We have a service that scans the Internets for us to find news on the naming industry (such as it is) and we are a little puzzled by something that popped up on our radar this week.

A post to a blog at SusanSuarez.com (post now deleted but archived here) titled "Vayton, The First Naming Company" caught our attention.  We thought we were pretty good with the history of the naming industry and this Vayton being the first in the industry was new to us.  Seemed like we might be needing a remedial lesson in the industry.

So we had an intern start digging.  The first line of the post (from earlier this week) read "Looking to brand your company, website or blog? Vayton Brand Capital is a name creating, brand management and domain..." but we couldn't get much more than that since the post by a work-at-home mom was pulled.  So we looked elsewhere - and found a pattern.  Something big appears to be happening at Vayton this week since at least four (now five) blog posts were written about them by people around the globe.

Just this week (and evidently only this week - we couldn't find anything earlier) we've got the work-at-home Mom, an Indonesian language blogger who was compelled to write favorably about them... in English.  Then we've got Gizmondo News (sounds important, no?)- whose other posts rave about a small promotional products firm, a small complaints registration firm, a small custom printing firm, and a small PVC banner maker.  And last, a blog about web advertising and SEO that seems, well, a little odd.  (In one paragraph we have a double exclamation point, triple question mark, and an ellipsis with fifteen dots.  And with all that extra punctuation there is no room for spaces following the end of a sentence... though there IS room for spaces both before and after commas.)

Frequent readers know that I am inclined to give organizations the benefit of the doubt when it comes to advertising tactics, but I'm finding that this tactic is getting my blood pressure up.  It appears that Vayton has paid for placement on blogs - and that the blogs that took them up on the offer are of a sort that add no value to the advertiser, and might in fact take credibility away from the brand.  Even if no money changed hands - something must have happened to get this mini-avalanche of blog postings to occur. 

We suppose there's nothing actually immoral about getting little-known bloggers to link multiple times to your site to get a boost in web visibility.  It just feels a little underhanded.  We have a bit of a mantra at Stokefire (one among many, actually) which is this: "If we wouldn't tell people about it on our home page we shouldn't be doing it."  That includes taking on questionable projects, working for questionable clients, or undertaking questionable advertising practices.  Of course this does not mean we'll be bragging about our own branding strategies here... It's more about the fact that we wouldn't feel like we were 'caught' if word got out about how we market ourselves.

So... how about you?  Are you undertaking advertising practices that you would embarrass you if they were found out?  If so, why? 

Remember... your brand is who you are when you think no one is looking.

Sadly, someone is always looking. 

We're not ashamed to say that sometimes it's us.  (Heck, if we didn't check out the competition how would we know if our services were providing good value?)

Note: We've exposed questionable practices before and welcome input from anyone that can shed light on the situation.  When we get something wrong we'll admit it.  And maybe even send a nice box-o-hotness along to the folks that help us out.  The guys at Vayton seem quite capable and well respected, so we'd love to hear about how this thing slipped into the mix.

Addendum 10/13/08: Alexandra Watkins had some time over the weekend to look into Vayton a bit more closely than we did.  She found all sorts of interesting tidbits about 'em online.  Not many of 'em were good.  Based on her post's content I'm guessing she didn't get paid much to write about about 'em... or if she did then perhaps I should put in my request for payment too. 

After reading her post I almost feel guilty for bringing up their name.  I don't think they were ready for this much attention.

Thanks to Marc Hershon - a fellow naming industry veteran - for pointing out Alexandra's follow-on-esque post to us.