branding – Techdirt (original) (raw)

The New ‘Sports Illustrated’ Promises To Still Do ‘In-Depth Journalism’ Despite Being A Hollowed Out Husk Now

from the words-are-but-wind dept

As the Vice and Messenger collapse just got done illustrating in glorious technicolor, the problem with online U.S. journalism isn’t that it’s inherently unprofitable. The problem is usually that the worst, least competent, shallowest people imaginable routinely fail upward into positions of management, then treat the brands they acquire like disposable napkins.

That’s certainly been the case over at Sports Illustrated, which isn’t so much even a media organization anymore as much as it is a bloated brand corpse being exploited by a visionless extraction class, with a largely nonexistent interest in the company’s original function: sports journalism.

That was first exemplified when the magazine got in hot water for using AI to create fake journalists and lazy clickbait, without telling its actual human writers. Then it fired most of those writers while simultaneously hosting lavish “brand parties” celebrating the brand’s descent from meaningful sports journalism organization to a hollow placeholder hawking cheap supplements and casinos.

Sports Illustrated’s fortunes got bleaker early this year when The Arena Group, which had actually only been renting the Sports Illustrated brand as part of a 10-year deal with Authentic Brands Group (ABG), failed to make a quarterly $3.75 million payment to continue licensing it. That resulted in a revocation of the branding license and no limit of additional chaos for the already imploding company.

Now ABG has leased the brand to a new owner, Minute Media, a digital-media company focused on “short-form sports content creation.” Minute Media CEO Asaf Peled states they might even stumble into the realm of “in depth journalism,” maybe:

Mr. Peled said Minute Media was focused on “short-form sports content creation,” making video, audio and text for consumption on mobile devices. It owns Fansided, which features articles and podcasts for sports fans and for several years was owned by Sports Illustrated’s former publisher, Time Inc.

…Mr. Peled said he also wanted to continue Sports Illustrated’s tradition of in-depth journalism.

“It’s an exception to our core strategy, but it’s not the first time we’ve done that,” Mr. Peled said.

Sure thing, buddy.

This is happening all over media and journalism. Companies, hedge funds, VCs and executives that have zero interest in journalism are buying media companies, hollowing them out like pumpkins, then basically waving the corpses around like empty marionettes as they push the shallowest content imaginable in pursuit of unlimited growth and bottomless ad engagement.

It rarely goes well. Nothing being built has any lasting power or depth. Sports Illustrated hawks supplements. Newsweek was hollowed out to launder right wing conspiracy theories. Vice was hollowed out to be used for… well, whatever the failson brunchlords left in charge think they’re doing. It’s all interchangeable, shallow, and largely meaningless.

Most of these folks envision a future where (badly) AI automated dreck gets pumped out at impossible scale as part of a massive, senseless engagement infotainment ouroboros that shits out advertising money with limited effort and even less meaningful thought. Others are keen on dismantling real journalism then filling the void with propaganda, distraction, and bad faith simulacrum.

The folks still interested in actually doing journalism are either fired, or relegated to starting their own newsletters or building smaller, cash-strapped news organizations that may or may not survive legal assault by petulant billionaires angry that somebody might have told readers the truth.

Surely there will be no broader cultural downside to such a transformation.

Filed Under: advertising, ai, branding, content, journalism, media, reporting, sports, sports illustrated
Companies: authentic brands group, minute media, the arena group

Sports Illustrated Threw Lavish Parties As It Was Shit-canning All Its Actual Journalists

from the none-of-this-means-anything dept

Fri, Mar 1st 2024 01:31pm - Karl Bode

As the Vice collapse and Messenger collapse just got done illustrating in glorious technicolor, the problem with online U.S. journalism isn’t that it’s not inherently profitable. The problem is usually that the worst, least competent, shallowest people imaginable routinely fail upward into positions of management, then treat the media companies they acquire and operate like a disposable napkin.

That’s certainly been the case over at Sports Illustrated, which isn’t so much even a media organization anymore as much as it is a bloated brand corpse being exploited by extraction-centric, visionless failsons, who have minimal coherent interest in the company’s original function: sports journalism.

That’s all well exemplified by this Washington Post article that explores how as the company was falling apart and its journalists and editors were being fired right and left, the folks in charge of the company were throwing lavish Super Bowl parties. It’s well worth a read, and features a lot of doublespeak by managers who talk out of both sides of their mouth about “values” and “mission.”

Over the past six years Sports Illustrated has been tossed around between a rotating crop of dodgy middlemen for whom journalism was an afterthought. SI was acquired in 2018 by what was left of Meredith Publishing as part of the purchase of Time (which founded the magazine in 1954), then had its intellectual property sold to Authentic Brands Group (ABG) for $110 million a year later.

ABG has basically just been renting the Sports Illustrated brand to a company by the name of The Arena Group, which has been mismanaging it for most of that time. The company, like Vice, was run by a lot of non-journalism, affluent, hedge fund brats, simply interested in blindly chasing engagement at impossible scale via seventy-five consecutive but nonsensical attempts to “pivot to video.”

Arena just got bogged down in a massive scandal after it began using fake AI generated authors to create shitty, fake AI-generated journalism — without bothering to even tell staff or readers. Then the company balked on paying its $12 million yearly fee to ABG, resulting in more chaos.

Now Authentic Brands Group is left pondering what to do with the brand. And it will probably involve renting it yet again to some other set of visionless brunchlords keen on chasing engagement at impossible scale in the most superficial way possible. The people who pay the actual price for this incompetence are, as usual, the journalists and editors who have little to do with mismanagement.

When you read the Washington Post article, there seems to be some realization by the executives at ABG, like CEO Jamie Salter, that you can’t just hollow a journalism company out like a pumpkin and parade the corpse around to sell shitty supplements without repercussions:

“Salter insisted SI’s journalism remains central to his mission. “That’s the mouthpiece to the brand,” he explained. “It’s not as critically important from the financial side, but what we put out there from journalism [is the] core. If you took the shoes out of Reebok, I’m not sure Reebok would be Reebok anymore.”

But then these hustlebros will proceed to do exactly that. Repeatedly. Their entire function is to collect brands, exploit and extract any last bit of value, and then when they’ve drained all meaning from the husk, toss it in the trash and start over somewhere else. Salter seems to throw most of the blame for this dysfunction in the lap of The Arena Group, but the dysfunction is commonplace and everywhere in media.

And then the question the Post correctly asks is, why are the actual employees doing the work always left holding the bag, while never getting a cut of the proceeds? Why does this extraction class view labor as such an irrelevant, exploitable resource in the pursuit of their fourth home?

“If Authentic is forging a new way to monetize a media brand — and, to be sure, there are not a lot of happy stories anywhere in media today — why, SI staffers asked, can’t they get a real cut?”

…”As the fates of some 80 staffers hang in the balance and Authentic contemplates its next move, whatever comes next for SI — a new publisher, a zombie website, a cultural renaissance or anything else — Salter probably will be just fine.”

The Sports Illustrated implosion is just such a perfect example of the utterly hollow vision of a lot of the modern media extraction class. There’s really no genuine interest in craft, or journalism, building consistent audience, or longevity. It’s just mindless consolidation, acquisition, quirky tax tricks, and exploitation dressed up as savvy deal-making, all slathered in as much tacky neon paint as possible.

Filed Under: branding, brunchlords, jamie salter, journalism, media reform, sports illustrated, sports journalism
Companies: arena group, authentic brands group

Sports Illustrated Implosion Perfectly Encapsulates The Ugly, Ongoing Collapse Of U.S. Journalism

from the hollowed-out-and-sold-for-parts dept

Wed, Jan 24th 2024 03:53pm - Karl Bode

When we last checked in with what’s left of Sports Illustrated, its owner, The Arena Group, had just got done baring its ass as part of a giant ‘AI’ related scandal. Company executives apparently thought it would be a great idea to create a bunch of fake, AI-generated writers to shit out lazy, uninteresting clickbait, without really telling any of the folks that create actual journalism at the company.

When busted, Arena Group executives blamed everyone but themselves.

Sports Illustrated’s fortunes got even bleaker last week, when it was revealed that The Arena Group, which had actually only been renting the Sports Illustrated brand as part of a 10-year deal with Authentic Brands Group (ABG), had failed to make a quarterly $3.75 million payment to continue licensing it. That resulted in a revocation of the branding license and no limit of additional chaos for the already imploding company.

To hear ABG CEO Jamie Salter tell it, Arena Group tried to change the terms of the licensing deal and lower its payments mid-stride. Salter says they may still be able to strike a deal with Arena, or they may find another renter. But when it comes to sports reporting and Sports Illustrated, it doesn’t really matter at this point — as the brand has already largely become a zombie of its former self.

And, as is usually the case, employees doing the actual work were the ones who got to pay the price for their employers’ incompetence and bickering, with large swaths informed of layoffs:

“Earlier today, The Arena Group gave notice over email that it would be conducting layoffs at Sports Illustrated. A statement from the Sports Illustrated union revealed that “a significant number, possibly all” of the magazine’s staff would be losing their jobs as the result of Authentic Brands Group’s decision to revoke The Arena Group’s license to the SI brand.”

Over the past six years Sports Illustrated has been tossed around between a rotating crop of dodgy international middlemen for whom journalism was an afterthought. SI was acquired in 2018 by what was left of Meredith Publishing as part of a purchase of what was left of Time, Inc. (which founded the magazine in 1954), then had its intellectual property sold to Authentic for $110 million a year later.

All the while, the output and quality of the end product and brand steadily declined, resulting in a media outlet that’s now more interested in hawking supplements and affixing its brand to casino deals than doing any sort of cogent sports reporting. It’s a not dissimilar trajectory to other major media brands like Newsweek, which was hollowed out like a pumpkin and now traffics in right wing conspiracy theories.

Sports Illustrated’s decline runs in parallel to the ongoing, continuing collapse of real journalism and the whole accurately informing the public thing–which has never been much of a money maker. There were a record number of media layoffs last year, as trust fund brunchlords and the incompetent stewards of a dying press hustle and jockey to make a quick buck shuffling bloated brand corpses around.

It’s more profitable to make a quick buck striking acquisition deals and pointless mergers for the tax breaks — generating automated clickbait and bullshit at historic scale and using what’s left of popular brands to sell junk — than it is to pay real reporters a living wage to create quality journalism. The end result of that lazy mindset is everywhere you look. And it seems to be getting worse.

Despite a lot of lip service, we’ve never really spent a whole lot of time actually trying to find creative new funding options for real journalism at any meaningful scale. Certainly nowhere near the time and effort put into get rich quick tech fads like NFTs. The stewards of what’s left have no interest in real journalism, or funding it. They’re in it to make a quick buck off the fading remnants of a dying industry, cutting corners, firing employees, and pursuing easy money wherever possible.

As a result journalism — sports or otherwise — is steadily being replaced by a parade of automated gibberish, clickbait, well-funded propaganda, and marketing, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to find anybody with the ethics and resources interested in reversing — or even combating — the trajectory.

Filed Under: branding, journalism, media, reporting, sports illustrated, trademark
Companies: arena group, authentic brands, authentic brands group

AT&T's Terrible New TV Branding Confuses Even AT&T

from the DERP dept

Thu, Sep 12th 2019 06:29am - Karl Bode

AT&T’s efforts to dominate the online streaming (and advertising segment) has had a bit of a rocky start. After spending more than $150 billion to acquire both DirecTV and Time Warner in recent years, AT&T’s been losing subscribers hand over fist anyway. Part of the problem is that the company acquired so much debt in the course of the deal (AT&T is among the most indebted companies in the world), AT&T’s been forced to raise rates on subscribers. Given the rise in streaming competitors, those users are wisely just heading for the exits.

But AT&T’s been making some notable missteps on the branding front as well. The company keeps launching, scrapping, and then re-launching so many different TV options it’s confusing the hell out of customers. As the company stumbles its way into building one cohesive brand, it has gotten kind of, well, silly:

For those keeping score, AT&T will be offering TV shows through:
– HBO Go
– HBO Max
– HBO Now
– AT&T Now
– AT&T TV
– AT&T WatchTV
– AT&T U-verse
– DirecTV https://t.co/Je7FNPRNVV

— Drew FitzGerald (@DrewFitzGerald) July 30, 2019

Apparently AT&T’s new TV branding isn’t just confusing consumers. It’s also confusing AT&T. The company’s marketing and support departments appear to have been bungling the names of several new AT&T TV products in marketing and support materials, only compounding consumer confusion. AT&T recently eliminated its DirecTV Now streaming TV brand, and renamed it (quite creatively) “AT&T TV Now.” The company also rolled out another completely new service and called it “AT&T TV.” The former service is just another streaming app, while the latter service requires a new AT&T set top box and is currently in a glorified beta.

This being the telecom sector, customer support is already kind of an afterthought. But AT&T’s confusing branding has taken things to an entirely new level, leaving many AT&T customers in a bizarre, customer service purgatory:

“To make matters even worse, most tech support for AT&T TV Now is labeled AT&T TV on AT&T’s website. When you try to contact AT&T TV Now you need to use the contact information for AT&T TV. This has resulted in many of our readers confused about how they contact… AT&T TV Now to ask a question.

AT&T’s website does not help. AT&T TV Now is only found if you click on streaming. For a while after the name change, clicking on DirecTV Now in some menus on AT&T’s website brought you to AT&T TV [instead of] AT&T TV Now.

Even just this week when AT&T announced a deal with Starz they didn’t list AT&T TV Now but listed AT&T TV. When asked about this AT&T said AT&T TV Now was lumped together with AT&T TV.

As we’ve long noted, telecom companies aren’t particularly innovative because they’ve spent the last few generations as government-protected and pampered monopolies. Fused to the nation’s intelligence and law enforcement community, they’re the personification of “too big to fail.” Their deep lobbying tendrils also mean they enjoy regulatory capture on the state and federal level, making any real accountability for bad behavior a rarity, at best.

Given real competition is alien to them, Verizon and AT&T keep doing face plants as they attempt to erode Google and Facebook online video ad revenues. That’s why instead of directly competing or innovating, the telecom sector’s first inclination is usually to try and tilt the regulatory playing field or cheat in some fashion. And while these kind of shenanigans have caused plenty of problems in the broader internet and streaming TV ecosystem, those problems would likely be immeasurably worse were the telecom sector actually competent outside of its core competencies (building networks, lobbying to erode competition).

Filed Under: at&t now, branding, hbo, hbo go, streaming, tv
Companies: at&t

Cable Lobbyists Stop Using The Word Cable In Hopes You'll Think Industry Has Evolved

from the song-remains-the-same dept

Wed, Sep 21st 2016 10:44am - Karl Bode

It often seems like the modern cable industry often goes out of its way to remain decidedly un-modern. Thanks to regulatory capture and limited competition, the sector consistently ranks among the very worst industries in terms of customer satisfaction and support. And whether it’s opposing net neutrality or fighting efforts to bring competition to the cable box, you’ll often find the industry’s top lobbying organization — the National Cable and Telecommunications Association at the forefront of fighting nearly every pro-consumer initiative that comes down the pike.

That’s why it’s more than a little amusing to see the NCTA announce this week that it’s eliminating the word “cable” from its branding and overall vernacular, apparently as an attempt to modernize the cable sector’s image in the Netflix age. According to a statement by the NCTA, the migration away from even using the word cable (despite coaxial very much remaining in use) is a reflection of “how the marketplace is no longer defined by silos of the past.” This is how former FCC boss turned top cable lobbyist Michael Powell explained the shift:

“Just as our industry is witnessing an exciting transformation driven by technology and connectivity, NCTA?s brand must reflect the vibrancy and diversity of our members,? Powell said. ?While our mission to drive the industry forward remains the same, our look now reflects a renewed proactive and energized spirit.”

And by “driving the industry forward,” Powell of course means supporting initiatives that do the exact opposite.

Most recently that has included using a massive sound wall of disinformation (including some help from the US Copyright Office and the likes of Jesse Jackson) to demonize attempts to bring competition to the cable box. The NCTA has also been busy working overtime to derail the FCC’s attempt to apply some relatively basic privacy protections to the cable sector, has also supported protectionist state laws that hinder broadband competition, and has even fought raising the base definition of broadband to 25 Mbps. “Proactive and energized,” indeed.

And while the cable industry is quick to argue it’s facing more direct competition than ever before, the reality is notably different. As AT&T and Verizon give up on unwanted DSL customers, it’s creating a stronger cable monopoly than ever before in many areas. As cable providers consolidate and their telco competitors crumble, cable is seeing 99% of the broadband net additions each quarter. The end result is a cable industry that intends to take full advantage of this lack of competition to impose draconian usage caps on consumer broadband connections in the hopes of thwarting Internet video competitors like Netflix.

All told it’s going to take a lot more than a vernacular change to shift consumer and cross industry perception away from the reality that the cable industry — and specifically the NCTA — is an anti-consumer, anti-innovation, antiquated turf protection machine.

Filed Under: branding, cable, lobbyists, marketing, tv
Companies: ncta

Sensible Canadian Trademark Ruling Takes Overall Impression Of Branding Into Account

from the well-done dept

We talk so much here about silly trademark disputes, often times resulting in equally silly court rulings, that, every once in a while, it’s probably worth the effort to point out when a court gets things exactly right. For this, we travel up to Canada, where a Federal Court judge presided over a trademark dispute between Pacific Western Brewing and Cerveceria del Pacifico over the branding of their brews. At issue was the labels on packaging for PWB’s Pacific Pilsner and Cerveceria’s Pacifico Clara. PWB argued at court that the branding and language was too similar and would confuse customers. Here are samples of each beer’s branding.

So, yeah, other than roughly similar uses of the word “Pacific”, there’s not a whole lot of similarity here. Normally, this is about when we’d hold our collective breaths and wait to see if the court comes down with a sensible ruling based on the likelihood of customer confusion, or if the court instead chooses the over-protectionist route, focusing on the common language and nothing else. In this case, Justice Luc Martineau appears to have gotten every last bit of it right.

Martineau said the first impression given by the label Cerveceria uses for its Pacifico brand “is of its obviously foreign origin” and that it’s “highly stylized, with many distinctive design elements, including strong and contrasting colours and font in red, gold, blue, green and yellow.” He further said the label “differs visually, phonetically, and semantically” from all of the marks PWB uses for its Pacific brands of beers.

Martineau also dismissed as without merit PWB’s argument that contrary to a statement on the register, Cerveceria del Pacifico was not first sold in Canada as early as April 1986.He noted that an affidavit from Cerveceria stating the beer was introduced at Expo ’86, where it was sold at a Mexican restaurant called Ole Cantina, was not challenged by PWB counsel. By December 1989, Pacifico was listed with the B.C. Liquor Distribution branch and in August 1990, a registration protecting the mark was issued.

“The delay of almost 25 years before attempting to invalidate the registration weighs heavily against a finding of confusion,” Martineau said of PWB’s action.

Let it all wash over you like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. The court took into account, in its words, the overall impression of the branding, which is another way of assessing the likelihood of customer confusion. Having found none, the judge then moved to dismiss PWB’s case, stopping only briefly to ding them for claiming this was an issue after a couple of decade’s worth of peaceful coexistance. Add to all of this the fairly common place a word like “Pacific” has in our parlance and it’s easy to understand the judge’s reasoning.

Still, we’ve been stung enough to times to make this worth a brief bit of applause.

Filed Under: branding, canada, confusion, pacific, pacifico, trademark
Companies: cerveceria, pwb

How Snowboarders Are Waving Company Logos In The IOC's Face… And There's Nothing It Can Do About It

from the the-corporate-promotion-that-got-away dept

The International Olympics Committee has this “branding” thing down cold. (No pun intended. The IOC is just as obnoxious during the Summer Olympics.) Everything that doesn’t belong to an Official Sponsor has its logo covered (including bathroom fixtures!) until the multi-ring circus of sports (and quasi-sports) folds up the last multimillion dollar tent and blows town.

The IOC is the ultimate control freak. This maniacal desire to cleanse the Games of anything not directly related to its corporate sponsors often results in the sort of behavior you’d normally associate with severe misanthropy. Hobbyist knitters get slapped with C&Ds. A 30-year-old restaurant is forced to change its name. A prominent news outlet has to build its own internal Starbucks in order to escape drinking nothing but the Official Coffee of the Olympics, which is crafted each day to the searing hot specifications of hallowed coffee mecca… McDonalds.

Each and every form of IP protection has been abused by the IOC. Bogus takedown notices/C&Ds are as much a part of the Olympic heritage as lighting the torch or channel-surfing during the figure skating events. The IOC’s rules even provide strict regulations for wearing the logos of the official sponsors, not to mention the sponsors who actually footed the bill so these athletes could take part in the Games.

But, as the New York Times points out, even a finely-tuned branding machine like the IOC can be defeated with a little creativity.

The International Olympic Committee, leery of spoiling the canvas, has a 33-page book filled with detailed restrictions on logos. It dictates the size and placement of them on everything from team uniforms at the opening ceremony to the emblems on a skier’s gloves and the stickers on a bobsledder’s helmet. Observers might go the entire Olympics and not notice them.

At least until the snowboarders and skiers go airborne.

The bottom of them may be the most prominent billboards at the Winter Games, a bit of a twist of guerrilla marketing. When someone such as the snowboarder Shaun White flies through the air, cameras often catch the underside of his board, on which Burton, the name of its manufacturer, is spread in large, bold letters. Those images flash across television screens and are published around the world.

Eight of the 12 finalists in the men’s halfpipe competition rode Burton boards. All of them went upside down.

The board makers claim this isn’t intentional and, indeed, it probably isn’t. But what a fortuitous coincidence. Snowboards have normally featured artwork and company logos on the bottom of the board and with riders more technically adept than ever, the chances of a company’s airborne logo being splashed across the screen continue to increase.

What can the IOC do about this? Nothing really, unless it wants to rewrite the rulebook. As the New York Times points out, competition snowboards are roughly identical to the ones sold to the public. This makes the company-centric artwork part of the equipment itself, rather than something added especially for Olympic competitors, which would run afoul of the guidelines.

“The identification of the manufacturer may be carried as generally used on products sold through the retail trade during the period of 12 months prior to the Games,” the rules read.

So, if Burton makes a board with Burton written across the bottom of it during the preceding year, and a competitor splashes Burton all over during his or her run, there’s not much the IOC can do, other than perhaps stare sadly at all of the toilets with covered-up logos and compose takedown letters for crocheting enthusiasts halfway around the world.

Filed Under: branding, cease and decist, olympics, sponsorship
Companies: ioc

Zynga Thinks You Might Confuse Having Casual Sex With Playing A Scrabble Knockoff, Because It's 'With Friends'

from the trademark-with-friends dept

You may recall that Zynga was once a company that made social media games, occasionally by taking games other people had made and repackaging them. You likely also remember them for their Words With Friends app that briefly reminded everyone why they hated Scrabble. Well, things haven’t been going so well for the company since its IPO, with share prices falling roughly seventy percent. And now, as we have seen in the past, the relatively aged internet company has decided to go the lawsuit route instead of competing in its own marketplace.

And thank the maker for that, because that’s how I get to report to you that Zynga is suing Bang With Friends, the app that lets you bang (BANG!) your social media contacts.

The company “selected the name ‘Bang With Friends’ for its casual sex matchmaking app with Zynga’s game trademarks fully in mind,” according to the complaint. The name infringes a trademark covering games such as “Words With Friends” and “Chess With Friends,” according to the filing.

Zynga seeks a court order barring the company from using the name “Bang With Friends” in connection with any social-networking applications in the U.S. and unspecified damages.

See, while there was once a time when Zynga’s games spread across everyone’s Facebook pages much like a sexually transmitted disease, it’s kind of hard to imagine most people thinking Zynga wanted you to bump uglies with that one girl you passed a couple times in your high school hallway. But even if you want to make the argument of brand confusion, it’s somewhat ridiculous for a company that played fast and loose with intellectual property in the past to now be using it as a weapon to get monetary damages.

Filed Under: bang with friends, branding, trademark, with friends, words with friends
Companies: zynga

DailyDirt: Make The Logos Bigger, Better

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Logos can convey all kinds of messages — and instill a sense of confidence or demonstrate a lack of attention to detail. Some logos are fun. Others are serious. Some company logos don’t change very much over a long period of time, but others seem to change with every passing design fad. Some logo re-designs are more successful than others. Here are just a few interesting logo collections of some branding campaigns that you might recognize.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: branding, design, logos, marketing, messaging
Companies: apple, pepsi

DailyDirt: What's In A Name?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of marketing gurus who will advise company founders to choose names and logos very carefully — making sure to avoid confusing names or names without the appropriate gravitas. Then again, there are several companies with names that break the rules.

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: branding, marketing, names, startups
Companies: apple, digg, lego