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My Client Invented a Term. I Said They Couldn’t Use It
My client had invented a term and they wanted to make it the focus of their SEO strategy.
The inventive folks at Llama.io (now Llama.im) developed a physical greeting card with a creative twist. When you scan the barcode on the card, your cell phone accesses a personal video message from the sender. With their card you can close the distance from a loved one and deliver a more nuanced and personal message. One part physical card, one part digital message.
To emphasize this, Llama.io coined the word “phygital.”
It is a clever term. A portmanteau, jamming the words physical and digital together, just as their product did. It was really rather a genius sort of word that fit their new concept perfectly.
But I saw right away that emphasizing this word would make for a lousy SEO strategy.
Not because it translated poorly.
It wasn’t the same as Chevrolet’s famous decision to name their new 1962 model the “Nova.” Sure, we know that a nova is an emergent star. However, in Spanish, this translates to “no go.”
Not because its words had a second NSFW meaning, like the North Korean video streaming service Manbang.
They were convinced that their clever new term was the perfect encapsulation of their product. And they were right.
