Box Vox

packaging as content

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September 28, 2012

BoxVox & Consumer Confusion

You might think from the previous 4 posts about self-rhyming brand names, that I’m all for it, but in the very first year of this blog’s existence I noted some drawbacks to brand names of this type…

Here is a pitfall of branding with a self-rhyming name. I thought “box vox” was a logical and suitable name for this blog in which I would hold forth on the subject of packaging (BoxVox as in “voice of the package”). Trouble is, if you find two words that rhyme, then someone else has also noticed this.

That’s what I wrote in November of 2007 about a theremin-like electronic musical instrument named “BoxVox.” Since then I’ve found a few other brands with the same name as my blog. Some of these enterprises are close enough in nature to what I do, that there is some likelihood of consumer confusion. Not that I’m inclined to launch any trademark infringement lawsuits about it.

This is just a round-up to help clarify things… a sort of a consumer guide— like a Wikipedia (disambiguation) page for BoxVox name brands.

Yes, THIS is Box Vox, but there are at least three others…

1. BoxVox, the musical instrument
When I wrote about this in 2007, I had attributed it’s creation to someone I thought was named Jon Kanon. Recently, however, I unearthed a pdf file that shows that it was in fact a collaborative project by Gustaf Carlberg, Jon Bernholdt Olsen, Wolfgang Mähr, Björn Östlund and Robin Söderström done in 2006–2007 at the IT University of Gothenburg.

“…the BoxVox is a shiny, polished, black cube of 40 cm edge length made of wood and standing on rubber stoppers (see Figures 1-4). The corners and edges are rounded, the sensor and light fittings are embedded in two opposing sides and the top. These fittings hold two sets of LED halogen lights and a pair of silver ultrasound sensors. One side we regard as the front, features a standard ungrounded female power connector and a 6.3 millimetre female stereo audio jack for sound output to an amplifier.”

2. BoxVox, the clothing brand
This Danish brand was conceived of as “fashion out of the box” around 2009.

THE BOXVOX STORY

Two good friends from Denmark went on a road trip around Europe in the summer of 2009. After visiting music festivals in northern Germany and surfing the French west coast they ended up in Spain for some serious partying. One night they were sitting behind their VW transporter talking about the making of a new Danish brand. They both agreed that quality and creativity should be the key factors and that it should be “fashion out of the box”.

After returning from Spain the first person they meet was the girlfriend of one of them… she said “make it casual”.

One of the friends played in a band and when he asked the drummer for one thing to add to the brand, the drummer shortly said, “trashed”. The day after they called their artist friend and asked what… he thought was the most important in a new brand. Daniel said that “colourful graphics” would be cool.

Then they called their poor ass friend, who is a business school student and he just said, “even though you guys will give my poor ass free clothing I think you should make it affordable for everyone else”, so they decided to make it affordable.

A couple of days later on a Saturday night out partying with their friend who is a solid snowboarder… He said, “make something different, something I haven´t seen before”.

After a hard night out they dropped of the snowboarder friend, and just before closing the door to the taxi he yelled “CRAZY, make something crazy guys, and I will rock it in the alps”. Crazy was added to the brand and the friends decided they had enough ideas for the creation of BOXVOX.

 (One more BoxVox, after the fold…)

3. BoxVox, the Brazilian “Agência de Comunicaçao e Design”
Thiago Capanema’s firm appears to have been founded in 2011 and concentrates mainly on web site design.

“I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil and I have six years of experience in Marketing, Communications and Web. My projects for the internet cover the areas of e-commerce, distance education, layouts for blogs, institutional sites and social media.”

 

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