Hasta La Creative!

Good morning. Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital-related news. What people are talking about today: Two former Google employees had the ill-advised idea to name their start-up “Bodega,” and social media users showered scorn on the brand name, the company and its raison d’etre. Here’s what happened: Fast Company wrote about Bodega, which makes vending machine-like dispensers for pantry essentials, in a story headlined: “Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete.”

Let’s look at what went wrong here. No. 1: People love real bodegas, a bastion of human connectedness and authenticity in the somewhat soulless e-commerce era. And they don’t want Silicon Valley tech bros to disrupt the folks who make their beloved egg sandwiches — folks who, often enough, are immigrants running their own businesses.

No. 2: Some people saw the brand name as cultural appropriation. It seems the founders had some inkling this might be a problem, because they researched the issue; one told Fast Company they “did surveys in the Latin American community to understand if they felt the name was a misappropriation of that term or had negative connotations, and 97% said ‘no’.”

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