Brett Favre (who’s younger than I am) can continue to pursue his football fantasies, so can this armchair QB. I just gotta take it easy on the high-fives — this typing arm ain’t what it used to be.

Shameless plug: Will write for football — or most any other topic: contact Atomic Tango…

Click to enlarge.

Written by Freddy, illustrated by Barzak

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

Ever watch a horror film and yell at the characters, “What the hell are you doing?!” Well, smarty, now you can put yourself in the characters’ bloody shoes with the online zombie flick The Outbreak…

The interactive horror short lets you make key decisions for the characters and see the results. For example, in one scene an annoying character breaks her leg while zombies are attacking. If this were a normal film, you might be cheering loudly for the zombies. In “The Outbreak,” the action freezes and you’re presented a choice: “save her” or “leave her.” Make the right choice, and the film continues with more critical choices. Make the wrong choice, and you get one final scene before the words “YOU DIE” appear on screen. But just like the zombies, you aren’t dead forever. You can start the film over or click on a chapter menu to see your film path to that point. You can then re-view a scene and change your mind. Here’s the trailer…

My friend Lynn Lund and her husband, Chris, created both “The Outbreak” and the site. I wrote the press release and low-budget marketing plan. I’m also now encouraging Lynn and Chris to make their next interactive flick a romantic comedy, since I’m more likely to yell at a nonsensical film like “Knocked Up” than at a horror film. But that might just be me.

Other Interactive Films…

I’m also a sucker for interactive stories. At Expo ’74 (The World’s Fair in Spokane, Washington), I remember seeing “Kinoautomat” (aka “One Man And His World”) a full-screen interactive movie from Czechoslovakia. Each seat in the theater was equipped with a red button and a green button. A live actor hosted the film, and she interrupted it at several points to ask us to vote on what the character should do next. We would vote by pressing the button corresponding to a choice, and the film would follow that path. Unfortunately, Czechoslovakia’s then Communist government put the kibosh on both the film and the technology, but it’s recently enjoyed a bit of a revival.

So other than films at world fairs, we interactive junkies of the ’70s had only dead-tree media to play with. I’m talking, of course, about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories of Edward Packard, including “Sugarcane Island.”

On the Internet, most cinematic entertainment to date has ignored the capabilities of the medium and been old-school linear. Instead of interactivity, we have YouTube shorts and soap operas made for MySpace. Yes, a lot of it is really good — like Dr. Horrible — but none of it has taken advantage of the technology to really engage the audience. (And just the word “engagement” gets corporate sponsors all hot and bothered.) Now comes “The Outbreak.” Here’s hoping this little zombie flick helps interactive films rise again.

Update 9/24/8: The zombies are a hit. My friend/client Lynn emails me, “Freddy, our stats are blowing up. We have to switch over to another server by the end of this week b/c we will go over our monthly bandwidth allotment of 1 TB in the next few days (we’ve only been on this server since Sunday!).”

Update 5/20/9: The zombies have been put to sleep, as “The Outbreak” has been retired. You can still find a low-quality version of “The Outbreak” on YouTube.

Related Article: Better Off Undead? The Mysterious Popularity of Zombie Movies

If you have a film or other product that you want promoted with a low-cost marketing plan, contact Atomic Tango…

Ever laugh at career retrospectives by people who are still getting started — or who never really got off the ground? I mean, really, how can the band The Goo Goo Dolls be upon their second volume of greatest hits already? I didn’t even know they ever had more than one hit.

Well, I’m about to do something that should have you ROFLYAO. I just launched this blog in December of ’007, and now I’m going to perpetrate a greatest posts retrospective. Yes, call it premature exaltation. Or just a lark…

But I’m in the midst of grading MBA marketing finals, and grading is to teaching what scrubbing dishes is to eating. (So time consuming. So dirty feeling.) In addition, I have to tend to my clients, attend business development meetings, feed the cats, work on two books (one fiction, one non), read up on USC Trojans football, and develop three different ideas for video series. Blogging? Who’s got time for blogging?

So I do what all other creative people do when they’re pressed for time, short on ideas, and overdue on their next scheduled release: I put out a greatest hits compilation. Here, then, are my Top 20 blog posts to date in terms of views. And I promise not to release a greatest hits volume two anytime soon. At least, not until the holiday shopping season…

1. Are You For Real, Monica Rockle? A Facebook Marketing Case Study — By far my most popular post, accounting for nearly half of all the views to Cool Rules Pronto. This one exposed a wildly successful marketing scheme perpetrated on Facebook. It even led the perpetrator to contact me in the guise of his faux femme fatale. I posted links to the article directly at the scene of the slime, and it resulted in a lot of traffic and comments — some of them surprisingly hostile.

2. Are You For Real, Monica Rockle II: The Updates, the Photo, and… the Haunting? — The silly sequel to the hit post also drew a few readers.

3. Use Your Illusion: The Viral Spinning Girl — Optical illusions are popular on the Web. I wrote about why this illusion had viral potential, and — to my relief — it lived up to that potential.

4. That Great Big Sexy Mistake: 5 Reasons Not to Use Flash — I was happy to see this one take off, particularly since 100%-Flash sites are an unfortunately common mistake. Though, honestly, much of the traffic probably came because of the word “sexy” and the photo of a hot model.

5. American Apparel Sports a Woody: Madness is the Method — I posted a link to this one on the American Apparel page at Facebook, and the double entendre no doubt lured over some of the fashion brand’s fans. A lot of people researching American Apparel’s controversial CEO Dov Charney also found it.

6. “Your Skin Color is not a Stain!”: L.A. Teen Takes On Unilever’s Bigotry — This post testifies to the power of Digg. I fully credit teenage blogger Delia Rose for first raising the issue, but it required some enthusiastic Diggers to give the story life. The best part? The traffic from Unilever websites.

7. Marketing During a Recession, Part 1: Pricing — Note to business bloggers: write about what to do during a recession. People are worried out there, as they should be. They need advice — make that free advice.

8. Public Relations 101: How (Not) to Write a Press Release — A ridiculous phenomenon (corporate press releases) calls for a ridiculous response, and I can be ridiculous on demand. I had publicists sending this to their friends. It’s great to see people willing to laugh at the themselves. If only more of the world would take itself less seriously…

9. What What? South Park Spoofs the WGA, YouTube, Canada… — Speaking of which, YouTubers and Hollywood writers loved being skewered by South Park. Indeed, I think some people were offended at being left out.

10. Full of Holes: The Extremist Attack on Dunkin Donuts — Want a hot blog post? Touch a heated topic. Critics dismissed the “kaffiyeh kerfluffle” as much ado about nothing. But it was an annoying moment in modern U.S. media that offended a lot of people. It deserved a little rant. Plus, I’ll take any opportunity to jab the wingnuts.

11. Totally Lushalicious: The Making of a New Word — Apparently, a lot of people are interested in new words. Who says the Web is making its users illiterate? (Note: “illiterate” means “can not read.”)

12. Breaking into the Media Biz: 10 Tips for Aspiring Media Moguls — I wrote this after hearing some really prehistoric career advice spouted by some dinosaurs at a career conference. The media world is being shattered into millions of little pieces, and the corporations no longer have a lock on it — nor are they hiring much anymore. So I went straight home and wrote this post, which I see as a work in progress.

13. Cute, Clever and Contagious: The HEMA Website — Cute viral site. Made my job easy.

14. Bankruptcy is the Fashion? Mervyns Fails to Declare Its Style — I didn’t think anyone cared about Mervyns, but this one took off after I posted it to Stumbleupon. I think there’s a fascination with bankruptcies out there. Is it out of a general fear, or are people excited about bad operations finally falling? Schadenfreude, anyone?

15. Say Vhat?! Do the People Want a VW with a German Accent? — This one drew VW fans, advertising professionals and … people interested in German accents? Say vhat?

16. Cows and Dogs in a Bear Market: Applying the BCG Matrix to Marketing — The BCG Matrix is an old framework that’s kind of cheesy, but it still generates a lot of interest. I think the photo of head cheese (shudder) also drew in a few clicks. In fact, there should be a horror movie called, “The Head Cheese That Ate New York.” It would be scarier than “Cloverfield.” Hell, John McCain’s campaign is scarier than “Cloverfield.”

17. Hail Mary: Does the All American Football League Have a Prayer? — People want more football. I second that emotion.

18. “Wait, That’s My Face!”: Identity Theft, Social Networking Style — The young woman whose photo was heisted by “Monica Rockle” contacted me. (I love how small the Web can be.) This article got the attention of a lot of people nervous about privacy on social networks.

19. Here We Go Again: Dotcom Bust 2.0 — This was a shout out to my peeps in Web 2.0 land. The sensationalist headline drew ‘em in, but my intention was to get all of us to start thinking seriously about marketing and making money. I love Web 2.0 sites and services and don’t want to see any more going under. Note to 2.0 entrepreneurs: you can’t all survive on advertising revenue — but hey, thanks for redistributing all that VC wealth.

20. (tie) Not So Artfully Crafted: Blue Moon’s Un-Wired Ad — Not sure what the fascination with Blue Moon is. It’s Coors, people!

20. (tie) Marketing During a Recession, Part 2: Honor the Fallen — More recession advice. The world wants it!

In addition to my Top 20, what also interests me (and, likely, only me) about my rankings is which posts full-on tanked. Basically, anything I wrote about the presidential election face-planted harder than Fred Thompson at a breakdancing competition. Each post garnered fewer than 20 views each. My guess is that there are enough blogs out there covering politics that no one really needs the political views of a raging leftist L.A. marketer. Damn.

Same thing with my posts about Hollywood: complete flops at the box office. I should have known better: the world doesn’t need another entertainment writer.

And articles about myself? Not so hot. In fact, I effusively thank all two of you who have read this far into this post.

So I’ll stick to writing about marketing in my highly critical and irreverent way, delving into controversy when I see it, and dishing out specific advice on how to survive in a brutal economy.

In the meantime, I’ve got papers to grade. And a couple of really hungry cats.

Behold: the premiere episode of The Worldwide Scoop, the original online series produced by my agency, Atomic Tango…

I’ve always wondered why more ad agencies don’t produce entertainment content.* Creating an online video show, magazine, or some other creative media requires the same talent as producing an ad: writers, artists, directors, actors, models, etc. It also provides a stimulating, liberating break from creating work for clients, who don’t always fully exploit an agency’s creative capacity. Plus, there’s always downtime when clients go on hiatus or burn out their budget early. During that downtime, all that high-priced agency talent has a few options: they can sit around, take long lunches, shop on Amazon, watch YouTube or indulge in some other time-suck, or they can team up on some fun endeavor that builds camaraderie and shows what they’re capable of doing with no client strings attached.

While advertising certainly has its perks — which is why I chose this industry and continue to work in it — sometimes you just want to create something not bound by brand guidelines or the need to actually market anything. Creative projects also give your employees in non-creative positions a chance to flaunt their talent. At one interactive agency, I worked with a programmer who played bass for a punk band, and an art director who was a killer cartoonist. Unfortunately, they had no opportunities to strut their stuff at work.

We had downtime and a CEO/owner with deep pockets, so I suggested to him that we create original creative media to showcase our creative prowess beyond developing websites. He vetoed that idea, saying content production wasn’t our “core competency”… Then the dot-com crash hit. And since there was no more demand for our “core competency,” the remains of the agency were sold to the highest bidder, and that amazing assemblage of talent was laid-off and dispersed.

I then made three vows:
1. To run my own agency someday. Enough with “leaders” who had the ambition and vision of lemurs!
2. To never use the term “core competency” (which I rank with “best practices” and “mission critical” as among the most annoying and potentially destructive examples of business jargon).
3. To use any talent in my immediate circle to do something creative and non-marketing related.

With The Worldwide Scoop I have fulfilled that third vow. (And I can be so grumpy when I catch myself perpetrating a self-deception.)

Where are we going with Scoop? Right now the goal is to build the audience and give everyone involved as much exposure as possible. It also gives me the opportunity to experiment with online-video marketing techniques, and it demonstrates to current and potential clients Atomic Tango’s ability to create online shows and other branded content. Want to put on a show involving your brand? No problem. We’ll even throw in a few amoebas.

*Side note on the term “content” (aka, the “C-word”): I curse the villainous cretin who first used the word “content” to describe creative media. “Content” is what is used to stuff a pillow. I don’t know any musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, artists or other creative professionals who describe their work as “content.” I do use “content” to describe the features of a website, but only as a general term to cover the words, layout, architecture, design, artwork, etc. When referring to specific features, I call them exactly what they are: “photos,” “texts,” “games.” For this article, I use “content” because, unfortunately, that’s the term everyone in this business understands. I’m hoping someone will coin a single term that encompasses all creative work. Which do you prefer: “media,” “creative,” “productions”….?

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

Who ever imagined that naming a company would become a game of speed and chance?

Client 9 as depicted by New York Magazine

As soon as the Eliot Spitzer-prostitute story broke, I looked up the name Client9.com. In case you’ve been stationed in Antarctica and missed the screaming sensationalist headlines, then New York Governor Spitzer was busted for hiring prostitutes: he was the mysterious “Client 9″ in investigative reports. Given my penchant for anything that sounds like it came from a James Bond film, I immediately looked to reserve “Client 9″ as the site of a satirical series, but someone beat me to the punch. Damn, that’s fast.

And that’s a taste of what it’s like to name a company in in the 21st century.

Over my two decades in business, I’ve named numerous products and companies — and it hasn’t gotten any easier. The big naming agencies use computers, linguist PhD’s and legal teams to ferret out the “right name” for a client, and then charge six figures for the service. I use my own secret formula, some of the ingredients including multiple shots of espresso combined with external sources of stimulation (the novels of Tom Robbins or Babylonian mythology) and a set of criteria:

1. Availability: Before you go out and print up some biz cards, make sure the name is available — both legally (check both federal and state trademark registries) and as a .com. Although there are now several options to .com, the alternatives just don’t have the same clout or searchability. You still really want a .com. Note: there are now 183 million website domain names in existence, so there’s a good chance that your dream name is already taken as a web address.

One of my biggest peeves is web-address squatters. Just when you’ve nailed a great name, you find that someone has already booked it but they’re not using it. They just reserved it for resale. And it’s not just geeks in Third World countries hoping to score an extra buck. The domain-registration and hosting service Network Solutions was recently sued for automatically grabbing addresses that people were researching on their site. Regardless of the legality, it makes finding a name even harder.

Finally, make sure a similar name isn’t being used by something unsavory. I once developed a name that turned out to be similar to a neo-Nazi website — oops, back to the drawing board. In addition, if you find a used name that’s now abandoned, try to find out what it was once used for.

2. Suitability: Is the name a good fit for the company, the industry, and the target consumer?

I love the name “Skullcandy” for headphones targeting the extreme sports and music crowd. It captures the company’s edgy culture, describes the product, and appeals to the youthful rebellious audience.

I’m not so wild about “The CW” for a television network targeting young people. It says absolutely nothing. At least its previous name, “The WB,” conjured up Warner Bros (its original parent company), the Wayan Brothers (its early programming), or White Babes (the focus of its non-Wayan Brothers programming). “CW” is what, Country Western? Corporate Waste? Creepy Weasels?

3. Memorability: Today’s consumers encounter thousands of company names from around the world. Most reflect no imagination or even thought.

In Web 2.0, apparently, the weirder the better. It started with Yahoo! and Google becoming massive and famous. Then came the onslaught of nonsense names like Danoo, Ooyala, Veoh and Hulu. Maybe those names will stick, but they’ll take time, work and money.

The worst corporate names are acronyms, like The CW, BASF, EDS, TIAA-CREF, or half the ad agency names in the industry (see below). It usually takes years and millions of dollars in marketing to make acronyms stick (like IBM or BMW), since they’re usually unpronounceable and have no readily apparent meaning.

Or it takes a brilliant ad agency: the Kaplan Thaler Group used a talking duck to finally make AFLAC memorable. Before the duck, AFLAC had spent millions of dollars on ads and yet failed to generate much name recall by consumers. My hats off to AFLAC for taking a creative risk for a conservative product (insurance). It worked. But what if AFLAC had a better name in the first place?

4. Spellability: If consumers have a hard time remembering the spelling, they’re never going to find your website. Hulu is only 4 letters, but I’ve already had to spell it for people.

Even if the name is made up of common words, if it’s too long, people will mistype it. Trying to type AllAmericanFootballLeague.com into your browser will give you writer’s cramp. (In addition, as I mentioned in a previous post, the League’s acronym AAFL is pronounced “awful.”)

5. Creativity: In dotcom land, everyone at first put an e- in front of their names (eTrade, eToys, eBay). Then came i- (before Apple locked up every noun in the world with an i- in front of it). Now I see names with You- at the beginning or -Tube at the end.

Other industries aren’t immune from copycat behavior. At the Consumer Electronics Show, every other name had the word Tech in it. In football, it’s something generic + FL (UFL, AAFL, USFL, XFL). Even in frogurt chains, Pinkberry spawned such leaps of imagination as Blue Cherry and Kiwiberri, and Pinkberry itself mimicked another chain, Red Mango. All sad and shameless.

It’s perfectly fine to derive your name from other sources (such as classic ’80s teen flicks) as long as they’re not in the same industry. Otherwise, you’re just confusing consumers instead of impressing them — some might even think you’re lame. You’re also setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

Almost as bad as a derivative name is a generic corporate name, like Technical Solutions, Premier Staffing, or National Finance Services. I just made up those names right here on the spot and… (drum roll please)… yes, they’re real companies — companies whose names are boring and impossible to remember, even if you’re holding the CEO’s business card in your hand.

And unless you’re a law firm, don’t make your name a string of the partners’ last names. Talk about hard to remember, spell or even pronounce.

An original creative name stands out from the crowd. It’s easy to remember. And It says that you’re a smart company that’s worth watching.

It also makes for great conversation at networking events.

Inspirations & Competitors

My criteria are partly based on the work of Marty Neumeier, author of The Brand Gap and Zag (I recommend both). Ironically, his website has the unfortunate name of NeutronLLC.com — a forgettable combination of commonplace noun and corporate suffix — proving that even the experts hit the occasional wall.

Indeed, I’m amused by all the ad agencies — who are masters of branding — with names like a law firm or a spilled bowl of alphabet soup: TBWA\Chiat\Day, GSD&M, Crispin Porter + Bogusky… In fact, I just Googled “naming services,” and the first listing was Master-McNeil, self-proclaimed “Thought Leaders in Naming.” And yet the best they could do for themselves was the last names of their founders separated by an annoying hyphen. Ego, anyone? (Fortunately for them, they own the URL naming.com.)

So What’s Up with Atomic Tango?

When I had to name my own agency, I avoided the industry clichés of using an acronym or my last name (for many people, Nager is both hard to pronounce and spell).

I came up with “Tango” first. It’s easy to spell and fun to say. It refers to a sensual dance requiring athleticism, cooperation and precision. And because I work closely with clients, I wanted to evoke “it takes two to tango.”

But the name Tango was already taken — as are nearly all one-word .coms — so I decided to create a two-word name, which is an effective way to bypass squatters. I selected “Atomic” because it’s easy to spell and say, and it evokes the late ’50s/early ’60s, the pinnacle of American style. (Yes, I’m mad about the TV series Mad Men, which is set in an ad agency in 1960.) It hints at “fusion,” which is what my agency does (fusing creativity and strategy). It was also the era of the early James Bond flicks, and the time when my father was jet-setting around the world as a member of the State Department.

So I put the two words together, and in the year ’007, Atomic Tango was born. Good name? I’ll let you decide. It’s worked for me so far.

Related Articles:

• Notes on Naming: Don’t Make It Personal
• To “The” or not to “The”: That is the Question in Product Naming

Update 5/28/9: TechCrunch takes Microsoft to task for naming their new search engine “Bing” — a name that must have cost a pretty penny, since short web-addresses are hard to come across, and yet entirely meaningless. (Unless you’re a fan of Bing Crosby.) I agree with TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld, who recommends “Sift.” Hell, if you’ve got the dinero to buy a four-letter name, make it a meaningful one. (The Bing logo, too, is nice, but also doesn’t say anything. That’s Microsoft for ya.)

Shameless plug: Need a killer name for your company? Contact Atomic Tango…

I love checking my blog stats, not just the raw numbers of views, but also such info as where my traffic is coming from. That’s how I discovered that my article on Wal-Mart had been cited by the Wall Street Journal. Woohoo — I’ve got Street cred!

I’m most intrigued by the search-engine terms that lead to Cool Rules Pronto. Who Googled “Freddy Nager blog”? And why is somebody researching “Spicoli origin”?

Here’s the key factoid I learned from looking at these search-engine terms: name dropping works….

I’m talking about corporate brand names. Particularly up-and-coming brand names.

For example, although I’ve received traffic from people Googling “Budweiser” and “Wal-Mart,” those results have been far outstripped by people Googling the smaller brands “Skullcandy” and “Blue Moon.” You might think it would be the other way around, but I hypothesize three reasons for this…

1. Interest Level. Budweiser and Wal-Mart are old news; Skullcandy and Blue Moon are new and still largely unknown. Consumers want more scoop!

2. Information Availability. It’s easy enough to find Bud’s website, and Bud is also covered by hundreds of other publications. As I mentioned in my article on Blue Moon, this smaller beer brand’s website isn’t even listed in its ad, so people need to Google to find any info about it.

3. Media Saturation. Wal-Mart issues a statement, and a million bloggers rant about it. But very few bloggers anywhere talk about a small company at any given time.

In other words, if you’re a new blogger who wants search-engine attention, think small — no, not the mom-and-pop taco stand down the street (save that for Yelp!); think small to mid-sized brands. Or bands. Or actors. Or politicians. They’re too small for mainstream media to devote space to, so it’s up to us bloggers to give ‘em the spotlight they deserve. No wonder blogs are booming while mainstream media is declining!

So look for me to blog about more up-and-coming brands. I had thought about analyzing the ineptitude over at Sears, and how marketing might turn that dinosaur around. But does anyone care about Sears anymore? Obviously, consumers don’t – nor apparently does the chairman. It would all be a bunch of wasted pixels.

I’ll still write about marketing tips, like this article, even though they get relatively little search-engine traction. ‘Consider that the teacher in me just itching to share.

Update 9/18/8: Here’s proof that this works: Penelope Cruz. I mentioned her in my article on American Apparel and Woody Allen, and I’ve had over 500 search hits based on her name alone. I’m not exactly sure that’s a good thing: although I welcome the traffic, it’s not exactly relevant for my business.

Related Article: You Can Lead a Horse to Water But… The Limitations of SEO