It’s Friday and time for a laugh. Granted, the appeal here is narrow, but if you’re a Gallagher or Carrot Top aficionado, you may be in for a treat. Of course that would mean you have bigger problems, but we digress. Try and read through this case study, straight from the Interbrand website, without busting a gut:

Xignux
Building a Future

Business Issue

Axa Corporation, owner of Conductores Monterrey and Zwan and other diverse businesses, sold its brand name to the French insurer Axa when it entered Mexico. In determining a new name, Axa wanted to conserve the equity it held in the letter X. The required change of name also presented an opportunity to renew the company’s identity.

Brand Solution

Interbrand generated proposals for suggestive and abstract names, given that a descriptive name could not cover the diversity of Axa’s commercial interests. The chosen name, Xignux, is derived from a word with many positive connotations by using “signo” (sign), with the abstract device of starting and ending with the letter X. The visual identity communicates the dynamism of the group’s businesses as well as the synergies between them.

“…conserve the equity it held in the letter X”, now that’s funny!

Which reminds us, “A duck walks into a pharmacy and asks for a three-pack of Certance for the weekend…”

For those of you wishing to get out from under the manky tutelage of “The Phone Company” and go your own open source way, there is a GNU kid in town with an interesting name. He’s short and ill tempered, with a long standing set of issues concerning goats. From LinuxDevices.com:

According to project leader David Sugar, the current stable version of Bayonne provides only a script-driven model for servicing voice applications that require basic switching, a constraint that has limited the software’s utility. “There are many specialized applications, such as VoIP-PSTN gateways, [in] which Bayonne’s entirely script-driven approach is difficult to manage or deploy,” Sugar acknowledges.

Sugar released the first developer’s release of Bayonne 2 on Jun. 27, saying the software would continue to offer a script-driven server, while enabling “completely new voice application services to be constructed using core Bayonne services and drivers as linkable libraries.”

According to Sugar, the new Bayonne release includes a basic PSTN-to-VoIP service binding called GNU Troll, which is intended as a “proof of concept” for a new Bayonne plugin model. “Basic incoming call handling should work under Troll at this point, although much work remains to be completed,” he said.

Sugar adds, “This is the very first step of an inititive to introduce basic IP-PBX services and new functionality to the core Bayonne 2 platform in a modular, user selectable, and incremental fashion. Different bindings will offer different services, and one can choose a binding appropriate for the application being developed, whether it is for integration with traditional analog or digital telephone networks, application services, or gateways for use within an existing VoIP infrastructure — or in eventually offering a complete Bayonne 2-based VoIP infrastructure and other turnkey telephony solutions.”

“Freedom” from the phone company will come at a price. You’ll most likely have to sign a deal with the Devil. So what’ll it be? The Devil you know or the Devil you know? Now that’s freedom of choice.

The new name is Microsoft Dynamics. The word “solutions” as been ineffectual white noise for some time now, and the word “business” brings very little to the table, so congratulations to Microsoft for finding a solutions solution. Accountingsoftware.com and PressPass bring us some details:

PressPass: Why is Microsoft Dynamics a good name for “Project Green” and Microsoft Business Solutions?

Reller [Tami Reller, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Business Solutions Group]: We undertook and completed a significant research project that was amongst the most extensive naming research projects Microsoft has ever done. We conducted hundreds of interviews with business decision makers and IT decision makers in the U.S. and international markets. These interviews yielded a number of findings, including that our customers and partners strongly prefer a brand that is suggestive rather than merely descriptive or fanciful.

At least they spent a ton of money making sure of the obvious. And now, armed with a pricey PP presentation and reams of focus grope data, they boldly embrace the obvious. Their conclusion is correct however. Neither descriptive nor fanciful names are acceptable choices, and by “fanciful” we assume they mean “random”. With good intentions and a little knowledge, Microsoft pushes the name changes further, truncating the fanciful:

• Microsoft CRM becomes Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
• Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains becomes Microsoft Dynamics GP.
• Microsoft Business Solutions-Axapta® becomes Microsoft Dynamics AX.
• Microsoft Business Solutions-Navision becomes Microsoft Dynamics NAV.
• Microsoft Business Solutions-Solomon becomes Microsoft Dynamics SL.

The idea is right, Great Plains, Axapta and Navision are all worthless, random names (fanciful), with Solomon going to the relative head of the class on a bulbous curve. Those names rightly deserve the ax. But what is the point of replacing them with the equally ineffectual abbreviations GP, AV, NAV and SL, respectively? It is unimaginable, even for Microsoft, to believe these letter combos will summon the old ineffectual names in anyone’s mind, and even if they did, why call back to the bad “fanciful” names at all, given all the “research” and such?

Because this idea is so inane, and as much as it pains us, we have to give Microsoft the benefit of the out. We’re betting these initials are transitory, part of a strategy to phase these names out. It would be a solid strategy, as dropping them at the same time as renaming Business Solutions would be a confusing, brand equity hemorrhage. Looks like they understand the need for a transitional period, and if so, the entire effort is very well done.

Any bets?