I was thinking about Romeo and Juliette and paraphrasing from the play, Juliette says to Romeo, “Romeo doth thy name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” So according to William Shakespeare, the name is not important. But in real life what we call something is of a high importance.

So let me introduce a data point. There’s something called the patagonian toothfish. This fish was really not that popular and was not selling well. So a fisherman that turned out to be a really great marketer decided to change the name of the fish. So he called it ‘The Chilean Sea Bass’. His own name was Lee Lance and he did this in 1977 and all of a sudden the fish that wasn’t selling, started selling really well. You can go to any fine restaurant in the world and they would definitely have the Chilean sea bass on the menu.

So, what’s in a name? It’s the difference between not making sales and having a worldwide phenomenon. So Mr. Shakespeare you may have been smart in writing plays but in marketing…not so sure!