Single letter can make one ‘L’ of a difference

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The press release announced the launch of ‘a new men’s collection with its signature scent’ – which is fine if you know the difference between the definition of expensive scent and stored fodder.

Because those who know their fragrances will know that sillage is the word that describes the degree to which a perfume’s fragrance lingers in the air when worn – as in, “neither scent has a very strong sillage”.

Take out one letter ‘l’ on the other hand and you’re dealing with a very different smell entirely – that of fermented fodder spread across the land, a substance we know as silage.

And while it’s a smell that I strangely enjoy for some reason, I wouldn’t bet on Brown Thomas positioning a sales counter inside the front door to promote Dignified, the new signature scent by House of Silage.

Yet House of Sillage is a self-proclaimed leading name in the world of Haute Parfumerie, based at Newport Beach in California where one presumes there’s very little smell of silage.

Dignified may well do what the promotional material suggests – provoke envy and admiration, a new class of man who cares deeply to distinguish his life and the story behind it.

The scent of silage, on the other hand, is more likely to clear a substantial space around you when you drop into the pub for a pint after a hard day spreading it all over your land.

The additional ‘l’ that separates sillage from silage – not to mention the variation in aroma – should ensure nobody gets one mixed up with the other.

But sometimes you need to be very careful when choosing your brand name – and sometimes you cannot anticipate how time may give your product a very different meaning.

Take the Belgian chocolate company, famous for its pralines since 1923, which decided to change the brand name in 2013.

A year later came the implosion in Iraq – which somehow gave a whole new meaning to newly relaunched Isis Chocolates.

Chocolates for terrorists may be a niche market in some part of the world, but it wouldn’t do anything for your branding in the west – hence another name change to Libeert, the surname of the company owners.

Sometimes it’s just language that lets you down; Poo Poo smoothies may be all the rage in China, but won’t work here – unless they link up with House of Silage perhaps.

Ditto, Pee Cola in Ghana, which actually means very good cola in their language but is unlikely to appeal to the discerning tourist.

‘Barf’ means ‘snow’ in Iran – so Barf detergent didn’t seem like a bad idea; ‘fart’ means ‘lucky’ in Polish, which makes Fart Bar easier to digest. And ‘fart’ means ‘speed’ in Swedish, which is why they didn’t think it a strange name for a car magazine until they saw the tourists laughing at them.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.