Because they are skins that change color with a flick of your finger across their surface. There was a second reason…but memory fades…

Happily, they use no power whatsoever from your portable device. It’s true. Highly reflective LCD technology.

Currently available for iPod Touch, coming soon for iPhone. Check out all the designs at the Improv Electronics site.

Skin Flik

An important first step when naming a business, product or service is to figure out just what it is that your new name should be doing for you. The most common decision is that a name should explain to the world what business you are in or what your product does. Intuition dictates that this will save you the time and money of explaining it, which actually turns out not to be true. Why not?

The notion of describing your business in the name assumes that the name will exist at some point without contextual support, which, when you think about it, is impossible. The name will appear on a website, a store front, in a news article or press release, on a business card, on the product itself, in advertisements, or, at its most naked, in a conversation.

There is simply no imaginable circumstance in which a name will have to explain itself. This is fortunate, because having a descriptive name is actually a counterproductive marketing move which requires an enormous amount of effort to overcome. A descriptive naming strategy overlooks the fact that the whole point of marketing is to separate yourself from the pack. It actually works against you, causing you to fade into the background, indistinguishable from the bulk of your competitors.

The following is a list of companies in the naming and branding arena. While each of their names describes what they do, you can clearly see the heavy marketing price they pay for such a shortcut:

Brand-DNA (.com) Brand-DNA (.net) DNA Brand Mechanics Brand 2.0 Brand Doctors Brand Equity Brand Evolve Brand Fidelity Brand Institute Brand Mechanics BrandForward	Brandico Brandjuice Consulting BrandLadder BrandLink BrandLogic BrandMaverick BrandPeople Brandscope Brandslinger BrandSolutions Brandtrust
Name Development Name Sharks Namebase Nameit Namexpress Namelab Namington Naming Systems	Namerazor NameSale Namestormers Nametag Nametrade NameQuest Namix Naming Workshop
Nomen Namepharm	Nomenon Medibrand
Absolute Brand Interbrand Building Brands Real Branding	Core Brand Futurebrand The Branding Iron Spherical Branding
I.D.ENTITY	Identity 3.0
Idiom Brighter Naming Corporate Icon	Metaphor Megalonamia Wise Name
Creating New Names The Name Works	ABC Namebank The Naming Company
Ivarson Brand Vision	Strategic Name Development
The Brand Consultancy	Lexicon Branding
Independent Branding	TradingBrands
The Better Branding Company	Not Just Any Branding

There are three pieces of advice that will serve you well in avoiding a similar dilemma:

1. Names don’t exist in a vacuum: There are competitors–the idea is to distinguish yourself. Business is a competitive sport.
2. Names don’t exist in a vacuum: The notion of describing your business in the name assumes that the name will exist at some point without contextual support. This is never true for any business or product.
3. Names don’t exist in a vacuum: When judged without the context of a clear positioning platform and an intimate understanding of how names work and what they can do, the best solutions are either never considered or quickly dismissed.

For example, any one of the following intuitive concerns could have been enough to keep these powerful names from ever seeing the light of day:

Virgin Airlines

• Says "we’re new at this"
• Public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional
• Investors won’t take us seriously
• Religious people will be offended

Caterpillar

• Tiny, creepy-crawly bug
• Not macho enough – easy to squash
• Why not "bull" or "workhorse"?
• Destroys trees, crops, responsible for famine

Banana Republic

• Derogatory cultural slur
• You’ll be picketed by people from small, hot countries

Yahoo!

• Yahoo!! It’s Mountain Dew!
• Yoohoo! It’s a chocolate drink in a can!
• Nobody will take stock quotes and world news seriously from a bunch of "Yahoos"

Oracle

• Unscientific
• Unreliable
• Only foretold death and destruction
• Only fools put their faith in an Oracle
• Sounds like "orifice"–people will make fun of us

The Gap

• Means something is missing
• The Generation Gap is a bad thing – we want to sell clothes to all generations
• In need of repair
• Incomplete
• Negative

Stingray

• A slow, ugly, and dangerous fish–slow, ugly and dangerous are the last qualities we want to associate with our fast, powerful, sexy sports car
• The "bottom feeding fish" part isn’t helping either

Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac

• I don’t want hillbilly residents of Dogpatch handling my finances.
• They don’t sound serious, and this is about a very serious matter.

As you can well imagine, this kind of negative deconstruction is at the root of why a committee can’t agree on a non-descriptive name that has any meaning. It’s also what gave birth to the second major school of bad naming: the "unique empty vessel" that "can become whatever you want." Here are some of the victims:

Acquient, Agilent, Alliant, Aquent, Aspirient, Aviant, Axent, Axient, Bizient, Candescent, Cendant, Cerent, Chordiant, Clarent, Comergent, Conexant, Consilient, Cotelligent, Equant, Ixtant, Livent, Luminant, Mergent, Mirant, Navigant, Naviant, Noviant, Novient, Omnient, Ravisent, Sapient, Scient, Sequant, Spirent, Taligent, Teligent, Thrivent, Versant, Versent, Viant, Vitalent and Vivient.

As with the descriptive list, these names are not part of an elegant solution, they are the seeds of a branding nightmare. This type of name is arrived at because of the lust for a domain name, consensus building and as a shortcut to trademark approval. At some point in the process marketing left the room, and nobody seemed to notice. And while they may technically be unique, it’s at the level of a snow flake in a snow bank.

The third type of name is the evocative name. These include the aforementioned Apple, Stingray, Oracle, Virgin, Yahoo etc. While everyone respects evocative naming when done well, most corporations don’t go down this road because it’s the toughest to understand and execute.

On a very fundamental level, here are the basic ingredients of the best evocative names:

Differentiate

A competitive analysis is an essential first step. How are your competitors positioning themselves? What types of names are common among them? Are they all projecting a similar attitude? Do their similarities offer you a huge opportunity to stand out from the crowd?

Apple needed to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by the other computer companies at the time who had names like IBM, NEC, DEC, ADPAC, Cincom, Dylakor, Input, Integral Systems, Sperry Rand, SAP, PSDI, Syncsort, and Tesseract.

They needed to reverse the entrenched view of computers in order to get people to use them at home. They were looking for a name that was not like a traditional computer company, and supported a Positioning Strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different.

Positioning

The next step is to carefully define your positioning. The idea is to position yourself in a way that rings true in a fresh way–that cuts through all of the noise out there. The goal is to have your audience personalize the experience of your brand, to make an emotional connection with it, and ultimately to take you in. To redefine and own the territory.

One of most important things that the best of the best brands accomplish is to be thought of as greater than the goods and services offered, to create an aspiration. Nike’s "Just Do It’ helps them rise above selling sneakers. Apple’s "Think Different" is bigger than computers. Fannie Mae’s "We’re in the American Dream Business" elevates them from mere mortgage brokers.

On a product level, Velveeta, Slinky, Mustang, Snapple, etc., are tapping into something outside of the narrow definition of what it is they do, and are allowing the consumer to make the connection, to personalize the experience. This type of active engagement created by playing off of images that everyone is already carrying around in their heads is an essential ingredient in creating a great name.

From there, a name should contain as many of the following qualities as possible. The more of them that are present, the more powerful the name:

SELF-PROPELLING

• A name that people will talk about.
• A name that works its way through the world on its own.
• A name that’s a story in itself, whether it’s at the local bar, on the job, or on CNBC.

EMOTIONAL CONNECTION

• What does the name suggest?
• Does it make you feel good?
• Does it make you smile?
• Does it lock into your brain?
• Does it make you want to know more?

POETRY

• How does the name physically look and sound?
• How does it roll off the tongue?
• How much internal electricity does it have?
• How does it sound the millionth time?
• Will people remember it?

PERSONALITY

• Does the name have attitude?
• Does it exude qualities like confidence, mystery, presence, warmth, and a sense of humor?
• Is it provocative, engaging?
• Is it a tough act to follow?

DEEP WELL

• Is the name a constant source of inspiration for advertising and marketing?
• Does it have "legs"?
• Does it work on a lot of different levels?

The key is to step outside the box that the industry – any industry – has drawn for itself, and to do it in a fresh way that hits home with the audience. To accomplish this, it is necessary to think about names in this fashion:

Virgin

• Positioning: different, confident, exciting, alive human, provocative, fun. The innovative name forces people to create a separate box in their head to put it in.
• Qualities: Self-propelling, Connects Emotionally, Personality, Deep Well.

Oracle

• Positioning: different, confident, superhuman, evocative, powerful, forward thinking.
• Qualities: Self-propelling, Connects Emotionally, Personality, Deep Well.

As an exercise, go back and see how the other names deconstructed above–Apple, Caterpillar, Banana Republic, Yahoo!, Palm Pilot, The Gap, Stingray, and Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac–stand up when held to these high standards. These are the qualities that separate a potent, evocative name from a useless one that is built without a considered positioning platform, such as BlueMartini or FatBrain. Random names like these disallow audience engagement, because there are no pathways between the image and the product–there is no connection to be made.

Want more? Download our Naming Guide PDF.

[ More posts about naming a company | More posts about company naming ]

Via Variety:

DirecTV pumps up its premium channel.
Satcaster to enhance, rebrand 101 Network as Audience Network.

DirecTV is devoting more resources to building its own premium channel in a bid to better harness the platform provided by its 19 million-plus subscribers.

As of June 1, the satcaster’s in-house 101 Network will be rebranded as the Audience Network. DirecTV plans a big marketing push for the change, which dovetails with the mid-July launch of the new season of “Damages.”…Derek Chang, DirecTV’s exec veep of content strategy strategy and development, and Chris Long, senior veep of content strategy and development, told Variety they view Audience Network as an opportunity to program their own pay TV-style channel and make it a big selling point for DirecTV with subscribers.

“We call it giving subscribers a premium channel without having to pay a premium price,” Long said. “We see our wheelhouse as programming that is edgy and thought-provoking.”

The Audience Network at the DirecTV website.

Igor

EROTIC CAPITAL

American Express debuted a series of podcasts about branding today. Igor co-founder Steve Manning is featured doing a segment on naming

ip.com (as in “intellectual property”) just launched a feature where you can add a Patent Search Box to your blog sidebar, so your visitors can search patents right from your site.

Search Box code available here.

You can do full searches for US Patents, US Patent Applications, Prior Art, PRC (China) Patents and PRC Patents in translation.

So that’s kinda cool.

And here is a great place to initiate a Patentability Search

If your intellectual property goals are to protect your right to use your ideas and to prevent others from patenting them, publishing a technical disclosure rather than filing for a patent, may well make good business sense. For starters, the entire patent process can run $25,000 and up. Publishing a technical disclosure will cost you less than 300 bucks. This can make even more sense if you have multiple ideas or technologies you have developed, but no immediate way to monetize them. You also may not want to freeze out others from developing products around and in concert with your idea by filing a patent.

IP.com has a great free guide that you can download called “Defensive Publishing Via Technical Disclosures“.

Check it out.

The Ford Lincoln-Mercury Sable is:

“A personal conveyance named after its inventor, an assassinated ruler, a character from Greco-Roman myth and a small furry mammal.” – Beldar Conehead

Best name we’ve seen in a while: Your Fucking Polling Place

Welcome to the End of Days, as the final two signs of the Apocalypse were checked-off late last week. Igor’s own creative director Jay Jurisich spouts off in not one, but two articles in the current edition of BW.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it…”

Some of Igor’s latest work: DirecTV Audience network

As if the naming industry wasn’t already overflowing with hot air, now there’s more on the way: Tropical Storm Igor forms over eastern Atlantic. Here is a high-tech graphic from the National Hurricane Center:

Now we just have to hope that Igor (2010 Hurricane Edition), doesn’t go on a destructive rampage like his cousin Katrina did five years ago, or our name is mud. On the other hand…more name recognition!

At Igor we deal with intellectual property rights every week as we search thousands of trademarks while naming products for our clients. It’s not enough to have a good idea, you need one that you can legally own.

Kevin Costner’s much publicized Ocean Therapy Solutions company developed a soon-to-be-implemented oil and water separation machine. BP has ordered 32 of them thus far to help deal with their latest environmental disaster.

You can view the patent filing, description and drawings for Costner’s oil spill clean up machine here. Click on the pic in the upper right corner to see the full diagrams.