Does your magazine's name do its job? - Small Magazine Workshop

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August 1, 1993 by Joseph E. Daniel

In this era of instant-impression, literal marketing, originality in a title may be too expensive a luxury.

There are two distinct schools of thought when it comes to naming a magazine. You either call it exactly what it is, like Bicycling or Sports Illustrated, or you just make up a name that, at first, means nothing to the reader, like egg or Open. It's the old left-brain, right-brain dichotomy. One approach is practical, marketable and safe; the other approach is creative, expressive and risky.

What's in a name? More than you might predict. As someone who bestowed upon his magazine one of the weirdest titles ever to grace the newsstands, I can understand why you may be dubious about what I have to say. But I assure you, because of Buzzworm's unique logo, I've become increasingly sensitive to the perceptions created by a magazine's "nom de public." If you are about to name a new magazine or you sometimes struggle with the notion of changing your current title, read on.

A little history: We never went through a formal name search with Buzzworm--although at times I wish we had. Free-form simply followed function. My original idea was for an environmental magazine to which I had given the somewhat yawn-inspiring name Strategies. When several people pointed out to me that it sounded more like a financial management guide, I tried on more literal titles like The Environmentalist or The Conservationist. These too were soon abandoned as lacking excitement and originality, and for being carryovers from an earlier period of grassroots environmental enlightenment. Our new magazine was born during that unlikely period of magazine publishing, the late eighties--which spawned rags bearing such bizarre names as Wig Wag, 7 Days, Monk, Taxi and Garbage--and I could feel myself being influenced by the trend.

An 18-day raft trip through the Grand Canyon "solved" my problem. While hiking with a well-seasoned boatman, I happened upon one of the beautiful pink rattlesnakes that are indigenous to the Canyon. As curiosity drew me closer to inspect the snake, the reptile suddenly raised itself into a striking position, shaking its rattle in an angry buzz. My wizened companion yanked me back, saying, "Hey, young feller, watch out for that old buzzworm. He's tryin' to tell you somethin' and you better listen."

Wow, what a wild name for a snake! Then it hit me. If a rattlesnake represents a very effective form of communication--it buzzes a warning, and you'd better react--wouldn't this Old West word "buzzworm" make a great name for a publication that provides warning of serious environmental threats?

And that was it. Our market research was an ad-hoc focus group around the campfire that night. My "river rat" companions gave their approval, then moved on to discuss other Westernisms, like "songdog" for coyote, "speed sheep" for antelope and "Holstein pheasant" for magpie. I fell asleep, secure in the knowledge that I had hit on the perfect name for my magazine.

Five years later, I'm not so sure.

There is, without question, a certain hard-won value in successfully coining a new word or name. There are institutions in the publishing world, like Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair or Harper's, that thrive with enigmatic titles. More common, though, is the fate of publications with wonderfully original monikers, like Mariah, Hippocrates, Harrowsmith and East/West, which are now known, respectively, as Outside, Health, Country Life and Natural Health in order to prosper. In today's sterile publishing environment of literal marketing, originality may be too expensive and too time-consuming a luxury.

Like the aforementioned magazines, we love our name and have built a great deal of equity with it. But the environmental magazine niche has been anything but easy. It is still supported by a small universe of zealots, and if the mainstream market fails to adopt the concept, it will eventually fail. We are beginning to sense that our name may have taken us as far as possible, and further growth--perhaps even survival--could hang on the decision to bid it farewell.

Yet every time I settle on renaming Buzzworm I get cold feet. Despite the tedium of spelling the name at the start of almost every phone call I make, there is deep satisfaction in hearing the occasional devoted fan refer to the magazine as "the Buzzworm." I remember my grandmother allowing my grandfather his monthly copy of "the Playboy." That institutional "the" in front of a title, usually reserved for such established chroniclers of culture as "the National Geographic" and "the Boston Globe," is gratifyingly akin to being accepted as a member in some time-honored, exclusive publishing society.

But where things go wrong is when 90 percent of the media buyers you solicit stare with blank incomprehension during your presentation. When the newsstand distributor displays your publication with the fishing titles. When the stampsheet bandits turn you down. The problem isn't the name, it's the selling of the name. There's a reason the generic titles virtually own the large newsstands.