Lulubel...What's In a Name?

Lulubel…I saw this license plate today in Hollister on a new mid sized sedan, a really good-looking car in a medium charcoal gray color. I thought to myself, “Charcoal gray is a masculine color for a car yet this car sports on it’s license plate a feminine name, lulubel. I assumed that lulubel was the name of the car, and not the owner. For some reason I can’t fully explain, I thought of Shakespeare’s quote:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Shakespeare lived in a ‘simple’ world where the ‘action’ was always between human personalities. There was no TV, no radio or computers to give information, and confuse issues. Star Trek’s aliens and “Scotty Beam Me Up” were not even remote thoughts in the mind’s of the people who inhabited Shakespeare’s world and his mind, yet he or the group of men who penned with the name Shakespeare, all knew human nature, and human nature doesn’t change, ever!

What is in a name? Advertising people will tell you that a ‘name’ can make or break the sale of a product. If you see a beautiful girl in a movie, and you scan the credits for ‘her name’, and she has a name that doesn’t suit her appearance you will not make a connection between her beauty and or the talent of the girl, and her name. She will not be memorable! That's why so many actors change their names when they join SAG.
A 'name' can make or break an actor's or a singer's fame today.

It’s the same with a product…a product has to have a name that links it to the product in the consumer’s mind. Safeway sells a ‘store brand’ water they call ‘refreshe’. Water called refreshe makes a ton of sense because the name links the product in the consumer’s mind with the product. You are refreshed with water. Water is ‘life’;(another possible name) ‘purified water’ refreshes you. Do you ‘see’ the cycle that is started in your mind by such a simple choice of a ‘name’ for a ‘simple’ product?

Lulubel is an unusual choice of a name for lulubel the charcoal sedan, but since she is named lulubel, she is a lulubel, forever.

Carol Garnier Dutra

Lulubel is real, she is a new, medium charcoal, gray sedan; Lulubel drives around Hollister, California with her owner.
Copyright © 2010 by Carol Garnier Dutra