What's in a name

At the bathroom where I work, the toilet lids are made by a company called Sexauer. I’m not okay with that.

Obviously the good folks at this fine crapper supply company didn’t name themselves “Sexauer” to intentionally gross people out. If that had been their goal, they would have called their outfit “Poopums,” or “Take a Whiff!” But I have a very strict rule that I just now invented: No piece of porcelain on which I take my morning constitutional should have the word “sex” written on it. Sex should be connoted with nice things -- rose petals and bubble baths and the like -- not a bathroom stall that smells like it’s in the flamingo habitat at a petting zoo.

By all measures, it’s a perfectly fine toilet seat. (Although who could tell?) It’s just the name that’s unfortunate.

Good products can sometimes be doomed by bad names. Look no further than Hydrox for proof. Anyone remember Hydrox? If you’ve ever had an Oreo cookie, then you’ve basically had a better version of Hydrox that also is not named Hydrox. The cookie-filling-cookie configuration is so similar that only subtle variations in flavor and texture distinguish the two brands. And yet Oreos effectively drove Hydrox out of the market in the late 1990s. A lot of people thought Hydrox was a cheap knock-off, but it actually debuted first, in 1908, whereas Oreos hit shelves in 1912.

Hydrox was just reintroduced to the market this past September after a 16-year absence, but now it’s basically a nostalgia item, available only on Amazon and in the panic rooms of wild-eyed end-timers. It’s amazing the brand was revived at all. I mean … “Hydrox.” It sounds like bleach. Might as well dunk each cookie in a bucket of Clorox and be done with it.

You don’t have to be a marketing expert to know that a brand name should sound appealing to the consumer.

Yet astoundingly awful monikers abound. Granted, many of these terrible brand names are for products sold in foreign countries; shoppers in Thailand, for instance, may not immediately recognize how disconcerting it is to buy a bag of kitty treats called “Frenzied Cat Meat” (a real product), or a case of bottled water called “Zephyrhills” (also real). But some names are just too wacky, gross, or outright shocking to merit any kind of excuse.

The following are totally real products being sold somewhere on the planet Earth as we speak: an ice cream called “Asse”; a beverage called “Pee Cola”; “Lemon Barf” laundry detergent; “Boudreaux’s Butt Paste”; “Colon Cleaner”; Starburst hard candies named “Sucks”; “Only Puke” soup crackers; “Golden Gaytime” ice cream bars; and the topper, pork on a stick called “Mr. Brain’s.” And those are just the ones that can be printed. Maybe.

You’d have to be trying pretty hard to make a worse first impression with consumers. Maybe there’s an underground club of company CEOs and marketing executives secretly trying to tank entire product lines. We may be on the verge of seeing sports drinks named “Captain Booger’s Jock Phlegm,” or craft beer with a label reading, “Imminent Liver Failure.” Actually, I’d probably drink that one.

Perhaps these seemingly hapless companies deserve our sympathy. After all, it’s really only been over the past 100 years or so that corporate brands have emerged as national and global entities. In 1900, it was inconceivable that developed landscapes in first-world locales would be pockmarked with Coca-Cola billboards and star-bright storefronts proudly displaying Nike’s trademark “swoosh.” Heck, in 1900 you didn’t even buy Nike shoes. You killed a beaver and tied its skin to your foot with baling twine.

Most companies that existed back then were local, so names were less of an issue. All you had to do was call your product something that appealed to those consumers living within a 10-mile radius of your “headquarters,” which was probably a small downtown shop with at least two elderly gentlemen playing Canasta at a corner table. It could be the goofiest product name in the world, and it would sell because it fulfilled the needs of the local populace -- “Tim Crotchhugger’s Miracle Toothpaste” or something. “Asshat Acne Cream.” And so on.

Look at what’s happened in the intervening century. Nothing’s local anymore. The common plea of “Buy local!” arose because buying local is becoming almost impossible; civilization has rapidly shifted from isolated pockets of people to an interlinked web of communications and commerce. Names matter more than ever, because it’s exponentially easier to expose a product to a national or global audience. The world is the new downtown shop, and old men are playing Canasta by the millions.

Which means “Lemon Barf” probably isn’t going to capture a large slice of the laundry detergent market. Wild guess here.

Look at various industry leaders and you’ll see catchy appellations that are snappy, simple, and stick in one’s brain. Snickers, a candy bar that sounds as delicious as it tastes. Pringles, forever associated with packaging its chips in cardboard tubes designed for tennis balls. Wranglers, which sound like denim jeans worn by men who kill bears with their hands. Those are names, dammit.

The Sexauer people are lucky in a sense. Unlike candy bars and soda, toilet seats are an essential product, and there can’t be too many companies out there making them; there’s not enough variation from one seat to another to justify a lot of market competition.

That doesn’t mean I have to be comfortable with it. Fortunately I don’t have to look at their logo very much since I’m generally sitting on it. That helps. It allows me to envision what a toilet seat would be called in a world where gross doesn’t exist, and eyebrow-raising nomenclature is but  a fantastical dream.

“Bob’s Butt Clouds.” Just imagine the luxury.