Comments on: Corporate punctuation finds its home

By: seocu

seocu — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 17:33:19 +0000

no ? am AoL is dead as a doornail, why are they worried about the period? Sell something to make money first, idiots! yes teacher

By: Arnavutköy evden eve Nakliyat

Arnavutköy evden eve Nakliyat — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 05:51:49 +0000

is well organized, thank you for enlightening comments.

By: boya

boya — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:07:25 +0000

well organized and run, and that all the parts of the company are on the same page.

By: Data Entry

Data Entry — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:17:13 +0000

AoL is dead as a doornail, why are they worried about the period? Sell something to make money first, idiots!

By: Jarkko

Jarkko — Mon, 24 May 2010 08:49:05 +0000

Consistency with foolishness is still foolishness. You nailed that one!

By: PLANETwebfoot

PLANETwebfoot — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:38:45 +0000

I couldn’t agree with you more Michal!!! I think it will take far more than changing caps and a period to re-establish Aol. credibility and usability. They already have a brand image but at the moment it’s not a very good one. I think working more on good customer service and interaction will benefit them far more immediately and in the long run than all the punctuation in the world.

By: Andy Freeman

Andy Freeman — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:04:18 +0000

> The obsession with the exact naming is for consistency in brand image.

Consistency with foolishness is still foolishness.

It’s one thing to insist on consistency with standard usage. It’s quite another to demand special usage.

People tend to do the easy thing, which is usually the standard thing. If your branding is inconsistent with the easy thing, you’re constantly fighting with your users. If your branding is consistent with the easy thing, your users are working with you.

Since you get to pick your branding…..

By: Dewer

Dewer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:51:07 +0000

They can pull it together. I think they are better off just ditching the brand, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

By: Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:00:24 +0000

Time Inc. is just straight AP style, regardless of the company. Then again, that brings me to one of my favorite AP style perversities: two-letter abbreviations use periods (i.e., U.S., U.N., U.K.). The one exception? AP.

By: S.Smith

S.Smith — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:08:04 +0000

Perhaps they should find out what text-messaging folks use – that could be the better branding move.

By: Fred Schlegel

Fred Schlegel — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:17:21 +0000

Forcing use of a period in the middle of a sentence does nothing but confuse the reader. Maybe appropriate given Aol.’s strategy of late.

Maybe Aol. just wants to always appear to be the last word in everything.

By: Lost in Phoenix | AOL brings new meaning to “dot com”s

Lost in Phoenix | AOL brings new meaning to “dot com”s — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:39:35 +0000

[...] if this image shift bring users back to AOL. AOL (and Yahoo, according to Jeff Jarvis, who just wrote about AOL’s decision) used to be about community. Facebook, Flickr and dozens of other sites have since encroached upon [...]

By: Alec Perkins

Alec Perkins — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:24:09 +0000

I was speaking generally about companies insisting so strongly on a particular formatting (having prepared standards guides myself). I do agree that AOL has a major brand issue that goes well beyond how the name is written. Hopefully, for their sake, they can pull it together, though I’m not holding my breath. I think they are better off just ditching the brand, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

By: Tex Lovera

Tex Lovera — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:55:22 +0000

This is like Ford now calling the Taurus SHO the “show” instead of the “S-H-O”. Stupidity in action.

Yet contrast with the name Ford itself. Have they EVER changed their logo? So give them some credit…

By: Cheryl H

Cheryl H — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:21:13 +0000

When Mr. Armstrong was listing things that come after Aol. I see that “a life” is conspicuously absent.

By: jtrigsby

jtrigsby — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:49:32 +0000

Alec, I have to agree w/Michael. Yes indeed, it does illustrate that the company is interested in maintaining a consistent brand image… way more interested in their brand image in fact than actually letting their brand speak for itself. I mean honestly, if it was a blazing hot web property… would it really matter how they spelled it?

Mr. Armstrong said he liked to describe the period as “the AOL dot” because “the dot is the pivot point for what comes after AOL,” whether it is e-mail, Web sites or coming offerings that will “surprise people.”

I think their goal with the Aol dot is to add some “extras” like Aol.mail, Aol.classifieds, etc… of course, if that is what they want to do, maybe it would have been better to put the dot at the beginning .Aol ?

jtrigsby

By: David Gehring

David Gehring — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:21:50 +0000

Yea, AON, I used to work there! Now I can count those years insurance as experience in digital media! Saweet.

By: Simon

Simon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:23:04 +0000

So I guess now instead of being pronounced A – O – L, it’ll be pronounced A-Hole. Sounds about right,

By: Michal Tatarynowicz

Michal Tatarynowicz — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:34:41 +0000

I think that until AOL actually does something interesting, like developing great web applications, it’s dead. Right now they’re rebranding empty space.

By: Michael Becker

Michael Becker — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:52:24 +0000

It may communicate that the company is interested in its image and controlling that image, but it also indicates that the executives are spending way too much energy mandating a pixel rather than focusing on more important things.

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:50:01 +0000

Good thing they added the period or I’d confuse it with Aon.

By: Alec Perkins

Alec Perkins — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:31:19 +0000

The obsession with the exact naming is for consistency in brand image. If being handled properly, it’s part of a larger effort within the company to control the perception of its brand, both externally and internally. Consistency, or at least the appearance of it, communicates that the company is well organized and run, and that all the parts of the company are on the same page.

In this case, the period makes (or at least tries to make) it clear that the last letter is an L as part of the word Aol and not an I as part of an acronym AOI instead. It’s still a stupid reason, and probably only there because they want to get away from the juvenile image of the all caps while hanging on the the recognition of AOL. Of course, now it reads as “Ayeole”.