Marketers Fall For Brand Name Spoof Site

In a telling tribute to the vapid mentality of the advertising industry, marketers registered over 20 of 150 fake brand names from a web site poking fun at the ridiculousness of corporate re-branding. Created as a spoof by U.K. ad agency Design Conspiracy, the site, What Brand Are You, asked marketers to enter a set of brand attributes and then click a button to get an auto-generate a brand name. Rather than get the joke, over 20 marketers used the site to generate a brand name and then registered it as a real brand. Some of the spoof brand names that are now "real" are Amplifico, Integriti, Thinc and Winwin.

Creator of the site, Ben Terrett said, "We were just literally trying to think of the most stupid company names." The goal was to illustrate the trend toward nonsense brand names and to debunk the complexity of the process. Advertisers, idea well dry, took the bait and perpetuated the trend of inane, meaningless brand names.