The (un)useful knowledge in communication and brand anecdotes

Want to shine at the coffee machine? The (un)useful knowledge in communication is made for you. You will find them completed and illustrated in bookstores in the book " The little secrets of the big brands » (Dunod edition). Happy reading 🙂

• Twingo is the contraction of twist, swing and tango
• In Spain, Auchan stores are called Alcampo (in the field)
• Facebook: 1 user in 23 is a fan of Candy Crush
• The 1st tweet was: "just setting up my twttr" by its co-founder, Jack Dorsey
• We use "@" because in no proper or common name appears this symbol
• The icon symbolizing a website is called a favicon
• The most used bad word on Twitter is "fuck"
• The 1st video on YouTube was: Me at the Zoo. Platform co-founder Jawed Karim stood in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo
• The "#" for hashtags on Twitter is a cross, not a hash
• Twitter's bird is called Larry
• The first domain name registered was Symbolics.com, e-commerce computer on March 1, 15
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd most populous country in the world after China and India
• Skype was invented by Estonians
• Jacuzzi, scotch, escalator, pedal boat, caddy, kleenex, photo booth are trademarks
• Mobylette, Frigidaire, paper towel, pressure cooker, sweets are all brands in our kitchen
• A champion of telephony is born on the banks of a river: Nokia in Finland
• The verb "positiver" was invented by Carrefour in its advertisements
• Durex is the contraction of Durability, Reliability and Excellence
• Translated from Latin to French, VOLVO means "I roll"
• SEAT stands for “Sociedad Espanola de Automoviles de Turismo”
• Friskies is a brand of the Nestlé group
• The Nike brand is an allegory to the Greek goddess Nike
• Naf-Naf is one of the 3 little pigs from the famous children's fairy tale
• Panzani was born in Poitou-Charentes
• BMW stands for "Bayerische Motoren Werke" (Bavarian Engine Manufactory) and produced aircraft engines
• Why do the "Peugeot" have a zero? Previously, this was the location to start the engine with a turn of the crank
• Saab is the acronym for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget" which means "Swedish Airplane Joint Stock Company"
• In Russian, Blédina means prostitute. We had to change brands!
• The mountain of Toblerone is the Matterhorn in the Alps
• The Alfa Romeo logo is the coat of arms of the Visconti family: a dragon eating a child
• Lego is the contraction of "leg godt" which means "play well" in Danish
• In the top 10 of French wines in the USA, the brand "FAT Bastard" (fat bastard) with a hippopotamus as its logo
• According to the American magazine Forbes, Apple is the most admired company in the world in 2017
• Product Placement: Captain Haddock Drinks Loch Lomond Whiskey
• Converse is the most popular shoe brand in cinema
• 64 products placed, this is the record for Iron Man 2
• The price of a product placement is 5 to 000 € in a French film
• Sophie la Girafe was born on May 25, Hagia Sophia
• NIVEA is the anagram of EVIAN
• The red phone between the White House and the Kremlin was a telegraph
• Condom advertising has only been authorized in France since 1987
• The longest video on YouTube is 596 hours long
• For listening, Spotify pays an artist on average € 0,003 and € 0,029 for a full album
• Bono is the richest singer in the world. He is a 1,5% shareholder of Facebook.
• On Spotify, 20% of music has never been listened to
• Nintendo sold card games before the famous consoles
• In China, yellow is the color of pornography
• Windows 95 sound identity was composed by U2 musician Brian Eno
• In 1971, Nike paid for its logo 35 US Dollars
• 275 grams of CO2, that's the carbon footprint of a 1 MB email
• 2 hours per day is the average time per day spent by executives reading their emails
• 64 seconds is the time it takes for an employee to concentrate again after being interrupted by an email
• You saw it ? The .tv geographic extension has been sold to TVs around the world by the Tuvalu Islands since 1996
• Selfies kill more people than shark attacks
• Häagen-Dazs means absolutely nothing
• DISRUPTION is a registered trademarke owned by TBWA since 1992
• Marcel Bich is the founder of the Bic brand. He withdrew his "h" to conquer the Anglosaxons
• Pokémon is the contraction of "pocket" and "monsters"
• Skoda means "damage" in Czech
• Krys originated in a nod to "crystal"
• Mariah Carey receives €447 in royalties every Christmas with “All I want for Christmas is You”
• Le premier spam was sent by telegram in 1864
• “Don't put your hands on the doors, you risk getting pinched very hard. The RATP rabbit who tells you this in the Paris metro is called Serge and was born in 1977.
• Apple has placed its products in one-third of the No. 1 films at the U.S. box office since 2001
• In Quebec, "Les Bisounours" are called "Calinours" because "bizoune" means "penis" there.
• Like its competitor “Coca-Cola”, “Pepsi” was invented by a pharmacist. Its name comes from dyspepsia, a disease characterized by stomach aches
• Slack, the queen application among Start-ups is an “acronym” brand. Its CEO Stewart Butterfield has thus revealed its origin as "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge" or "logbook of all knowledge and conversations in which it is possible to find everything".
• OVH stands for "Oles Van Herman", nickname of the founder at the time, but today is often interpreted as "On Vous Héberge"
• The shape of the Perrier bottle comes from the circus. It is more precisely inspired by juggling clubs brought back from India by the owner of the source, Sir John Harmsworth.
• The first "idea box" appeared in 1880 in a Scottish shipyard company, William Denny & Brothers
• Disneyland, California is the most photographed destination on Instagram in 2017. Cocorico, the Eiffel Tower is 4th in this world ranking!
• In 2018, 1,87 billion people (+ 11,9% vs. 2017) worldwide are expected to watch videos on mobile (eMarketer)
• The "i" prefix for Apple products was suggested by advertiser Ken Segall. It had to evoke “internet”, but also “innovation” and “individuality”. The first of its kind was the “iMac” in 1998
• The neon lights of the 1st light advertisement were lit at Piccadilly Circus (London) in 1908 at the initiative of a French mineral water company, Perrier
• Cetelem's mascot is called Crédito and was born in 2004
• The first RER was to be called “Métro Express Régional Défense Etoile”. The name was changed to "RER" thanks to the vigilance of the painter responsible for creating the signage with the acronym "MERDE"
• The Francine brand is not only the reference to a female first name, it is also the contraction of France and flour
• Audi means "listen" in Latin and the four circles of its logo evoke the merger with three other brands in 1932: DKW, Horch and Wanderer
• « Connecting People has been Nokia's slogan since 1967
• Netflix was established in 1997. The company delivered VHS tapes by post.
• In the Fedex carrier logo, the E and X form an arrow
• In the Formula 1 logo, between the black F and the red flag hides a 1
• In the last century Bibendum was paunchy, the container full. Today, the Michelin mascot is a bodybuilder. Each era has its own silhouette
• The profile face in the RATP logo symbolizes the route of the Seine, surrounded by a circle that evokes the limit of Paris: the ring road
• Emile Zola started his career as press attaché for Hachette editions
• The Chupa Chups logo was created by Salvador Dali in 1969
• Slack is an acronym for "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge"
• Only 15% of brand names in Japanese represent a brand of Japanese origin
• Coca-Cola did not create Santa Claus nor even his red color… but the character has been present in its advertisements since 1921!
• The first product sold by Sony in 1 was a rice cooker! The Japanese brand was called Totsuken
• Smart is the acronym for “Swatch Mercedes Art Car”. Its logo combines the letter C (for its Compact appearance) and an arrow (for displacement).
• The La Poste logo represents an airplane or a blue bird. Since 1960, it has symbolized the conquest of the skies which revolutionized the postal service
• Burger King is called Hungry Jack's in Australia because the brand had already been registered
• Adobe is the name of a river in California
• Adidas and Puma are cousins: the creators of each of the two brands were brothers
• Alcatel is the acronym for Alsacienne de Constructions Atomiques, Télécommunications et d'Electronique.
• The first Carrefour supermarket opened in 1959 at the crossroads of avenue André-Thieuret and avenue Parmelan in Annecy.
• Cisco is a reference to the birthplace of the IT company: San Francisco
• "L'Auréale" was a fashionable hairstyle in 1909. It will inspire Eugène Schueller, founder of L'Oréal
• Microsoft is the contraction of Microcomputer and Software
• Reebok is one of the fastest living and fastest growing antelope species in South Africa
• The first Auchan supermarket opened in the Hauts-Champs district of Roubaix
• 3 Swiss are northerners. The company had a spinning workshop in Croix in the North of France, at the crossroads of 3 Suisses
• Quiksilver's logo depicts "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" passing over Mount Fuji
• Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
• According to Kantar Media, the first advertiser in 2019 was E. Leclerc
• Pastis 51 was born in 1951, year of liberation of alcoholic beverages and was called Pernod 51
• The Jeep brand owes its name to the acronym "General Purpose" meaning "all-purpose vehicle"
• The word "mug" comes from the Breton "mok", it meant a cider bowl
• The "Hollywood" sign was actually a temporary advertisement, for the sale of the land
• A naming agency specializes in creating names for brands and companies
• Le Bon Marché was the first department store to use the sale by mail
• The French Academy proposes to translate the term "follower" by "acolyte of the illustrious"
• Ronald's gradual disappearance from fast-food advertising campaigns is due to coulrophobia
• The slogan "pasta, pasta, yes, but Panzani" is an alexandrine
• In 1931, the consumption of spinach in the United States increased by 33% thanks to the creation of Popeye
• Oldest advertisement in the world is a papyrus dating back to 3000 BCE
• For the launch of the Fracas perfume, a work was commissioned from Dali. The latter arrived on D-Day with nothing. He just broke the window by throwing a stone at it
• Walt Disney was Norman! Descendant of the Lords of Isigny, who helped William the Conqueror to invade England 
• A brand new contraceptive method was born in the 1920s in the USA: Ramses. Oops, the pharaoh of the same name had more than 160 children ...
• In Amsterdam, junk food advertising campaigns are banned in the metro 
• The slogan of the Française des Jeux "all the winners have tried their luck" is a tautology
• Since 2004, the French police have worn uniforms signed Balenciaga 
• The Ray Ban brand takes its name from the contraction of "ray banished", translate "ray bani"! 
• Duff beer, so loved by Homer Simpson, was initially fictional. The brand did not appear on the market until 2006. 
• Beyond being a lucky charm, the number 57 on the Heinz bottle is used to indicate where to tap to pour the ketchup.
• Kleenex tissues were originally gas mask filters, an invention dating back to World War I. 
• In the XNUMXth century, Havas sold state news to newspapers, to which it had priority access. The media paid the iconic agency in white pages, which it sold to advertisers.
• Danone was once a medicinal brand, created after the 1st World War, in response to the intestinal disorders of the population. The recipes were the result of studies on fermentation, and yogurts were sold in pharmacies.
• The Cadillac logo represents the coat of arms of a French explorer from the XNUMXth century. When he arrived in America, Paul Laumet claimed the title of Sieur de Cadillac and founded the automotive capital, Detroit.
• In Quebec, the famous brand KFC fast food restaurant (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has been renamed KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken).
• A limited edition of the Orangina brand was renamed Onagrina. Why ? Because this soda is completely shaken up! 
• Originally, the electronics giant Samsung, sold dried fish, Fruits and vegetables.
• The first smartphone created by IBM in 1992 was called “Simon” in reference to the game “Simon says”, the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of “Jacques said”.
• The laboratory innovation of the Butagaz group is called Zagatub. The brand has created what is called an anacyclic.
• The Energizer Bunny was born from a parody of the Duracell Bunny, continued a trademark registration renewal error.
• Yahoo! comes from the acronym of “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”, translate: “Another un oracle à classification unofficial”.
• The world's largest tire producer is the Légo company!
• The famous Tagada strawberry takes its name from Maurice Chevalier's song "Yop la boum, tagada tsoin tsoin"!
• The "I Love NY" logo is from an advertising campaign promoting tourism in New York State,and not the city.
• The Hénaff pâté travels in space with Thomas Pesquet. The famous Breton company is selected to concoct the astronaut's meals.
• Every two minutes more photos are taken in the world, that at during the XIXth century.
• Besides being the famous logo of the brand of crisps, Julius Pringles is a potato man, who works as a baker. 
• On average, 2.7 kilometers of banners adorn each stage of the Tour de France. 
• The “doodle” is a mutation ephemeral Google logo, carried out according to current events.
• Bluetooth takes its name from King Harald I of Denmark, also nicknamed Harald Blåtand, literally "to the spoiled teeth" or "to the dark teeth".
• The atrium dates from the XNUMXth century century. The acronym @, essential of our mails, would be the ligature of the Latin phrase “ad”.
• The 12-25 reduction card offered by the SNCF is the result of a partnership between the rail transport giant and the rockers of the Indochine group.
• The shape of Petit Beurre LU represents an allegory of time. The 4 corners are the seasons, the 52 teeth are the weeks and the 24 points are the hours of the day.
• During World War II, Coca-Cola was declared an "official supply" for soldiers, by the US government.
• The famous bull depicted in the Lamborghini logo refers to the astrological sign of the founder of the automobile brand, Ferrucio Lamborghini.
• At the cinema, Apple prohibits product placement for the wicked characters.
• Asics stands for the quote from the Latin poet Juvenal: “anima sano in copore sano”, in French, "a healthy mind in a healthy body.
• The Breizh Cola brand was bought by a Norman cooperative.
• During the First World War, the Maggi brand was suspected of espionage. The sound of his line of broth, Kub, was considered too German.
• It's a CIA project in the name code "oracle" which gave its name to the company of the same name.
• The Little Prince is the most translated book in the world after The Bible.
• Chuck Taylor was the basketball ambassador of Converse in the 30s in the United States.
• Toblerone comes from the contraction of "Tobler" and "torrone": the name of the chocolatier and the word nougat in Italian.
• It was to alleviate the cocoa shortage of 1946 that the Italian chocolatier Pietro Ferrero added hazelnuts to his chocolate and created the Nutella recipe.
• Le Bon Marché is the origin of the tradition of Christmas window displays. The first saw the light of day in 1909.
• Originally, the Yule Log was a decorated wooden stump intended for to burn as long as possible. Today, tradition sells 10 million liters of log per year.
• Jean-Paul Gaultier's first top model was his teddy bear, named Nana.
• In the United States, galette des rois is sold without a bean, the latter being considered too dangerous. 
• Airbnb stands for “Airbed and breakfast”. Indeed, originally the two founders offered strangers an inflatable mattress and breakfast.
• By adding wheels to the legs of his task chair to move faster, Charles Darwin invented the wheel chair.
• Nike's famous slogan, "just do it", was inspired by the last words of a death row inmate "let's do it".
• Following a serious car accident, the boxer Malamine Koné nicknamed "the Panther" who could no longer claim fights, created the Airness brand.
• McDonald's "Palapapapa" jingle is inspired by a song sung by Justin Timberlake.
• The tartiflette recipe was developed in the 1980s, then popularized by the Syndicat Interprofessionel du Reblochon, to boost sales.
• On black and white films, the gloves provided more visibility. This practice initiated by Mickey Mouse was taken up by a large majority of cartoon characters.
• The Perrier bottle shape is inspired by Indian clubs, instruments of rehabilitation. 
• The Cémoi house initially refused to market the Petit Oursons Marshmallow. It was by tasting it without knowing it, during a meeting, that management finally bought into the idea.
• In the mountain of the Toblerone logo hides a bear, in reference to the city of Bern.
• If Facebook is blue, it's because Mark Zuckerberg is color blind.
• The “Fat Bastard” brand, whose logo is a hippopotamus, belongs to the TOP 10 of French wines in the USA.
• The Celtic harp was the symbol of the Guinness brand before being the symbol of Ireland.
• The Lamborghini Gallardo goes from 0 to 72km/h in 2,8 seconds. Cheetah does this in 2 seconds.
• Max Heilbronn, founder of the Monoprix brand, was a hero of the French Resistance.
• The name Pepsi comes from "dyspepsia", a disease against which the soda was supposed to fight.
• With its campaign "The woman will vote", the Bourjois brand has been committed to women's right to vote since 1936.
• The "www" to access websites is the acronym for "world wide web".
• The first father Noël from the La Poste Group Santa Claus Secretariat was Françoise Dolto. 
• Playmobil small toys were created following the first oil shock, causing the price of plastic to rise.
• FNAC is the abbreviation of Fédération Nationale d'Achat des Cadres.
• Originally, Heinz marketed some sauerkraut, horseradish and pickles.
• The two-tailed mermaid in the Starbucks logo is a mythological figure.
• The Persol brand takes its name from the Italian "per il sole", literally "for the sun ".
• The name “Rolex” would come from the abbreviation of "exquisite horology".