DR. SCHOLL’S has tackled one of woman’s biggest modern day dilemmas: cute or comfortable? It’s no secret that most fashionable shoes aren’t suitable for wearing all day … whether it’s a on business trip or a girl’s night out, we want to look our best but struggle with achy feet at the expense of our high heeled kicks.

A few weeks ago, “Merck Consumer Care announced the launch of DR. SCHOLL’S® FOR HER Fast Flats™, a stylish and practical solution for women who need a break from their uncomfortable shoes.

Fast Flats™ are compact and foldable shoes that fit discreetly in a purse and come with a wristlet for easy storage and portability. This spare pair is perfect for nights out, weddings, traveling through airports and other times when a long trek in heels won’t cut it. Women can even wear Fast Flats™ during their commute, and then slip in to their fashionable shoes just in time to hit the office.”

According to Jay Morgan, vice president of Research and Development for DR. SCHOLL’S®, “While women love their stylish shoes, many feel they have to sacrifice comfort to wear them for an entire day or night. We know that’s not the case, and we wanted to give women a great solution for their feet. Fast Flats™ are fashionable and affordable, enabling women to be prepared for the many scenarios they face throughout the day without having to worry about shoe discomfort.”

As a woman who has spent countless hours in uncomfortable shoes at the sake of fashion, and as someone who has been naming new products for over a decade, I can appreciate both the uniqueness of this new offering, and the simpleness of the name. DR. SCHOLL’S could have taken a variety of directions when naming this new product, but they chose to be descriptive, and emphasize the ease of use and quick-change nature that women prefer. Fast Flats is set up to be a category definer (as illustrated by the current surge in knock-offs). The messaging of the name makes it easy to for the customer to understand the product and the benefit. Alliteration lends to memorability, and the two syllable name construction adds easy recall.

I’m excited to try my own pair. What do you think? Ready for a quick change?

Sad, but true. According to the Wall Street Journal, sociologists and name researchers are seeing unprecedented levels of anxiety among parents trying to choose names for their children. While once a reflection of family tradition or cultural values, a child’s name has now become a symbol of individual taste. The pressure is on! Knowing the name will become a lasting part of the child’s identity, parents are turning to several resources before they commit to a final name for their baby’s birth certificate.

Hiring a baby naming consultant or branding consultant has become a recent trend. Some of these “baby naming experts” offer phone consultations and even mathematical formulas. The consultants may analyze the phonetic elements, popularity and ethnic and linguistic origins, and can serve as an objective third party when parents are in disagreement about a name. Some parents even turn to research to find out how society reacts to different names. Albert Mehrabian Ph.D., a professor of psychology at UCLA, found that more common names elicit positive reactions, while unusual names typically result in negative responses. He has a popular article, “Baby Name Report Card: Beneficial and Harmful Baby Names” and is frequently cited in blogs for his knowledge regarding which names will lead to success vs. failure.

For parents that want to do their own exploring, nymbler.com is an interactive website where the user can input their favorite name and the site will generate popularity statistics as well as similar name options they may want to consider. Some parents go straight to the Social Security Administration website, which allows them to browse reliable data and see the most common names for each gender. The Social Security Administration site allows searches for past years as well as particular names.

Will parents every truly find unique names for their babies? Only time will tell!

Contributed by: Ashley Popham

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Very few fashion brands can say that they’ve stood the test of time, especially those that don’t constantly evolve to fit the ever changing trends. Well, the Ray-Ban Wayfarer is one brand that keeps coming back for more and has managed not to get a major face-lift over the decades.

Wayfarers have been manufactured by Ray-Ban since 1952. Since then, the brand has come and gone…and come and gone…and come again. Although very successful in the 1950s and 1960s, the brand’s popularity hit a slump in the 1970s. With the help of some primo product placement in the 1980s, the brand struck gold once again. You may recognize the brand from such movies as The Blues Brothers, The Breakfast Club, or the infamous showing in the hit, Risky Business.

Although successful in the 1980s, the brand hit another slump in the 1990s. During this time, the brand even underwent a redesign that proved to be unsuccessful. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that Ray-Ban noticed stars rocking some vintage Wayfarer frames, so they came to their senses and brought back the original design. Since then, the brand has found itself at a steady up and up. Continue Reading »

We’ve talked a lot about how brands are trying to add “Green” to their corporate color palette, sometimes with real, valuable initiatives and sometimes with just words. (Green: Who Can Claim It? and Greenwashing) So in honor of this Earth Day, the 40th Anniversary actually, we’d like put some of those brands to the test to “verdify” how green they really are.

Last month, SunChips introduced the world’s first fully-compostable chip bag. The new bags, made of plant-based materials, should fully decompose in 14 weeks (under typical hot composting conditions). A few weeks later, Snyder’s of Hanover announced it too would be using sustainable packaging (on its organic line of pretzels).

I don’t have a compost pile, much less the perfectly mixed 1-2-2-2-1 “hot” compost that SunChips recommends, but I do find the random scrap of trash in my yard after trash day. Would the bags eventually decompose in my yard or on the side of the road? We plan to find out.

For our Earth Day experiment, we have staked one of these composting bags to the ground to simulate errant trash. We will photograph our progress and share the results on the blog.