As a philosophy, no publicity is bad publicity seems to work pretty well for celebrities. The kind of transgressions that would end most people’s careers only seem to bolster a celebrity's stock. But before you attempt to raise your project’s status by being caught in flagrante delicto, it’s good to remember how far we can push things in the real world – a subject that came up recently here at the Software Sustainability Institute.

As a new project, we want our name to be known in the outside world. Exposure costs money, and that’s something that academic institutes don’t have (especially in these austere times). We needed a new idea.

Apart from their passports and clothes, researchers always take one thing with them when they travel and meet people: their laptops. If we could persuade people to put a Software Sustainability Institute sticker on their laptop, we’d get excellent exposure at hardly any cost. A fantastic idea! But one with a tiny little flaw: even if it is bought by your employer, a laptop is a personal item and people aren’t just going to plaster them with anything. (I speak from experience. I recently got a shiny new MacBook Pro and I’d rather be tattooed on the forehead than allow anything to ruin its sensuous curves and sleek aluminium lines.)

In the bid for the Software Sustainability Institute, we used the term software decay. This vivid term describes the tendency for software to break down and become more prone to error unless effort is invested in its upkeep. Terms like software decay are eye-catching, because humans tend to be interested in two things above all others: sex and death - something that Ad Men have relied on for a long time. Based on this phenomenon, and the fact that we’re fighting against software decay, we came up with a slogan Death to Decay!

To get all nerdy about it, the slogan has a few good points. First of all, it’s not the kind of thing you tend to see at academic conferences, so it stands out from the crowd. It has that sex-and-death je ne sais quoi. And don't overlook the fact that it's easy to remember: it alliterates and follows a nice pattern (five letters, two letters, five letters).

All good stuff, but could we get away with using a slogan that uses words with connotations like death and decay? As it turns out, yes. It’s been very popular with over 700 stickers being distributed in about nine months.

I can’t say that there weren’t a few worries about the slogan. That's not too  much of a problem. If a roomful of people can agree on a slogan... it's probably quite bland. When it comes to dreaming up a slogan for a project (or a new name, logo or anything to do with the project's public appearance), the whole point is to stand out from the crowd. As long as you're not pushing the boundaries too far, it's good to try something a little more dangerous. It might just work.