Rosie PopeNaming your baby is a preeeetty big deal. So do you think you're taking it seriously enough? Really? Because you could pawn it off on think tanks and focus groups instead of doing the job yourself.
Oh, if only I were joking. The first episode of Bravo's newest reality show, Pregnant in Heels, served up a first look at what happens when the uber rich get pregnant ... and turn to pregnancy concierge Rosie Pope to help them prep. Enter branding expert Samantha Ettus and husband Mitch Jacobs, founder and CEO of a business capital firm. They want to brand their baby.
They have a point. As Samantha says, "The first impression people give is their name." Fair enough, but then she goes on to point to her first two kids, Ella and Ruby, and admit they've had two attempts at branding a kid and "I don't know that we've done it as successfully as we could." Ouch, Mom, that's my name!
Nevertheless, they're not going to screw up with baby number three, a boy. So they've called on Rosie Pope to help them test out their names on a focus group like it's a new form of toothpaste.
But first, they need to come up with names, and they want a think tank to help them do it. Pope does her duties well; she brings in a linguistics expert, a poet, a baby name blogger, and more to sit around a table and bring up baby names that fit the requirements Ettus and Jacobs have: No J names, no E or R names, and nothing that ends in S. They want easy to spell, and nothing decorative. Did they mention they've already been through thousands of names? Oh, and they already have a name they're playing around with: Bowen.
Their requirements make a lot of sense (hello easy to spell!), which begs the question ... why do they need a think tank to do this? They've already done the heavy lifting?
Pope nails it with her simple summation: "Holy moly, these people are crazy." Not surprisingly, that little gem is already raising Ettus' ire on Twitter. But her point is made as Ettus and Jacobs move onto the focus group, and quickly dismiss the people inside the little room any time they disagree with them.
The whole point of the focus group was supposed to be to find out what other people thought of their child's name -- hence that first impression. But as the couple dismisses the whole thing and calls for a dinner with their friends to get THEIR opinion, their real MO comes out. "It's groundbreaking ... who's ever done a focus group for a baby name before?" they say.
Ah. So it's not about the name per se. It's about breaking ground. Gotcha.
In the end, the couple stick to their guns. They name their little boy Bowen Asher Jacobs. They probably wasted a lot of time with all those groups and meetings, but GOOD for them! Naming your baby is such a personal thing, it's nice to know they came back to their own preferences instead of letting someone else have the final say.
Do you think of baby naming as branding? Would you be able to put it out to a committee of experts and go with their suggestions?
Image via Bravo