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A Little Brand Cleanup
Written by Mike Rundle on September 7, 2005
Since our company/service/network is getting links from everywhere nowadays, I wanted to quickly clear up some confusion regarding the name of what it is we’re doing.
The company is “9rules, Inc.” and the network is “The 9rules Network” or just “9rules.”
These capital R’s dropped everywhere are making our CEO cry in public, and believe me, that’s not pretty. Lowercase r’s are where it’s at. Uppercase is for suckers 
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September 7th, 2005 at 6:27 am
but there is something wrong with your feed,just look at http://9rules.com/blog/feed/ ,”9Rules Network” …your title used “R”,so when we use bloglines to read your content ,”9Rules Network” is the title. just fix it!
September 7th, 2005 at 7:25 am
Silbo: Updated! We used to use the big ‘R’ back when we were big ‘G’s, now we’re just lowercase ‘g’s.
September 7th, 2005 at 8:00 am
faint…you means you were called “Grules”, and now change the “G” to “g” ,and “grules” is your name ,and “g” is more like “9″,so now you are 9rules! am i right? sorry for my poor English:-)
by the way, i really want to join your network, but my blog is not beautiful and also in Chinese…
September 7th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Silbo, I think they should let you in just for posting those FeedSky images. I’ll have to see if I can pull up a decent translation of your site.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:55 am
Keep the faith! Branding is always important.
Glad you kept the direction of the look of the logo you started out with. Makes a statement.
Keep the little “r” as well… little letters are people too you know.
just joking.
September 7th, 2005 at 10:45 am
Greg, Darcie thanks:) now i am learning CSS,maybe i could do my own beautiful Blog one day. just keep the faith!:)
September 7th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
I don’t know, dudes. I remember several years ago, Jakob had an Alertbox in which his research showed that an uppercase R is more usable than a lowercase one. He did, however, say that a backwards uppercase R is bad and lambasted Toys’R'Us for that one.
September 7th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
What about 9rULES? Did we address that one already?
September 7th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
Britt, that wasn’t the letter R, it was the letter C.
September 7th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Come on guys, dictating link format without at least appearing greatful of the links in the first place and not asking nicely for the correct usage in unbecoming of you, and you should know better. Good will is fickle in this game, insulting people who link to you because of a capital letter leaves you guys as the only suckers.
September 7th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
Hey Duncan-
I think most of our readers know that this weblog post was definitely written tongue in cheek, with a little 9r sarcasm sprinkled on top for effect. We don’t think we insulted anyone, but if we did, we certainly apologize.
*Mike channels Indiana Jones in that scene where he apologizes to the Maharaja at dinner*
September 7th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
[...]
A good lesson in how not to show appreciation to those who give you links from the 9rules blog: Since our company/service/network is getting links from everywhere nowadays, [...]
September 7th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
Let me add that we think it’s important to establish a brand especially with high quality networks like your’s popping up. We are extremely grateful for the link love that we receive, but also know that it can be disconcerting if everyone comes across a different way to spell 9rules every single time they see it.
We are just striving for consistency, most companies would do the same.
September 7th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
[...]
A good lesson in how not to show appreciation to those who give you links from the 9rules blog: Since our company/service/network is getting links from everywhere nowadays, [...]
September 7th, 2005 at 10:31 pm
If someone links to you as ä¹ä¸ªè§„则, will you all collapse in one massive 9rules paroxysm?
September 7th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Ahhhh too late! Elliott nooooooooo!!!!!
September 7th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Seems like the answers were somewhere in the middle.
Had the feed been fixed before the post, the post might not have been necessary.
The post seemed a little sarcastic, but maybe that’s just my simple mind at work.
Tounge in cheek doesn’t have to be condecending, which it might have seemed.
Had it been way over the top, like Duncan’s version of what he might have posted, I’d say we wouldn’t have anything to comment on.
Let’s simply say that the original post could have possibly been dressed a little nicer and Duncan’s thought’s might have been tempered a little more, too.
Now, if either one of you want to link to my blog, here’s what I’d like you to put….:-)
September 7th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
Yeah Duncan gave us a good tongue-lashing about sarcasm/humor that’s not directly implied. We’ll know better next time
September 7th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
Same goes for a company like VMware. I’ve worked with them in the past and there are certain policies in effect that state that when you mention VMware in online (or offline) documention, you must use ‘VM’ in capitals and the rest of the letters in lowercase.
September 8th, 2005 at 7:06 am
Hey Mike -
You might want to check businesslogs.com concerning brand cleanup and identity consistency errors.
September 10th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
Thanks, Mark. I replied to your email about that exact issue
September 19th, 2005 at 11:22 am
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December 16th, 2005 at 7:24 pm
“Same goes for a company like VMware. I’ve worked with them in the past and there are certain policies in effect that state that when you mention VMware in online (or offline) documention, you must use ‘VM’ in capitals and the rest of the letters in lowercase. ”
There is such a phenomenon as “corporative standarts”… they always stick to that, IMO…
December 25th, 2005 at 10:48 am
There are plenty of resources to learn to make brand progress.
Often times the issue is that many small business owners are wearing too many hats;
We will be linking soon; we would be honored if we could be added to this business blogger. We are from the World Business for sale is the leading independent businesses for sale listing service http://www.worldbusinessforsale.com/
December 25th, 2005 at 8:53 pm
[...] like the fact that people sometimes refer to 9rules as 9Rules (capital R), and Mike Rundle wrote an arguably condescending post about it today on the 9rules blog that said: Since o [...]
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