Lexicon News
New ABC's of Branding
Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal, MarketplaceAugust 26, 2002
Product Names Pack Punch One Letter at a Time; Strawberry Is No BlackBerry
As soon as the naming gurus at Lexicon Branding® Inc. saw the hand held wireless prototype that Research In Motion Ltd. had produced, they were struck by the little keyboard buttons, which resembled nothing so much as seeds.
"Strawberry!" suggested one.
No, "straw-" is a slowwww syllable, said Stanford University professor Will Leben, who also is director of linguistics at Lexicon® based in Sausalito, Calif. That's just the opposite of the zippy connotation Research In Motion wanted. But "-berry" was good: Lexicon's research had shown that people associate the b sound wih reliability, said David Placek, who founded the Sausalito, Calif., firm and is its president, while the short e evokes speed. Another syllable with a band a short vowel would nail it ... and within seconds the Lexicon® team had its fruit: BlackBerry.