First there was e.
Then came i.
Now it’s +.
With the proliferation of streaming platforms, the plus sign has become an everyday marker indicating endless hours of on-demand shows.
Plus streaming services include ESPN + (starting in 2018), Apple TV + (2019), Disney + (2019), BET + (2019), AMC + (2020) and Discovery + (2021). On Wednesday, streaming peaked with ViacomCBS ‘renaming of CBS All Access. The company decided to call it Paramount +.
Using the plus sign in the name of a well-known film studio can be a very effective way of telling customers that the platform offers movies and something extra. Or it could be a disaster, ‘said Mike Carr, co-founder of the brand NameStormers.
“The plus point is a good idea in the short term and a terrible idea in the long term,” he said. Carr said, which helped draw up names for thousands of customers, including CarMax, the used car company, and Angry Orchard, the hard cider label.
‘This is cool and hip now, “Pursue Mr. Carr,” but you can not own or define a generic term like ‘plus’ because all your competitors do the same thing. ‘
The use of the plus sign dates back to at least 1984, when the French television channel Canal + made its debut. Google was part of the trend from 2011 to 2019 with its social network on Google+.
The streaming platform Hulu used it in 2010 when the Hulu Plus subscription service started. In 2015, the company deducted the plus point and the name simply became Hulu. “We had an explosion with our old friend Plus,” Hulu said when announcing the change, “but it’s time to move on.”
The plus trend arose after the craze for names in the dot-com era – eBay, Esurance and Eharmony – that used e ‘for electronics, as a sign of online leisure and shopping. Apple announced the lowercase ‘i’, followed by iGoogle, iHeartMedia and iZotope. Ampersands also flourished, thanks to a string of fashion labels such as Me & You, Me & Ro, Stella & Haas and Stella & Dot.
The plus sign has become such an everyday streaming industry that film star and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds has mocked the trend in an ad for his wireless Mint Mobile service provider. Promotes his parody Mint Mobile Plus, a fictional streaming service.
Various professional brands – the name industry exploded in the 1980s from a handful of specialty stores to thousands of outfits – said that the use of “plus” could stop the growth. Mr. Carr pointed to financial institutions that are struggling to make a distinction between new credit card offers and need to resort to colors such as silver, gold, platinum and black.
“I can not say how many times I have seen it happen – there is always a next generation, a version 3.0 or 4.0,” said Mr. Carr said. ‘So it becomes Paramount Plus Plus? Paramount Plus Plus Plus? ”
Last year, new streaming services such as NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform and AT & T’s HBO Max managed to resist the fad. But with so many others relying on the symbol, the early adopters probably feel a little irritated now because everyone copied them, “said Julie Doughty, who runs the Naming & Verbal Identity practice at branding firm Landor & Fitch.
Now the plus sign can finally become a shorthand to stream itself, ‘in the same way that the pound sign has become the hashtag’, said me. Doughty said.
Managers of naming companies said that ViacomCBS and Disney probably went through months of debates and focus groups, as well as brand and foreign language research, before approving the plus sign brands.
“It’s not ‘plus’ what the best name is,” said Steve Manning, a founder of the Igor Naming Agency. ‘This is the one that survives, because all the others have been evicted. This is the least offensive choice for a massive audience. ”
Mr. Manning, whose firm Court TV has turned into truTV, compares the choice of names to the choice of a pizza per committee.
“Someone will be lactose intolerant, and someone is not going to eat meat,” he said. “You’ll be happy if on a good day you eat something more than just a gluten-free crust with cheese.”
Alexandra Watkins, whose trademark firm Eat My Words came up with Smitten for an ice cream business in California and Neato for a robot vacuum, said she tried to avoid names “that look like someone got drunk and played Scrabble.” She admitted that she once sold a client with a name with ‘plus’, and was surprised to earn $ 30,000 for it.
Since so many streaming companies have adopted the symbol, she said ViacomCBS completely missed an opportunity by naming its platform Paramount +, rather than doing something more imaginative.
“Plus is the lowest common denominator,” she said. “It’s lazy and the easy way out.”