The most ridiculous agency names in adland
When deciding on a clever name for an agency, adland creatives would do well to heed this lesson from way back in 1993.
Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, which melded the male and female symbols into one glyph.
Aside from having no name, the symbol was also impossible to replicate on a traditional keyboard, forcing Warner Bros to send out a floppy disc to media outlets containing a font with only one symbol: Prince’s new name.
It was a communications nightmare, and stands as a cautionary tale for those trying to get too clever with their names. After all, when clear communications is your job, the worst thing you can do is saddle yourself with a confusing, hard-to-communicate name.
And yet…
It seems almost de rigueur for Australian agencies to launch with the most confusing, ridiculous names possible. Punctuation is indiscriminately used, a backslash or stray apostrophe flung into the mix, capitalisation popping up like an RBT unit, words squashed together as if queuing for pork rolls, and other linguistic crimes that would have Strunk and White spinning in their respective coffins.
Enough is enough. We’ve played your games, and used your naming conventions, even when it means putting a small letter at the start of the sentence – which breaks the very first rule you learn about sentence structure.
Below is a mere sampling of this madness.
Feel free to dob in any oddly-named agencies we may have missed – and please don’t take it to heart – it’s not like we’re taking aim at your children’s names. That’s for another column.
Enjoy the list, and try not to take it too seriously. Love, from all of us at Mu|\/|bR3ll@.
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SICKDOGWOLFMAN
All caps, all one word, and all terms you’ll hear interchangeably yelled at the skate park down the road from your office as a bunch of teens attempt a tricky quarter-pipe entry.
Mustard
I mean, there’s no stray punctuation or clever homophones, but c’mon now. Mustard? It’s as evocative as… well, mustard. Plus, it completely removes those condiment clients who now avoid you because that would be too obvious and easy.
Hopeful Monsters
This name isn’t the worst, but it’s a rebrand from the far cooler-sounding Magnum and Co. which sounds like an after-hours club that smells of cigars and Brut. Hopeful Monsters sounds like a Muppets spinoff about achieving your dreams, or a bunch of Lady Gaga fans outside a concert trying to buy tickets from scalpers.
We Are Social, We Are Different, We The People, For The People
Aside from being confusing, these agencies all sound vaguely like communist slogans – or like a knock-off Nike brand having a go.
Rifle Agency, The Pistol
These names will either hinder or help expansion into the American market – depending on which clients you have in your sights (pun intended).
TBWA\Melbourne
I was going to penalise this name for failing the acronym test and using the letter ‘w’ — a three-syllable letter which is rarely shorter to say than the word it is meant to be shortening — but in this case, ‘w’ stands for Wiesendanger, so I can’t touch them for that. However, the use of the backslash, a character only used in coding, as well as the graceless cramming of the city name at the end, puts them firmly into this list.
It could be worse: one of TBWA’s American offices is called TBWA\Chiat\Day, after the big businesses merged in 1995, and TBWA forced Chiat/Day to reverse their forward-slash. The ignominy!
Special
I mean, if you have to tell people…
VMLY&R / PHD / OMD / DDB
WTF? LOL
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Got a tip?
topics
For The People
Hopeful Monsters
Rifle Agency
TBWA Melbourne
The Pistol
We Are Different
We Are Social
We The People
Seems many of these agencies have been – and continue to be – extremely successful despite their supposed naming crimes. What a non article.
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Was my fave. VMLY&R is a close second. Also surprised Bear Meets Eagle on Fire didn’t rate a mention for overall name length and absurdity. Surely a contender.
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John Bevins Pty Limited was such an imaginative name.
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Lol. You should probably put yourselves on the list, given this publication started life as mUmBRELLA, and over the years has been responsible for the likes of:
* Mumbrella neXt/ NeXt Awards
* mUmBRELLA CommsCon
* Mumbrella BEFest Awards / BEFEST Awards
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How’s the outraged ad people being outraged at a pretty light and harmless blog about funny names.
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Slow news day.
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A few years ago there was a marketing agency called Pirate Pee Argh in Sydney. Maybe it was the bad pun or the use of “Pee” in the brand name but either way, unsurprisingly, it folded.
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If you’re running out of things to do Dr Mumbo, you could always clean out the office fridge or water the plants. Make yourself useful!
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Love the new editorial direction Mumbrella is taking after recent departures.
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How ridiculous! They dont even wear them. Oh wait thats mine. Oops. Ah well. Can I join the list now? 🙂
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UDKU KPMG where I worked on UNSW!
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Is Dr Mumbo 10 years old?
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this feels like a blog post and i like it
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Not many people know this but TBWA is actually pronounced “Tea-bah-wah”. They love it when people use it in meetings, plus it’s fun to say.
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Clearly written by one of the named agencies 😉
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A part of Accenture Song
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This is as ridiculous as an accountancy magazine having a pop at names like PwC, KPMG, EY. How can a media/advertising title not know the history of these famous agency names: VMLY&R / PHD / OMD / DDB / TBWA?
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Feels like you should have saved this one for that weird period between Christmas and New Years. Non article on a slow news day. But I agree with Anonymous 10 Oct 23 that the editorial direction has improved recently. Love the one on Nup to the Cup. Keep up the good work and save these ones for an Xmas special. Maybe ‘Mumbrella’s X-Mas LOLganza: A Yuletide Yarn of Marketing Madness’ to keep up the tradition that A shiny black kettle pointed out.
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How’s about you start up as “HowMuchIsAKiloOfButterWorth”. It would stick.
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Mumbrella again just having a go for the sake of having a go.
What happened to real news
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Atkins & Atkins….when there was only ever the 1 Atkins present (the great Michael Atkins) was a beauty
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My favourite has always been “ABKP & Friends”, which stood for Alexander Bird Kulmar Porra & Friends. And they say there are no egos in advertising!
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agreed!
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whats disappointing to me is the amount of times mumbrella won’t share our work but will spend time posting this. sounds about self-fulfiling if you ask me.
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There are so many more agencies with differentiating names, this list could be endless. Feels like a slow news day at Mumbrella, Dr Mumbo.
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The best writing on Mumbrella in some time.
I♥U Doctor.
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