Who comes up with names for, say, perfumes or soaps or cars? There's a liquid soap in my bathroom called Endless Weekend. How did someone come up with that? Did she take a sniff of the new, unnamed soap, and then muse for a while on how it made her feel? "Hmmm, this fragrance makes me think of, of... Freedom. No, free time. Lots of free time."
Did a committee kick around ideas? "Patriot's Dream." "That's stupid, Bob. This is soap, not a country song." "Okay, how about Crystal Palace?" "Come on, Bob, be reasonable. Do we want people thinking about crystals and palaces when they wash their hands?" "Well then, how about Cookies and Ice Cream?" "Think, Bob, think. This smells nothing like cookies and ice cream." "Is this meeting never going to end? I've got soccer tonight." "Endless Meeting. Ha ha ha ha, that's a clunker." "Hey, yeah, how about Endless Summer?" "That's a movie." "Okay, Endless - Endless - what do we hate to see end?" "Sex." "Parties." "Binges." "Weekends." "Bingo!"
Were polls and surveys and studies done to statistically reveal what soap-buying demographic groups respond to? "Fresh!" "Crispy!" "Sweet!" "Golden!" "Radical!"
Somebody gets paid a lot of money to name that paint chip Arabian Noon instead of Sort of Light Sand. How is all this decided?
Do I have any say at all when I choose a product, or am I simply one of Pavlov's consumers, trained to drool at certain images or cues? "Want these abs" to men and women. "Fuller hair is more beautiful" ditto. "Having friends and going to the beach will make you happy." "Be thin and look ready for sex" to women. "Be strong and slightly bad" to men.
What would it be like if I could somehow find a way to respond to my own purest desires? I wonder what I would choose.
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