vowe dot net :: Successful branding, not

Successful branding, not

by Volker Weber

Imagine for a second, your company Powergen would be located in Italia (Italy for unilingual folks), what would be your best shot at a URL? Oh, the logo? You mean that logo? Yes, they operate also in Italia.

[via IT&W]

2003-06-17 :: email :: twitter :: facebook :: google+

Comments

Beautiful - that really must get added to the list of classic marketing boobs!

John Keys, 2003-06-17 11:58

Are they asking for trouble? If so, WELL DONE!

Alma, 2003-06-17 13:42

Too funny! That reminds me of the naming snafu for the company I used to work for. Before Enron was Enron, they were two smaller pipeline companies located around Texas. They decided to merge and come up with a new name. They did so and were just about ready to reveal the new name to everyone. Seems they decided to call the company Enteron, which was fine until someone pointed out that the term meant intestines. Not exactly the image you want for your company.

But in retrospect, perhaps it was more accurate that way...

Tom Duff, 2003-06-17 14:52

Reminds me of www.whorepresents.com.

Jeff, 2003-06-17 15:06

Oh, and then there's www.IPAnywhere.com. (Say it out loud)

Jeff, 2003-06-17 18:44

reminds me of the good old vacuum cleaner ad " nothing sucks like an Electrolux"

Moritz Schroeder, 2003-06-18 03:49

I get a "cannot find server" error on that URL (power genetalia). A joke? if so, it's a good one. Funnier if it is true, of course.

Ed Brill, 2003-06-18 08:53

Ed - so do I today, it was definately there yesterday.

There have been postings about the name on several sites apart from vowe's, so perhaps they've picked up on it and decided to spoil the fun?

John Keys, 2003-06-18 09:05

Update (from whois) - updated yesterday -see bottom line.

Domain Name: POWERGENITALIA.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com
Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com
Name Server: DNS2.NIC.IT
Name Server: LD.ELLEDI.IT
Status: ACTIVE
Updated Date: 02-apr-2002
Creation Date: 14-apr-2000
Expiration Date: 14-apr-2004

>>> Last update of whois database: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:56:08 EDT

John Keys, 2003-06-18 10:06

I've clearly forgetten to switch my brain on today. Whois is updated daily I think, so the date on the bottom of the entry is irrelevant. I think I'd better go back to bed today...

John Keys, 2003-06-18 10:28

Looks like a real one to me:

Registrant:
POWERGEN S.R.L. (POWERGENITALIA-DOM)
VIA LUXEMBURG, 13
BIBBIENA, AR 52011
IT

Domain Name: POWERGENITALIA.COM

.....

Record expires on 14-Apr-2004.
Record created on 17-Sep-2002.

Moritz Schroeder, 2003-06-18 11:11

LOL

oh my god that is funny.

jonvon, 2003-06-18 16:43

ROFLMGO!! Perhaps they had a power failure. They're back "up" now ;-)

-rich

Richard Schwartz, 2003-06-19 00:03

Now Rich, that was funny :)

Ed Brill, 2003-06-19 02:02

Article from The Register:

Powergen denies ties with powergenitalia

There's been much hooting and sniggering in the last couple of days following reports of the curiously-named "powergenitalia.com".

So has someone at the giant energy company's Italian division messed up by registering this Web site? It seems not.

A spokesman for PowerGen told us: "This site has nothing to do with us at all. We don't even have an Italian division."

Ah well, funny all the same. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/31273.html

Mitch Wolfson, 2003-06-19 12:06

You may link here. :-)

Volker Weber, 2003-06-19 13:03

Reminds me of a story which was going around some years ago at GPT (the then official name of GEC-Plessey Telecommunications).
It was alleged that for a French presentation the sales team decided to accent the pronunciation to make it sound more French, and that there was raucus laughter from the audience each time the company name was mentioned. The resultant uttering of GPT apparently sounded to the french like "I have just farted "

Barrie, 2003-06-23 00:14

Whether this is a joke or not, this "little piece" brought lots of yucks to the office.

BTW, lucky they are a For Profit or they may have needed to grab that ".org" domain, too.

Andrew Barker, 2003-06-24 17:23

it is not a joke and is not connected to the UK company PowerGen. It is in fact a real company selling power generators. Sometimes geeks can be too geeky as you are all looking at whois results instead of just ringing them up.

Even if it is not connected to the gas and lekkie giant, the humour is not misplaced however as it is still funny that they have an english version of the site to help sell products and services to us in the UK.

joe, 2003-06-25 13:33

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