1984
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
George Orwell’s classic novel of a dystopian future overseen by the all-seeing despot, Big Brother, embodied omnipresent government surveillance, perpetual war and historical negationism (the rewriting of history).
It is a portrayal of government power and suppression of individual freedoms far beyond Orwell’s 1949 England and today’s governmental operations… or is it?
If one were looking for a perpetual war, today’s never-ending War on Terror, 18 years old with no sign of ending, would certainly serve. The government surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden makes clear that your every phone call, Internet search and email is washed through Uncle’s digital fingers. And facial recognition software is embedded in cameras now strewn across the nation’s commercial landscape.
If you read 1984, you’ll recall that the protagonist, Winston Smith, worked in the Ministry of Truth, revising history to fit the current political demands.
“Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.” (Orwell, pp.47-48) “It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy.”
Rewriting the past could never happen here, of course – setting aside the current destruction of statues of Civil War Generals throughout the South. It appears Robert E. Lee never existed, or so the City of New Orleans would have you believe.
I ran into this kind of historical revisionism, working on my 4th fiction novel. I write a detective series (if you enjoy fiction thrillers, my books, under the pen name of John Truman Wolfe, are at Amazon. The fiction titles are Mind Games, The Gift, and Ransom.https://www.amazon.com/s?k=john+truman+wolfe&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
At any rate, Tom McKenna, the protagonist, is a private eye who went to Boalt Hall, the heralded law school of the University of California at Berkeley. So, I was writing something about McKenna and in researching Boalt Hall found that it no longer exists, at least not as the official name of UC Berkeley’s law school, which it had been for over 100 years.
What happened?
The law school was named after John Boalt, a lawyer and sometime judge. In 1906, his widow, Elizabeth, donated land in San Francisco to be sold with the proceeds going for the construction of a new building for the law school at UC Berkeley.
The law school proudly carried this name for more than a century, when some committee at Cal, protecting the feelings of Berkeley’s Generation Snowflake, called for a name change because John Boalt had made some racially insensitive (racist) remarks more than a century earlier.
No one is justifying racist remarks. People who make them are low IQ fools, self-identified by what comes out of their mouth. But the Boalt brand had long ago outgrown and out shown the turn of the century lawyer for whom it was named.
Boalt was a brand. A brand that stood for graduating some of the greatest legal minds of the century.
Brands mean something.
Nike means sports - in all its ramifications.
Google means search. (It has growing PR problems, but the brand still means search).
Titleist means golf ball.
B of A means banking.
But there are also local and regional brands. And having a brand that communicates and stands out above its competitors is valuable, indeed.
Some businesses don’t bother branding their product or service at all.
Some throw a name on what they produce without thought as to its communication value. You know, name a new tech product after their first-born child. Sure, the digital age has spawned some brands that don’t follow the rules – Google itself being an example.
But unless you have some seriously deep pockets to drive a non-sensical brand into the mind of your public, a brand should be descriptive of what you do. It should be memorable.
Some communicate wonderfully. How about the organic/natural food market…Whole Foods? A great brand.
A while ago, a friend recommended a particular health supplement to me. It’s called Organifi.
Huh?
He sent me a link and I got some. But if someone had said, “You ought to get some Organifi…”
Which is a better contact lens brand?
SofLens...? Or Polycon?
Clarity...? Or Paragon?
Descriptive.
I have a brand of reading glasses called Peepers. Cute, clever brand.
There is an exact method of surveying for a name/brand for your product or service. We have conducted naming surveys for a wide variety of products and services.
A naming survey, particularly for a new product or service, can make a world of difference in the acceptance and want of the product.
Naming surveys are fast and quite reasonable.
If you are launching a new product or service, or perhaps are thinking about renaming one that you have, give us a call and I can let you know cost and timing.
Of course, to really boom your sales and income, we should also survey your products for buttons and positioning.
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Best,
Bruce
Bruce Wiseman
President & CEO
On Target Research
www.ontargetresearch.com
1-818-397-1401