I’m staring at the new Denzel Washington flick and thinking Déjà Vu? Where have I heard this title (Déjà Vu?) before? I’m thinking, “Oh boy…another renter in two months that I’ll only get halfway through before boredom brings it to an early end.”

And then I remember: Titles are among the biggest problems in marketing today.

People don’t think before they name something. Monikers are too cute. Why is Chase calling a new youth-directed credit card Plus One, as if that isn’t a throwback to a time before these kids were born? Why does Gloria Steinem call the women-geared radio conglomerate Greenstone Media? Do we get the green and the stone reference? (I don’t.) And then: Why use a name that makes people work? What the heck is a Boniva? I digress. It’s the entertainment conglomerate marketing committees who name their fare and think they are so nifty cool creative cute.

There’s simply no creativity in titling today.

Far few seem to spend time to find a name that matches intentions. Hollywood is the perfect allegory for this rave (in deference to rant):

For the last years, in every newspaper critic on earth is bitching that until this week the numbers have been down on screens and that the people of America, excepting Borat, seem to have decided to forego the movies. Period. Marketers in LA are panicked. We have stopped going as much but not because we would rather stay home and make our own popcorn and watch Kate Hudson’s latest thought-free vehicle on Pay-per-View.

I believe most of us would rather be around folks during the Great Escape we call the cinema. But the smarter among us know that when critics or economists tell us it’s the slim window between movie release and home video causing our lax attitude toward movie going, or that humans seek something “fresh” to make us rise up and run to the theater…that it’s not true!

Paying-butts-in-seats has become a rarity because titles suck. They’re all the same boring easy-to-forget monikers that under no circumstances leave an impression on us. And originality is what makes the buyer want in.

I don’t understand why, since movies are our greatest export. You’d think being unique would be the way to make it in Hollywood. After all, most films make money overseas, and they want to see something new.

Let’s review some problems: How many movies are going to have Dance in the name? How many will use the titles of a movie from yesterday but not be a remake? (Weren’t you SURE that The Fountain was supposed to be The Fountainhead…or was it just me!) How many are going to be called Don’t Go in the House or He Knows You’re Not Alone? How many are Last Summer? Oh and the summer ‘07 Lindsay Lohan forgettable is a titular combo (“sounds like”) called I Know Who Murdered Me.

Movies are not about quality. They’re about a large company masquerading as artist who needs to rake in the cabbage before the second weekend crowd is told it’s a hackneyed piece of poop. Turn on CNBC and hear an analyst spend his valuable time explaining that Cars by Pixar/Disney needs to make $70 million during its first weekend or it’s a bust. (It made $62.8, so Disney was freaked?)

Yet Cars is a marketer’s dry dream since it’s about toy cars at a NASCAR rally fighting for a win. It has Americana written on every slide—even before word got out that this was stale and written on last year’s toast.

See, according to IMBD.org, when Cars pooped, er, popped up, there were 47 other movies with cars way up in the title, and even if a cave-dwelling movie searcher did not know this as a movie out that weekend (every TV sponsor from State Farm to Chrysler was in on the act), you’d still be hard-pressed to find folks running around saying “Oh Cars is the movie I got to see—that’s that crazy new Pixar one right?”

Makes you long for Forrest Gump, which though sappy and manipulative at least had a title you couldn’t forget, one where you said to one within hear-shot: What’s that about?

The makers of the High School classic Bring It On should be ashamed. A sassy early 2000’s look at a cheerleading squad had a notable cast (Kirsten Dunst, Eliza Dushku and Jesse Bradford, the decade’s 20-something megawatts) but seconds later brought out Bring It On Again, then Bring It On: All of Nothing, which was hardly worth bringing out. To make it worse, the last one by screenwriter Jessica Bendinger, Stick It, about a less-than-cheery gymnast, got stuck with an unmemorable name. (I do love Stick’s tagline: “They don’t call it gym-NICE-tic.”)

Because I care so much, I looked into the making of the original Bendinger classic (italics necessary). The writer claims her first title choice was Cheer Fever—then went by Jump. How they came to BIO…let’s say I’d have loved to be a fly splat on the wall during that meeting.

Here’s the lesson. Consumers want to be challenged; they want to walk up to the multiplex and think “Wow, gosh, something named What the Bleep Do We Know? has to be fascinating.”

Hollywood underestimates the buyer and so Angelina’s Beyond Borders has been mistakenly called Without Borders and many movie offerings have titles from famous or kitschy songs (Tender is the Night, I Want to Hold Your Hand) but no clue what the song’s about.

It’s a wonder anything makes money when all our films and TV shows and CDs and video-games are created by gigantic groups who just want to agree with each other.

But no one sees La-La laziness going away soon, since the film industry has elevated recycling to a fine art. Let this to be a warning to those trying to gain attention with the name of your product: Go with the first kooky thing that comes to mind, and please don’t use something because you think it’ll make the buyer think, “I heard of that.”

Our consumers are already pretty pleased with themselves. They don’t need to be assured by you.

May this give you pause—and may you like my carefully considered title for this article!

RLM CEO Richard Laermer and his pal Mark Simmons are authors of Punk Marketing: Get off your ass and join the revolution, available on the Web as an informative, nay promotional, site; then a book in March: www.PunkMarketing.com.