21 February: fyi -- paid wordplay, San Francisco
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Lexicon Branding, a brand name development company located near San
Francisco, is looking for a full-time associate to conduct and coordinate
branding-related consumer research and to perform linguistic risk analysis
on global branding.
Lexicon's current staff includes two in-house Ph.D. linguists plus a
network of 77 Ph.D. linguists in 43 countries who report on linguistic,
cultural, and transliteration issues involving brand names. Our new
linguist will share responsibility for collecting information from this
network and putting it into reports, developing techniques for collecting
more accurate and useful information, and expanding the network to include
world languages not already covered in the program.
Depending on the candidate's background, other responsibilities could
include: writing detailed linguistic assessments of prospective brand
names, developing new research techniques to measure the effectiveness of
brand names, evaluating marketing programs for cross-cultural
effectiveness, and working on qualitative consumer research on potential
brand names.
The ideal candidate will have an impressive combination of the following
skills and qualifications:
- Ph.D. in linguistics, anthropology, or a related field (ABDs will be
considered);
- Strong knowledge of at least two language families;
- Background in semantic, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, or linguistic
anthropology;
- Experience eliciting linguistic data from informants through
questionnaires, interviews, or observational studies;
- Broad perspective on cross-cultural matters;
- Some background or experience in advertising, consulting, marketing, or
graphic design preferred but not required; and
- Ability and willingness to travel up to 25% of the work month for
domestic research.
This is a high-paced work environment, since assignments are crucially
time-sensitive and can involve quick turn-arounds and sudden deadlines.
Names that Lexicon has developed over the years include Pentium, PowerBook,
Scion, Swiffer, and BlackBerry. From very early on, the company has
included a team of linguists as a way of bringing fresh insights about
language into the field of branding. If this sounds potentially more
attractive than an academic career, we look forward to hearing from you.
Interested candidates should submit a CV with a cover letter, via e-mail
only, to Andrew Wong at the e-mail provided below.
Application Deadline: 31-Mar-2008
Email Address for Applications: wong@lexicon-branding.com
Contact Information:
Andrew Wong
Email: wong@lexicon-branding.com
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