An $8 billion healthcare spinoff gets a caustic new name:

The brand naming brief must have called for a cold, distant, uncaring, inhuman, faceless megacorp, dark void vibe. A bold choice for a healthcare company.

3M explains the meaningless name because otherwise, you’d only have its toxic personality to go on: “The name of the company is a combination of “solving” and “momentum,” according to Bryan Hanson, chief executive officer of 3M Health Care Business Group.”

“Solving” and “momentum” are concepts so generic that any company, from Ford to Zoom, would sign off on them – they aren’t specific to the new company. They are no more exciting or distinctive than “growth” + “solution” = Grolution, or “triumph” + “succeed” = Triceed. Or “solvent” + “um” = Solventum.

Landor used to be the go-to agency for lifeless constructions like this, having named Ilimity, Enactus, Magotan, and Centravis, but another agency has filched their manky crown. When a naming or branding agency sells a client on a name by smushing together generic terms that create a negative asset, that process is called The Happy Idiot.

“VANILLACIDE: when an original idea or plan is repeatedly changed until it becomes less interesting and unique than it was first intended to be. Vanillacide is most often used in business contexts, where it refers to the scenario of new and creative proposals undergoing a series of changes in order to make them generally acceptable to people, but in the process becoming so ‘watered down’ that they lose their original individuality and appeal.

The term vanillacide was coined  by Steve Manning, Chief Executive Officer at Igor, a branding agency in the US. The expression is a blend of the adjective vanilla in its modern sense of describing something as ordinary and lacking in any special or extra features, and the suffix -cide, which denotes an act of killing.
Unlike vanilla, which can simply be used to show that something is of a standard variety, vanillacide always has disapproving overtones, suggesting that something has become unnecessarily conformist and ‘bog standard’.”

Read the full  dictionary entry.