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Why Do Brands Keep Dropping Vowels?
From Flickr to MNDFL to The Weeknd, brands are selling off vowels like an alternate reality version of WHL F FRTN.
Maybe you’ve noticed a trend over the last couple of years. New companies, apps, and musical acts are popping up with goofy looking names. Take one good scroll through Instagram and you’ll be marketed a new product that has a simple enough name when you say it out loud… but isn’t spelled with any vowels. (I have a shipment of MUD\WTR on its way to my house right now.)
Why?
Every even-slightly-common domain name has been taken, and every feasible company name has been trademarked. What’s a brand to do? Either make up a word (Google, IKEA, Kodak), simply misspell one (Digg, Lyft, Qustodian), or start selling off vowels like an alternate reality version of WHL F FRTN.
It’s also just trendy to name your company like it’s already listed on the NASDAQ. So, while startups may be searching for domain names that haven’t been snatched up, many are also hopping on the bandwagon to show how cool and different they are.
How are they doing it?
Simply Drop The “E”
Sure, Flickr and Tumblr have been around for a minute (and have been bought and sold for tens of millions of dollars), but check out Blendr, Gathr, Grindr, Letterboxd, Pixlr, Pushr, Qzzr, Readr, Scribd, Timr, and Viewr. You know what the word says; who needs an “e?”
“At the end of the day…it all comes down to one simple, absolute truth: Tumbler.com looks fucking stupid.”
— Christopher Price, Editorial Director, Tumblr
Get rid of the vowels you don’t need
I have a friend in Nashville with a really cool startup, GVE. Now, the website says this stands for Growing Volunteers Everywhere, but I think we all know the acronym came after the name. The best part is their branded slogan, where they give zero craps about using a vowel: “GVE & B KND.”
