Hillside, N.J.'s Route 22 Toyota might not have Procter & Gamble's marketing budget, but surely whatever they can afford to spend deserves better than this. In an email sent to a Direct Marketing News staffer on Jan. 20, Route 22 Toyota urges fans to come into the shop wearing their favorite team's colors in order to save on service packages.

Seems harmless enough; however, the dealership fails to capitalize on a HUGE opportunity to motivate anxious Giants fans (whose favorite team was two days away from qualifying for a Super Bowl berth), as well as dejected Jets and Eagles fans (two groups whose favorite team failed to make the playoffs despite lofty expectations).

 

The email never references the three local teams, it calls the Super Bowl the “Big Game” and the AFC and NFC champions the “American and National” champions.

“Whether your favorite team is on the roster or not, we're rewarding everyone that wears their team colors,” the email says, misusing the term “roster” in a way only someone who knows nothing about sports ever could.

Look, I realize not everyone likes sports and that some of my objections to this email might seem overly picky. But here are three important questions that need to be asked:

1) Everyone understands the significance of the Super Bowl. It's watched by 1 billion people worldwide every year. Why not call it what it is instead of using vague terminology like, “Big Game?” Are football terms copyrighted? Or is this a case of ignorance or someone cutting corners?

2) Why would you not specifically leverage the emotional attachment New York, New Jersey and Philly fans have for their football teams? You know who is most likely to come into your store. The email is targeted to a certain region. Get fans' attention by actually calling out their teams' names.

3) If you're not going to do either of the things I mentioned above, then why use football to motivate your customers at all? Why not just promote your specials and use the price points to drive traffic to your dealership and website?

This is a major missed opportunity here.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that everything should be gender neutral (for example, I think gender neutral childrearing is a little extreme), but there's something a little off-putting about “Lego Friends,” Lego's new line of girly toys — and it's not because I'm opposed to gender-specific marketing.

Understanding why men and women generally maintain different buying behaviors would be like discovering the answer to the age-old chicken/egg question. Do people act their gender because they're treated a certain way or because that's what they are intrinsically?

For that, there's no black and white answer, but when it comes to marketing, gender-specific targeting is understandable. Marketers are looking to move product or build awareness around a brand and they're only going to reach out, with their limited funds and time, to the people most likely to buy or care about what they're doing. Marketers need to get their messages into the right hands.

So, boys get G.I. Joe dolls (sorry, action figures) and girls get My Little Ponies. I, for one, owned this purple, red-haired My Little Pony when I was growing up, a gift from my grandfather. The popcorn on its hindquarters was scratch n' sniff. Yum.

But then there are the Lego Friends. I don't like them. They're really skinny. And they're all wearing different color variations on the same pastel tank top, one emblazoned with butterflies, another with hearts.

What gets my hackles up is not that Lego decided to design products that would appeal to girls; it's their marketing department's conception of what appeals to girls: beauty shops, fashion and cupcakes.

Often, we don't even realize we're being targeted, but that's because the targeting is working. It makes sense to us why we're being targeted. And sometimes the targeting makes us uncomfortable, like when Lego feels the need to create something like Emma's Splash Pool.

Don't forget to check out our special February targeting issue, live on our site on Feb. 1.

The embattled U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is continuing its struggle to stay in the black, but the five-month moratorium on facilities closures may end more than a month before the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) releases an advisory opinion on its streamlining plans, said USPS spokeswoman Sue Brennan.  

The USPS filed a formal request this week with the PRC asking it to expedite its approval of plans to reduce the number of postal facilities by more than half and revise mail delivery service standards. The request is in response to the PRC's announcement that it will need until at least July 10 to release its opinion, Brennan said. Some lawmakers — including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a cosponsor of one of several postal reform bills on the table — have been vocal on the issue, saying that the Postal Service, without intervention, is likely to go belly-up by that time.

The USPS requested in its filing a decision by mid-April.

However, PRC chairman Ruth Goldway said the commission's decision to wait until July to issue an opinion is purely proper due process. She said the Administrative Procedures Act “requires certain levels of notice and time for review of testimony and the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses,” as well as the opportunity for each camp to offer rebuttals to testimony.

“It's a long process,” she said. “I myself pushed our staff very hard to find a way in which we could move this process forward quickly, and the staff presented to us what they thought was the minimum time necessary and fair, and that's what we issued. The USPS in the pre-hearing conference did not raise this April date. We're trying to do the best we can.”

Goldway explained that the USPS provided 13 witnesses with written testimony on the issue, and there are a host of other participants in the debate — among them various postal unions, the Greeting Cards Association and the Major Mailers Association. She said these participants must all legally be given the opportunity to read the testimonies, determine who to cross-examine, submit their own witnesses for examination by the Postal Service, and have the chance to offer rebuttals.

“The USPS, if [it] wants, can not rebut … and it would take a month out of the process,” Goldway said, adding that the issues facing the post office are of such complexity that a thorough review is necessary. “This is an important issue and we have to listen to all interested parties,” she said.  

Brennan said she doesn't know what will happen if the PRC fails to issue an advisory opinion by the end of the moratorium, but said the USPS is proceeding with every cost-saving aspect it's permitted to without waiting for the PRC or the moratorium to end. The moratorium only prevents physical closures of facilities.

“We're doing all the feasibility studies; we're reviewing everything,” she said. “There may be some uncertainty with the time frame, but we are moving forward.”

The five-month moratorium, announced in December, was intended to allow lawmakers time to find solutions to the problems plaguing the Postal Service and enact them through legislation. While several reform bills exist, none have made it through either house of Congress. However, that may soon change, as the House returned to work Jan. 17 and the Senate goes back to work on Monday.

Many possibilities have been bandied about in terms of revenue-raising, including authorizing the USPS to sell non-postal products as a way to raise additional revenue; revising a 30-year-old mandate that requires six-day delivery; and reevaluating another longstanding mandate that requires the USPS to prefund 75 years' worth of retiree benefits.

The USPS' inspector general has said that the organization has overpaid its civil service pension requirements by about $75 billion since 1972.

The USPS also pays about $115 million every other week to the Office of Personnel Management to fund the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Goldway said $7 billion has been overpaid into the FERS fund to date. “There is legislation that would give them that $7 billion back, some of which it could use for operating [costs] and retiree benefits,” she said.

“Those are the big accounting issues, and the federal government and Congress can take action on that one way or another,” she said. “We're going to do what we think is fair and responsible within the requirements of the law.”

I recently took a trip to my local bookstore and left outrageously offended.

I've become more and more accustomed to shopping online; whether it's because I've grown lethargic or because I attend school in the barren farmlands of Rhode Island, I don't know. Had I known I would encounter the experience I'm about to describe, I would have continued my e-commerce shopping under the covers with a chocolate bar and a credit card. Here's what happened when I did venture out for a in-store shopping adventure.

I went to a different store than I'm familiar with for a monthly browse and, as any self-proclaimed music geek would, I ventured towards the magazine section on the hunt for the latest music industry news before I left.

I spent 20 minutes searching for the music magazines. I was in a state of confusion as I circled around the shelves again and again. I checked entertainment, current events; heck, I even checked the tabloid section. But never, never, did it cross my mind to check the so-called “men's interest” shelf. But sure enough, as I walked past, I happened to notice a little guitar sticking out by one of the scantily clad models on the magazine beside it.

If I had a “most offended moments in life” list, which I don't, this would be right up there with my great aunt pinching my cheek and telling me I should lay off the turkey or I'll start to look like one. How dare they assume that only men are interested in music? It was while my inner outrage boiled, however, that I got to thinking: Is this bookstore really that sexist or are marketers actually aiming to appeal to men with these magazines?

None of the magazines in this section were using particularly flashy colors or phrases that typical women's interest magazines include, but to assume that marketers gear magazines without bright colors towards men alone is sexism that should not be overlooked. 

While it's true that certain magazines aim to please men and conversely women, it doesn't seem entirely fair that such a broad topic enjoyed by both sexes should be blatantly placed in one sex's category because that implies women are interested in fashion and beauty alone. I might as well grab my pink lipstick and cook dinner while I'm at it. At the time, I concluded that this particular case was the fault of a worker in the store.

However, there have been other similar occurrences that piqued my suspicion further as I investigated.

The “Cami Secret” clip-on camisole, coined “Boob Apron” by an online parody, brings up doubts in my mind about the intentions of the marketers. The women in the infomercial declare their exasperation with men who stare at their chests and seems to insinuate that all men are pigs who can't take their eyes off women's chests. While this could be a major issue in some cases, many people were outraged by the idea that all men behave in this manor.

In other cases, an unsettling number of commercials display, instead of a set of parents, mothers alone with their children. Why should women represent stay-at-home parents instead of men? The old standard is hardly as prevalent as it was fifty years ago.  Recently, more and more men have taken on the role of “stay-at-home-dad” and these commercials can be offensive to both fathers who stay with their children and mothers who work.

Both examples show a transparently sexist approach to connecting with their viewers.  Do our magazines do the same? Hard to say.

What I do know? Make a "general interest” shelf.  Problem solved.

Until yesterday, there may have been some folks out there who thought SOPA and PIPA would make cute puppy names, as my colleague Allison Schiff suggested. It wasn't until major websites like Craigslist, Reddit, Wired, WordPress and Wikipedia staged a daylong blackout — along with approximately a gazillion smaller sites — that Web users of every age and stripe were forced into an understanding of what the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate counterpart, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, could mean to the open sharing of knowledge on the Internet.

The puppies are really wolves in disguise.

By the way, I just linked to an image that is undoubtedly copyrighted material, so if the legislation were law, this would be the end for Direct Marketing News' website — without a speck of legal due process.

As far as protests go, yesterday's was effective. Of the 40 original sponsors of the Senate's PIPA, six have defected and another 12, while still supporting the intent of the bill to enhance the protection of intellectual property, are working to rejigger the legislation to make it less Orwellian (I hope).

House members have also been backtracking on SOPA. Yesterday, SOPA cosponsors Reps. Tim Holden (D-Pa.), Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) withdrew their support.

The issue websites, protesters and, now, your average Internet-addicted Joe have with the two bills is not that they necessarily want carte blanche to pirate movies and music — although file-sharing websites could be concerned about that aspect — but that the broad wording of the legislation would allow the government to shut down, without notice, any website hosting any copyrighted content whatsoever.

This would have the effect of placing upon the Internet a gag order. Under PIPA/SOPA, the fact that I'm about to link to something from file-sharing torrent site The Pirate Bay could result in Direct Marketing News' entire website being taken down for a second time today. Interestingly, The Pirate Bay claims to be not scared of these bills at all.

Anyone who attempted a Google search yesterday saw its logo masked by a black bar, which when clicked, linked to a petition page and a charming infographic. Google said 4.5 million people took the time to sign the petition.

The looming specter of SOPA and PIPA didn't just prompt website blackouts. Massive traffic to the websites of congressional reps overloaded and shut some down completely. The popular website Mashable didn't go dark, but replaced its regular content with 100% SOPA coverage. Actual physical protests occurred in major cities, including New York and San Francisco.

More than 2.4 million tweets on Jan. 18 were about the bills. Teachers and students alike seriously freaked out or alluded to pending meltdowns on Twitter, where it became uncomfortably obvious that neither teachers nor students are learning from books anymore. Many of these tweeters were also completely clueless about what was happening, some actually tweeting “RIP Wikipedia,” which makes me wonder: Is our children learning? 

Hopefully now they get it.  

(Side note: Since when did user-edited Wikipedia become acceptable as a vetted source for lesson plans and term paper research? Didn't everyone see the Colbert Report episode when Steven Colbert urged his fans to go online, find Wikipedia articles about elephants and edit them to include the completely untrue statement that their population had tripled in the last six months? Roughly 20 articles were vandalized, and Wikipedia blocked Colbert from being able to edit Wiki pages. But I can log on right now, go to George Washington's Wiki page, as Colbert also did that night, and edit it to say that he never owned slaves. This would be bad news for someone's George Washington term paper.)

(I also just linked to copyrighted material — a television episode — so this would be the third time I'd have gotten Direct Marketing News' website killed under the legislation.)

But whether a reliable source or not, the beauty of the Internet is the free and open sharing of information. Everyone knows that you can't trust everything you read on the Internet, but without such an open forum, the truth would have a harder time revealing itself. It's a cliché for a reason that the cream rises to the top.

The problem is that while effective, yesterday's protest didn't kill the legislation. Many people may misguidedly think SOPA and PIPA are dead in the water now. Not the case. While the Web's Jan. 18 protests and blackouts shined a bright light on the danger the bills pose to free speech and liberty, this is not yesterday's news. Internet restriction is still on the table. Lawmakers are simply redrafting the legislation, which may or may not contain language that would turn America's Internet into a replica of China's. One thing, though, is for sure: The conversation needs to continue, unabridged and unabated.

Apparently it's weird for Google to launch a campaign heavy on print and out-of-home advertising. Given that the campaign spotlights online privacy, I think it's weird that people find the campaign's chosen channels weird.

I may be stereotyping, but I imagine it's easier to reach privacy-unsavvy consumers through print ads than display. Nothing controversial there; if you're promoting a new brand of tapioca pudding, would you run TV spots during 60 Minutes or Gossip Girl? Add to the fact that this is a full-spray brand campaign. According to AP, publications featuring the print ads include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today (!) and Time (!!), and billboards will appear throughout New York's and D.C.'s subway systems.

(Yes, the campaign also features online advertising, but I doubt that accounts for the bulk of the “tens of millions” of dollars Google's dropping on the campaign, as the AP reported.)

In a company blog post, Alma Whitten, director of privacy, product and engineering at Google, described the campaign as “focused on making the web a safer, more comfortable place.” That sounds so nice, as though she were wearing a Snuggie while writing it. The campaign's centerpiece is a dedicated landing page that portals into sections on how consumers can be more secure online, how consumers' data is collected online, how Google collects and uses consumer data and how consumers can manage their data.

The site is very consumer-friendly, which also means it's pretty sanitized. Google could easily be criticized for dumbing down online privacy to more easily spoon-feed the ignorant masses, but that's a bit extreme. However it's also extreme to call the site comprehensive. The site was written for Goldilocks; again, this is a brand campaign aimed to educate as many consumers as possible.

No matter, Jeff Chester, executive director of the privacy group Center for Digital Democracy, still came down hard on the campaign, telling the AP it is “really just a PR offensive to help dim the increased scrutiny of Google's privacy practices.” Well, yeah. It's been less than a year since the FTC slapped Google with a mandated privacy program to be audited biannually after the government agency charged that Google violated consumers' privacy with the February 2010 launch of Google Buzz. Google's also staring at an antitrust investigation, the flames of which the company continues to fan.

To be surprised at Google for launching a broad-reaching campaign touting its privacy is weird. I wouldn't expect them to pull a Domino's and market their shortcomings. And it's not like Google's the only one trying to get ahead of its privacy issues. Less than a month after Facebook settled with the FTC over alleged privacy violations, the social network directed users to a landing page that described its advertising practices and addressed whether Facebook sells consumers' personal information (Facebook claims it doesn't).

What I find most surprising about Google's and Facebook's recent privacy initiatives is that they highlight the advertising industry's struggle to get ahead of the privacy issue. The Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) has still yet to launch a consumer-facing campaign around online behavioral advertising, despite DAA managing director Peter Kosmala telling me in June that the campaign was planned for last fall.

Hopefully that campaign will roll out sometime this year, and the sooner the better. I still stand by my assertion that all it would take is a 60 Minutes segment or Time cover story for the issue to be ripped wholly from the industry's hands (or Congress ending its turf battles and consolidating the online privacy bills introduced last year). Another nightmare scenario is a presidential or high-profile Congressional candidate deciding to make online privacy a pet issue. If it gets to that point, I would doubt even a SOPA-level response from the industry would fix things, or at least I'd be surprised if it did.

Remember that anti-piracy PSA that used to appear at the beginning of DVDs, the one that made a lot of presumptions like: “You wouldn't steal a car … you wouldn't steal a television … downloading pirated films is stealing.” Fair enough. But if passed, will the two pieces of anti-piracy legislation currently before Congress help stave off copyright infringement, or will they suppress the free and easy sharing of information that makes the Internet the World Wide Web?

Most websites, needless to say, are not at all happy with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate confrere, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), and many have instituted blackouts in protest to simulate what the Internet would be like if the bills went through. The Los Angeles Times aggregated a gallery of “sites on strike,” including Wikipedia, Wired and Google. When you go to Wikipedia's homepage, for example, it shows you the regular homepage for just an instant and then a moment later whisks you to an ominous black screen where it invites you to “Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.” The SOPA page, however, is not blocked out, so interested visitors can learn more about the bill.

[A digression: SOPA & PIPA sound like names for puppies.]

Social news site reddit is also orchestrating a protest blackout. For 12 hours on Jan. 18, reddit went completely dark to “raise awareness” of SOPA & PIPA, which it claims “could radically change the landscape of the Internet.”

The reason websites are taking such issue with the acts is mainly because of their broad scope and vague wording. For example, from the SOPA summary: The bill would authorize the Attorney General to “seek a court order against a U.S.-directed foreign Internet site committing or facilitating online piracy to require the owner, operator, or domain name registrant, or the site or domain name itself if such persons are unable to be found, to cease and desist further activities constituting specified intellectual property offenses under the federal criminal code including criminal copyright infringement, unauthorized fixation and trafficking of sound recordings or videos of live musical performances, the recording of exhibited motion pictures, or trafficking in counterfeit labels, goods, or services.”

That just about covers it.

As of right now, several congressmen who had previously lent their support to the bills are making semi-ignominious about-faces, according to CBS News [Hi there, Marco Rubio] — and it seems like others might reverse their stances, too.

In the interim, as the protest continues to swirl, please to enjoy this infographic from infojustice.org explaining the whole situation in a way that only an infographic can do.

For the past few weeks, the Direct Marketing News team has scoured the Internet and our inboxes in search of the industry's greatest and worst targeting campaigns. In February, we will be blowing up the Direct Report section of our print issue and skipping the usual news pages in favor of a four-page Heat Meter that bluntly assesses and rates the inner workings of four targeting campaigns. In our research we came across many, many bad examples — one of which will be shamed (fairly and objectively) in our upcoming issue.

To give you a sneak peak at what we're working on over the course of the next three two weeks, I will dissect examples of targeting gone horribly, horribly wrong. None of these campaigns will be examined in the February issue so make sure to check it out in print or on the Web on Feb. 1 to find out which campaigns we selected.

For last week's example, click here.

This week's example: Before I rip into the email's horrid, horrid image, I'd like to sincerely compliment Equinox on the sell-job. This message, which was sent to a lapsed female Equinox member on Jan. 9, features a subject line — “We Want You Back” — that is straightforward and compelling. The email's lures include a $0 initiation fee, two-week trial membership offers for friends and a free Pilates session, all of which add up to $550, according to Equinox.

Even the email's copy is enticing: “Get schooled with invigorating group fitness classes like ViPR and Blockbuster Body, and learn a thing or two about relaxation with luxury amenities like Kiehl's Since 1851. You're guaranteed to come out on top.”

That paragraph makes me want to go to the gym, and not just any gym, but an over-priced Equinox gym. I wouldn't have thought twice about the last line of copy — “You're guaranteed to come out on top” — if not for the disturbing image of The Situation's twin brother mounting a disinterested girl in what appears to be a rich dude's library.

What exactly does this image have to do with me going back to the gym? If I sign a one-year agreement will I instantly become fit, educated, wealthy, and be given unlimited access to Rohypnol?

The fact that this email was sent to a FEMALE lapsed customer makes it even worse! If the premise of the email is that Equinox gym members come out on top, shouldn't this have been sent to male customers, with an entirely different version sent to women that features a woman on top? At the very least it could have featured a less machismo-driven, male-conquest-dominated photograph.

(Full disclosure: The email's female recipient found the art to be “compelling,” so perhaps my harsh judgment is a minority opinion.)

(But seriously, how corny is it that the dude is still wearing his vintage loafers? I digress.)

If the image tickles your fancy, well then maybe the poor direct marketing will vex you. The email's link does not connect the member to a landing page where their credit card and address information is already stored and ready to be submitted. Rather than leverage the massive amounts of information Equinox has about its members, the fitness chain decided it was in its best interest to force each lapsed member to re-enter this information to re-register. Even if it seems un-Kosher to auto-fill credit card information, the link should auto-fill address information.

Let me know what you think of the Equinox message. Do you find it compelling? Or are you as horrified as I am?

Bill Clinton began his keynote at the National Federation's (NRF) 101st Big Show on Jan. 16 with a joke: “This is a bigger crowd than I usually draw; kind of makes me feel like I'm president again.”

Chuckles from the crowd.

In order to ensure I could snag a seat for his speech, entitled "Embracing our Common Humanity" — which the NRF in an email prior to the show promised would be overrun — I was advised to arrive by 9:30 a.m. to be in time for the session's 11 a.m. start. Members of the press were corralled behind ropes towards the back. When Clinton later appeared in a smart gray suit, he was but a speck upon the stage, visible from where I sat only on enormous screens suspended from the ceiling. By the time he took the podium, it was standing-room only. I got my seat and had a bit of time to kill with the rest of the journalists.

One reporter, though he said he's a Clinton supporter, wondered why the NRF decided to engage the 42nd president as a keynote speaker. Yeah, he's a draw, but what does he really have to say about retail? And will the NRF be able to recoup what it probably cost them to bring him there? An editor sitting to my right mused: Perhaps people are more inclined to register to attend a show when they hear a big name will be there. The Big Show program is packed with sessions covering the nitty-gritty of retail, so with all that brass-tacks content, why not have a high-profile name to draw people in? It's just marketing, folks.

Clinton, who spoke in his capacity as founder of the Clinton Foundation, covered a breath of topics, with some references to the retail industry. He cited the fact that retail grew over 5% last year — that's about 3% more than the U.S. economy as whole. Retail, he said, made up nearly 20% of GDP and supported roughly 25% of jobs.

Not too shabby. But retail, Clinton said, “does best when there's a broad middle class” — and to guarantee this, a few things need to change, especially in light of the energy crisis, the financial meltdown that ultimately engulfed the world, and the inequality that led protestors to occupy Wall Street.

So, how do we build a world of shared prosperity? According to Clinton, it's different in poor versus wealthy countries. In poor countries, it's about building the systems that can make “life predictable,” while in rich countries, where the infrastructure and systems are already in place, it's about reforming them.

“They've become long in the tooth and eroded by people who are more interested in preserving their positions … than investing their wealth in the future,” Clinton said, referencing the financial crisis in Greece as the most “grotesque” example of this.

He spent a good deal of time talking about the environment. He discussed Brazil and the work it's done to reduce the destruction of the rain forest while at the same time growing its economy. Apparently Brazil used more sugar cane ethanol in their tanks last year than they did gasoline. He said we need to “accelerate the resolution of the mortgage crisis” and do something about healthcare, which takes up 17.2% of the economy at $2.2 trillion a year. To put that into perspective, retail makes up $2.5 trillion in national spending. Clinton advised that Americans keep healthier from the get-go, as in: It's time to tackle obesity. Clinton also suggested eliminating certain tax incentives, like the charitable exemption.

But then he got down to what people really care about: Where did he do his holiday shopping? Clinton, who said he likes to help out small businesses when he can, shopped mostly in his now-home of Chappaqua this holiday season, where there's a nice jewelry store he often frequents. He also bought some clothes in New York City and a few books for Chelsea and his son-in-law at Argosy.

“I'm morose all these book stores are closing,” Clinton said, referring specifically to the recent Borders insolvency.

Me too.

So not too much there about the retail side of things, but the session was packed and there was raucous applause at the end. Clinton still definitely sells tickets.

Although most people — famous or otherwise — can generally pull off the procreative process, it seems that in our celebrity-centric culture, nothing is as pleasing to the public as when one famous person and another famous person make a baby.

As a just-barely-Gen-Y female, it's impossible for me to completely avoid the constant “bump watches” and celebu-tot news commodified by tabloids and “respectable” media sources alike. So sick of the word “bump” is this journalist that she shamefully daydreams about censorship (I'd also like to see the word “leverage” leveraged completely out of our language) — but if there's one facet of this cringe-inducing coverage that even I can tolerate, it's the naming of these lucky tykes.

I'm certainly not the only one, and celebrities don't disappoint. From the bizarre — actor Jason Lee's son Pilot Inspektor and magician Penn Jillette's Moxie Crimefighter jump to mind — to plain embarrassing monikers like Jermajesty (I'm looking at you, Jermaine Jackson), it's always an interesting day when the enormously entitled are blessed with the one thing money can't (usually) buy.

Of all the famous-people progeny produced as of late, the birth of rapper Jay-Z's and the singularly named Beyonce's baby girl was perhaps the most hyped. Born last Saturday, her famously private parents haven't yet sold her image to a tabloid, but the name of the newest Carter was revealed almost immediately as Blue Ivy.

Now, as far as celebrity baby names go, this one seems almost tame and normal-like. But something about it doesn't seem right. It doesn't really sound like a person's name. Think of Blue Ivy, and your synapses probably deliver something like this.

They're just two words that, to me personally, don't really go together — although surely they mean something to Mr. and Mrs. H.O.V.A. But if you ask the small, Boston-based event-planning company of the same name, Blue Ivy is a careful balance of elegance and the unusual. The Huffington Post spoke with Blue Ivy owner Veronica Alexandra, who said that she decided on the brand name after an intense six-month brainstorming process.

“We wanted to brand ourselves as being of a certain caliber and have a name that would resonate with customers, a name of a company someone would want to sign a contract with,” she told the Post. “Through that process, we thought of things that were elegant, pretty, sophisticated. I liked the word ‘ivy' because it's prestigious, romantic, growing, goes with the seasons. I liked the way it sounded and looked. With ‘blue,' we wanted to be edgy, and a blue flower is something very unique.”

What one would expect to be a boon for Alexandra's business was reportedly quite chaotic, as Jay and Bey's babe drove the business's website down in Google search listings (at the moment, the website is completely down). Still, Alexandra saw the coincidence as an opportunity, congratulating the power couple on the website and using social channels to discuss the name and tie her brand as closely as possible to the days-old media sensation.

As odd as the Blue Ivy moniker may seem to some, there's actually another company with the name. BlueIvy Communications is a public relations firm in Florida, with its name half a tribute to the owner's deceased mother (she always desired blue eyes) and half a tribute to the owner's Ivy League education. Melissa Perlman capitalized on the coincidence as any good PR firm-owner would — by issuing a press release relating not to the name, but to the Carters' hospital controversy, including reputation-management advice for the natal hospital. Letting Google, of course, take care of the rest.

The Carters may not have intentionally named their child after a brand, but even if they had, they wouldn't be breaking any sort of new ground. In 2002, the gaming company Acclaim put 10 grand up as a reward for the first parents who named their child “Turok” after the game was released that year on Sept. 1. The company is now defunct, and no one on the Internet seems to know whether anyone claimed the prize, so I'm going to just go ahead and believe that no parent was that cruel.

U.S. companies were the hero, however, in the 2001 story of a New York couple willing to name their child after any brand willing to shell out a cool half-mill for the rights. No one took the bait, and the child ended up being dubbed Zane, which sounds comparatively normal.

Zane's one of the lucky ones. Parents have reportedly named their children after such brands as Chevrolet, L'Oreal, Armani, Chanel (I actually know of one), Canon, Bentley, Celica … and there are two boys in different states named — this is not a joke — ESPN.

Considering the current state of affairs, I thought it might be helpful for new or expecting parents to understand the differences between naming a baby and a naming a company.

How to name a baby

• Don't name your baby after a company, product, brand, musical group, or the location in which they were conceived. I know naming a child “Paris” or “Bed” sounds cool and unique, but it's not. Well, I guess Bed would be.
• Don't give a child of either gender Superman's birth name (WTF Nic Cage).
• Strike all the names your relatives and friends suggest. They're keeping the good names for their own offspring.
• A strong family name can be a gift to a younger generation, depending on that name and its possible nickname iterations.
• Honoring a family member can also be a meaningful choice, but please follow the guidelines above.
• Sound compatibility is important. If the last name begins with a vowel, don't end the first name in a vowel. Even if you're having a girl and really, really love “Twilight.”
• Careful with initials! Do not give your daughter Anna Smith a middle name that begins with S. In this particular example, it would also be prudent to avoid “Nicole.”
• Check the meanings of names. Did you know the nice old-fashioned name Dolores means “lady of sorrows?” I know names of that generation are back in style, but do your research, people!
• Above everything else, don't forget that this baby will someday, hopefully, become a person with a desire to have a job or, even better, a career. Don't make that more difficult than it already is.

How to name a company or brand

(Reminder: Do not use these tips to name a human being)

• Settle on something that is both unique and legally protectable.
• Make sure the name you choose can be expressed in a URL. Sometimes off-beat spellings of common words can help with this, since affordable domains are often difficult to find).
• A good brand name should invoke the ideal consumer experience or their feelings after using the product or service.  
• Blend long descriptors to make catchy nicknames. Tech company Intel was once “Integrated Electronics.”
• Don't put E-Z in the name. It's been done.
• Informative, service-specific names are a solid and safe choice, but can lack flair.
• Shock value in a name can be useful to drive business or garner initial press.

A name is more than a name in both cases. The creation of a child or a company can engender similar feelings in the creator(s), but finding a good moniker simply requires different processes.

And while any good parent or founder wants to see the fruit of their loins and/or labors stand out in a world of sameness and mediocrity, it's far more kind to take license with the name of a company, which will never have to attend middle school.