Branding

 

You Don’t Know Me

You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
Well, you don't know me

Maybe to be known, you need better branding!

When I was  a young engineer, I was working on what became known in Boston on I-93, the South East Expressway as the Zipper lane. That was NOT what it was called by us engineers.  We called it the SEXway ( South East eXpressway) Reversible Movable Barrier Separated High Occupancy Vehicle Lane.  Rolls trippingly off the tongue doesn’t it! 😉

The basic concept is that connected, concrete Jersey barriers are stored against the median on both sides of the South East Expressway and moved as needed.  The traffic was highly directional during peak hours, northbound in the morning and southbound in the afternoon.  While the traffic was such that it warranted an additional lane during the peak hour in the peak direction, there was not the right of way to add an additional lane. But there was an extra lane in the reverse direction.  But that traffic was already going at expressway speeds in the opposite, off peak, direction so it could not be safely taken.  A lane could be taken if that lane was separated by a physical barrier, but then that barrier would be needed to be removed, and switched to the opposite side only hours later each day.  If only there was a physical barrier that could be moved twice a day when needed, and thus the concept of movable barriers was developed.  The barriers could be moved to create the lane in the early morning, and stored against the median in the afternoon.  In the afternoon, the process would need to be reversed in the opposite direction.  Once the kinks were worked out, a design was developed, and the barriers were put in place.  Because there was only a single lane, to entice and reward drivers to use this lane, and to prevent it from being overloaded upon opening, entry would be restricted to High Occupancy Vehicles (e.g. carpools and buses).  But there was still that name.

The branding of the lane was taken care of by the newspaper headline writers.  The machine that moved the connected barriers appeared like it was opening a big Zipper, when it was stored it appeared to be closing a Zipper, and the lane that it created allow you to Zip into Boston from the suburbs. Would it have been as successful under the original name?  Maybe.  But the Zipper lane by which it is known is MUCH better branding.  There is an article by Parker Molloy dealing with another example.  What is formally known as  “coherence bias” by journalists might be better branded as “sane-washing”. The intent is cleaning up a speech by journalists which informs only about the policies, but does not convey about the character, of the speaker.  The intent is good and is informative on policy but is depriving any information about character.  Knowing it is “coherence bias” is interesting.  Calling it “sane-washing” is not only better branding, ... it gives the reader the proper information.