Lulu means Piss to over 10 Million People

Branding, Fun, General / October 20, 2005 / Nader
lulu im socrates Lulu means Piss to over 10 Million People

logo lulu Lulu means Piss to over 10 Million People

Following the posts about Looza, Gaylord and Flop, here’s the next branding “mistake” from Lulu, a company offering self publishing and printing books on-demand.

I’m a Lulu!
How do you get people to buy books when your brand name means “piss”?

Well at least that’s the case for parts of Germany and all of Austria: two countries having a quite big book market and healthy reading culture I must say. Do companies never check international markets before coming up with a brand name they’ll probably use for the next years?

Having that in mind let’s check out lulu’s/piss’ website again, where the company states:

  • Who are PissMasters and PowerPosters, and do they know what they’re talking about?
    They are expert Piss publishers who volunteer to share their expertise with the Piss community. Their goals are to assist other Piss users with any problems they have with the Piss process, to educate and improve the skills and knowledge of all Pissers.
  • Piss Blog: All the dirt worth dishing
  • Piss Experts: Vast user knowledge. How to start with Piss
  • Getting started on Piss
  • Search Piss
  • Piss Basics

So, now that we’re all confident in the brand and informed about Piss, let’s go buy some books!

Thanks Alex for pointing me there


4 Responses to "Lulu means Piss to over 10 Million People"

  • bob / October 20, 2005, 11:24 PM

    Really interesting. But do you have any evidence for this?

    Babelfish, Google, and others don’t recognize Lulu as meaning anything in German or Austrian german. On the other hand they don’t track slang, so anything is possible.

  • Nader / October 20, 2005, 11:49 PM

    Hi Bob,

    thanks for your comments on this.

    Lulu is indeed a slang word and common across Germany and Austria. It is used to describe the process to little children.

    I’ve written humoristic stories about other brands like Flop, Gaylord, Bluescreen Computer and Looza.

    If you feel offended by the story about your company, let me know by mail and we’ll figure it out.

    Best regards,

    Nader

  • s / October 23, 2005, 6:58 PM

    do you know elefant- lulu??? take 2cl of coke, 6cl of orange juice and fill it up with apple juice. voilà ;-) and for all non-children: vodka is also an alternative.

  • Nader / October 23, 2005, 8:13 PM

    no, but thanks for the tip! i’ll try mixing the cocktail and tell you how it tastes like.