The name game

As a reporter, there are number of questions that I always want to ask but never have the courage to bring up during a typical press conference. Luckily, magazine columns provide the perfect forum for addressing the truly tough questions that must be asked when a company launches and re-launches its brand. Questions like: What is a cingular?

According to the official company transcript, Cingular, the new name for the wireless joint venture between SBC and BellSouth, stands for personal and individual service. I'm still holding to the theory that Microsoft, in yet another attempt to dominate the service provider market, has removed the spell check function from every copy of MS Word in the industry.

How long will it take the market to familiarize itself with Cingular? The company doesn't plan to begin a major brand push until January. That's three long months for Cingular to linger in the netherworld of brand equity. January, though, is an excellent time to introduce a new brand: Half the country is stuck inside, and the Super Bowl of advertising - the Super Bowl - hits at the end of the month.

How many names does it take to come up with a cingular name? The company started with 6000 names and whittled that list to 200 through a series of 18 focus groups and trademark and URL searches. The company even sent the final few to a linguist to ensure that it didn't translate into something offensive, perhaps just in case Cingular's President and CEO Stephen Carter is eyeing that burgeoning wireless system in Mongolia.

If Cingular was the winner, what ended up on the cutting room floor? The company isn't saying, but I bet the words "global," "clear" and "free" are being incinerated.

How will the market react to the new name? The first reaction was as expected and produced a lot of shrugs and quizzical looks. It also begged the question of where the company came up with such a name.

Is that Cingular pronounced "singular" or "kingular?" It's "singular," but rest assured many will pronounce it "kingular" just as this magazine still gets several calls every week asking for an editor from "Tell-a-phony."

And how many millions did Cingular pay the company that came up with that name?

Can you convince employees that the new name really means a new beginning? Regardless of how consumers take to the cingular name, employees are already having their own fun. According to one source, some Verizon employees entertained themselves after the official unveiling by making the Verizon V symbol with their fingers then dropping the index digit to symbolize Cingular.

Will the name stand out from the rest of the industry? While it is different and not an actual word, Cingular doesn't really remind me of anything in particular except the opening bars of "A Chorus Line's" finale. But given that this industry seems to prefer names that infer weakness and frailty (see: Lucent, Pliant and Eziaz), Cingular isn't so bad. It also fits with a long tradition of misspelling words by a few letters to grab attention (see: Qwest, Verizon and Zhone).

How does it stack up against other carrier names? If you haven't noticed yet, it's another evolution toward non-geographic specific brands. Southwestern Bell has drifted off like tumbleweed, U S West's brand has ridden off into the sunset, Nynex retired to Florida and Southern Bell went the way of the cotillion. In their place are gray, corporate names that don't hold the brand to any specific region. So Cingular fits.

Is that neon green really necessary? Yes. Every company must have a corporate color, regardless of how trendy it is now or how out of date it will be in six months.

What's with that symbol on the logo? Maybe it's a person in abstract form; perhaps it's a piece of a child's set of jacks.

I hate to repeat myself, but what's a cingular?