Confusing names and urls

Confusing names and urls

As I mentioned in my previous post, we are running out of names and gimmicks to use to promote the public interest. There is one that confuses me more than most. UN.GIFT. When I first saw the ‘word’ I thought it was a url. So I typed it in only to find that there is no .gift TLD (top level domain); I suspected as much. At this point, just before the results came up, I was expecting that this url or whatever it was, would be about gift giving; it would be a fundraising site of some kind for the UN. In fact, as you will discover if you do the looking up yourself, the UN.GIFT initiative is about human trafficking.

I deplore human trafficking but I also do not believe using confusing words or images is the way to go. Granted, and this is a big granted, I did look up the site and now I do know all about UN.GIFT. I even, proudly, use a conference badge neck band to hold my small camera. And yes, it is a bona fide project which includes the biggest UN agencies such as  the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

By now you have probably realized that GIFT stands for Global Initiative to Fight Trafficking. Actually it does not. You are missing an H. It is the Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. So actually it is GIFHT. Which means that some communications committee thought up the acronym deliberately. It seems as though it was intended to mimic the word ‘gift’. It also means that all the partners and the highest UN instances approved the word. Why? Again, they did get me, and millions, to be curious. But, regardless, I am not for such gimmicks. I am now more about getting to the point and making the message clear.

The point: There is too much noise to be cryptic. Get me interested because you are about human trafficking, not because you have a gimmicky name. What’s more, this would have been a great ‘gimmick’ for UN fundraising initiative. That’s lost now. It won’t happen. I think it’s a wasted opportunity.

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Cemil Alyanak

Communicator. Perception analyst. Filmmaker. Photographer. Senior Policy Advisor. Amateur Radio Operator. Military officer. Pilot. Adventure biker. Husband and dad.

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