Corporate identities! We love ’em. But boy is it hard to come up with good ones. Sounds like we decided to go with “Oath: A Verizon Company.” We already have a post, but I just did a focus group with myself and this is what I discovered.
Pros:
- It’s an actual word, unlike some corporate identities.
- Good brand if we decide to pivot to “Tinder for cults.”
- The type is clean (can’t go wrong with geometric sans serif) and our blue is different from Facebook’s, Google’s and Twitter’s.
- No gradients, for now.
Cons/other:
- Oath is another name for doing a swear. Ancient oaths are actually very interesting. Did you know “gadzooks” is short for “by God’s hooks,” indicating the nails used to crucify Christ? That’s just one of many colorful oaths.
- “Take the Oath” is kind of a scary tagline fundamentally. But when a company makes its money through intrusive ads and tracking (sorry) and monopolistic practices, telling customers to take it could be misconstrued as aggressive, e.g. Take the Oath and like it.
- No oath is specified, even though there’s a colon. Kind of sounds like we haven’t decided what we’ve promised to do yet. “This is our undying pledge to you: PLEDGE TK”
- Internal communications regarding “taking the oath” sound like suicide pacts, or at least something involving blood. I’m submitting this for the official Oath of allegiance:
Weave a circle round Tim thrice,
And click your mouse with holy dread
For he on revenue hath fed,
And drunk the MAUs of Yahoo sites.
- Looks like we forgot to register oath.com. 😬
- Sounds like “oaf” and people with certain accents will pronounce it that way. Oafs unfortunately are generally not well thought of, which is too bad because it’s not our fault.
- People take oaths during trials ostensibly to prevent them from lying. Also when taking office, but usually it’s stuff like, “remember, you are under oath.” Not a really good association for several reasons. Being “under Oath” may be the new “A-o-hell.”
- OAuth joke.
In conclusion, it could be a lot worse. Almost everything online has a bad name, when you think about it. If we can get used to “Yahoo!” we can get used to Oath. Or Oath:. Or Oath: A Verizon Company. Not really clear on how that’s going to work.