I love this sort of thing.
When I went to university in London, Ontario, Canada in the 1970s, we drank regularly at the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) hotel by the tracks on Richmond Street. The place was known affectionately and unofficially by everyone in the city as the Ceeps.
Many years after I graduated, I was driving by the place one day and chuckled to see that the sign out front had been changed and upgraded and now read simply, “The Ceeps”. No more CPR Hotel.
In fact, I bet today’s university students who raise a glass there don’t know where the name Ceeps came from or that the building was once a railway hotel.
Customers of Canada’s Giant Tiger took to calling their favourite discount store the GT Boutique, as though it was a high-scale clothing outlet.
Rather than be offended, the owners of the place saw the humour in it and capitalized on it. They now use GT Boutique in their signage and marketing.
Today, I was in a stationery and computer store and was checking out some printer paper when I saw a bunch of paper labelled Dunder Mifflin Paper. That was the name of the fictional paper company in Scranton, Ohio, in the great sitcom The Office which ended its multi-year run this spring. Somebody was thinking.
I don’t know if I would buy the paper because of its connection to a fictional TV show I loved, but I might. Never know.
In a society where “branding” is everything, it’s good to be on the lookout for opportunities to be creative.
©2013 Jim Hagarty
