Names With Stories: The story behind MakeLoveNotPorn.com

Cindy Gallop is an advertising and branding professional with over 35 years of experience working with global brands, like Coca-Cola, Ray-Ban, and Polaroid, to name a few. You may know her for her advertising career, her famous tagline “I like to blow shit up. I am the Michael Bay of business,” or as the first (and to our knowledge, only!) TED speaker to ever use the words “come on my face” on stage. Our Tatiana Bonneau had the chance to have a delightful conversation with Cindy about her project MakeLoveNotPorn.com, the importance of a good name, and how to have The conversation about sex and porn with your kids (yes, this all happened in 20 minutes).

Without further ado, here are the main highlights:

Cindy shared her own experience with young people being frustrated and lacking adequate sexual education. In her words, “hardcore porn has become the only sexual education there is.”

So she put her advertising expertise to work, and after a quick brainstorm session, she came up with MakeLoveNotPorn.com.

The main criteria she used to pick the name were:

• Short, punchy, snappy name where she can get the matching URL
• Easy and simple to say
• A name that people would enjoy saying and so sharing
• Don’t just say it — be it

Little did she know that as a side effect of the great name she chose, 12 years on she is the owner not just of a domain and brand name, but of the definitive call to action in this arena. #MakeLoveNotPorn is a hashtag used globally by millions of people who share the same vision.

It hasn’t all been easy, as you can imagine. But Cindy is not one to give up. And the rest is history. MakeLoveNotPorn.com has grown from a basic sex fact-check site to a user-generated video-sharing platform with a buzzing community of contributors and supporters.

Today, Cindy feels she has a responsibility to make the project more far-reaching and effective. She is on a mission to socialize sex and use what she knows best — great communication.

Cindy also shared some great tips about how to approach the topic of sex and porn as a parent, you can check those in the video Originally published at SmartBranding.com