A Good Product Name... OOPS

One of my favorite programs is Open Office... although I was just at their web site and I read that we are not supposed to call it that. It is now to be known as the Open Office Productivity Suite which is made by OpenOffice.org.

That's a good name. It describes what the software is and does. But finding the perfect name... the name without blemishes, is the goal of marketing. And OpenOffice.org may have missed that mark. As much as I love the Open Office Productivity Suite, and recommend it to everyone, I still have to point out that the acronym for this name is... OOPS.

When it was known as just Open Office it was just OO. But now it is OOPS. Is that an oops?

Product naming is one of the most difficult aspects of marketing. Getting the right name never is never easy, and you can get blindsided by the unexpected... such as an acronym or the meaning of the name in another language.

So, is there a way to make lemonade from this lemon?

Of course there is. Changing the name at this point may not be an option. So the first step is to embrace what appears to be a negative and turn it into a positive. I'll talk about that in my next post.