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First there was e.
And came I.
Now it’s +.
With the proliferation of streaming platforms, the plus sign has become a versatile marker that signals endless hours of on-demand shows.
Plus sign streaming services include ESPN + (launched in 2018), Apple TV + (2019), Disney + (2019), BET + (2019), AMC + (2020), and Discovery + (2021). Streaming hit its peak on Wednesday with the rebranding from CBS All Access to ViacomCBS. The company decided to call it Paramount +.
Hanging the plus sign on behalf of a well-known movie studio could be a very effective way of telling customers that the platform has movies and something more. Or it could be “a disaster,” said Mike Carr, the co-founder of the NameStormers brand.
“The plus is a great idea in the short term and a terrible idea in the long term,” said Carr, who has helped come up with names for thousands of customers, including CarMax, the used car company, and Angry Orchard, the tough cider label.
“It’s cool and trendy now“Carr continued,” but you can’t own or define a generic term like ‘more’ because all of your competition are doing the same thing. “
The use of the plus sign dates back at least to 1984, when the French television channel Canal + made its debut. Google was part of the trend from 2011 to 2019, with its Google+ social network.
The Hulu streaming platform used it in 2010, when it launched the Hulu Plus subscription service. In 2015, the company subtracted the most and the name changed to simply Hulu. “We had a great time with our old friend Plus,” Hulu said, announcing the change, “but it’s time to move on.”
The positive trend came after the craze for dot-com-era names – eBay, Esurance, and Eharmony – which grabbed the “e” for electronics, as signifying hobbies and online shopping. Apple popularized the lowercase “i”, followed by iGoogle, iHeartMedia, and iZotope. Ampersands has also flourished thanks to a multitude of fashion brands such as Me & You, Me & Ro, Stella & Haas and Stella & Dot.
The plus sign has become such a banality in the streaming industry that movie star and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds mocked the trend in an advertisement for his wireless carrier Mint Mobile. His promoted parody Mint Mobile Plus, a fictitious streaming service.
Several professional brand names – the naming industry has grown from a handful of specialty stores in the 1980s to thousands of outfits – said that using the “plus” could end up stifling growth. Mr Carr pointed to financial institutions that are struggling to tell the difference between new credit card offerings and must resort to assigning colors such as silver, gold, platinum and black.
“I can’t say how many times I’ve seen this happen – there’s always a new generation, version 3.0 or 4.0,” Carr said. “So does this become 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, early adopters “probably now feel a little bit irritated that everyone has copied them,” said Julie Doughty, who leads the Naming & Verbal Identity practice at the Landor & Fitch brand company.
Now the plus sign may end up becoming a shortcut for the streaming itself, “in the same way the pound sign became the hashtag,” Ms. Doughty said.
Naming company executives said ViacomCBS and Disney likely went through months of debate and focus groups, as well as foreign language and trademark checks, before approving the plus sign brands.
“It’s not that ‘more’ is the best name,” said Steve Manning, founder of the Igor Naming agency. “He’s the one who survives, because everything else is gutted. It is the least objectionable choice for a large audience. “
Mr Manning, whose company turned Court TV into truTV, compared the task of selecting the name to choosing a pizza by a committee.
“Someone is going to be lactose intolerant, someone is not going to eat meat,” he says. “You’ll be lucky if you eat something other than a gluten-free crust with cheese on a good day.”
Alexandra Watkins, whose brand company Eat My Words suggested Smitten for a California ice cream company and Neato for a robotic vacuum cleaner, said she tried to avoid names “that sound like someone who s ‘got drunk and played Scrabble. She admitted to having sold a client once on a name that included “more” – and was surprised to earn $ 30,000 for it.
With so many streaming companies embracing the symbol, she said ViacomCBS “completely missed an opportunity” by naming its platform Paramount +, rather than going with something more imaginative.
“More is the lowest common denominator,” she says. “It’s lazy and the easy way.”
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