Now that you’re hot to go, prepare yourself for this major re-naming news:

Blue Sky Logistics Changes Name To Blue Sky Technologies

June 2, 2008

Blue Sky Logistics, Inc., a real-time supply chain visibility software provider, has changed its name to Blue Sky Technologies, Inc. The name change is expected to help shippers better identify the company’s role in the supply chain marketplace.

“With the word ‘logistics’ as part of our name, we found ourselves often being confused with being a third-party logistics provider or 3PL”, explains Steve Hensley, president, Blue Sky Technologies, Inc. “We would get phone calls for moving truckloads from point A to point B or we would get asked to manage a warehouse for a potential client. These are not our core competencies. Since our role is to help customers though visibility dashboard technology to better leverage their existing investments in supply chain infrastructure, changing the name seemed like the logical thing to do.”

It’s always nice when ditching the name “Logistics” is seen as the “logical” thing to do, and in this case a belated admission that the name “Logistics” is illogical, which is the only logical conclusion. And we couldn’t agree more that it is soooooo annoying to get calls for moving truckloads from point A to point B, as we have long-since moved to a Points L, Y and N moving strategy. Such are the logistics of the naming racket.

A bold, risky move this name change. So how has it played out in the marketplace?

“The reaction from our customers to the name change has been very favorable,” added Hensley, “They agreed that the new name better describes the solutions that we offer in bringing dashboard methodology to supply chain visibility. For these customers, we have helped them get additional value from current investments in their supply chain rather than scrapping what they had and start over. Our objective is to always help clients find fresh use of the assets they already have in place.”

We too are always working to help our clients find fresh use of their assets, so we couldn’t agree more.

For those of you keeping score at home, here is a synopsis of this breaking news: A non third-party real-time supply chain logistics solutions technologies provider with core competencies of leveraging visibility dashboard technology to bring dashboard methodology to supply chain visibility has logically jettisoned “Logistics” from its name to avoid being confused with third-party 3PLs. Got it?

Thanks to Logistics Online, “A VertMarkets Marketplace for Industry Professionals”, for bringing us the Blue Sky press release. I bet you didn’t even know there was a “VertMarkets Marketplace” out there, did you?

Ok, just how many social bookmarking / link services can the Web accommodate? And will somebody please stop the madness and Just Say No to social bookmarking icon overkill on their blogs?

Click the image to engorge this example, where below the icons that appeared on an actual blog we’ve listed the service associated with each:

Be sure to savor the keen glut of Web 2.oism exhibited by the names above; for those of you who can still remember the ’90s, it’s deja vu all over again. Especially annoying is the spreading virus of interstitial periodicity that began with del.icio.us, as far as we care to tell, and has now spawned, just from the above sampling, “De.lirio.us” (you go girrl!), “co.mments” and the delightful “Ma.gnolia”. If you know of more, post them here in the Comments and we’ll compile a full list of these atrocities. U digg?

UPDATE 7.19: Tate, who publishes the “actual blog” in question (it has something to do with naming, I think, but what do we know?), has removed all the pretty little Web 2.0 icons from his site and written about the whole exhilarating experience: Oh yeah, well… um… You have bad posture! Does this represent a SURGE of defections from the social bookmarking iconoplastering movement? Only time will toil.

One of the most successful online retailers for blinds and window treatments hired Igor to name a new brand of upscale online window treatments, which we named Jupiter Wells. We have posted a case study for your reading pleasure.

AdLand conducted an online popularity contest for the past several weeks, judging a handful of blogs in each of sixteen categories.

Snark Hunting captured the flag in the coveted “Best Topical Blogs (trademark, branding, media, adbusting)” category, the final category nestled prominently at the bottom of the page. A hearty thanks to all our competitors for letting us win.

There will be a parade in our honor beginning at the 1913 Armory Show and concluding in Plato’s Cave.

When Old Navy recently moved a hefty chunk of its advertising from Deutsch (part of Interpublic) to the new New York office of StrawberryFrog, a small Amsterdam-based agency, it was yet more evidence documenting the shift away from old guard conglomerate advertising behemoths toward smaller, independent, more flexible and boutique agencies.

This is definitely a trend we have seen firsthand in the naming and branding arena as well, where giant multinational corporations that used to only hire other giant multinational companies are now lining up to hire smaller, more creative advertising and branding agencies such as Igor.

Reports the New York Times, in A Mainstream Brand Tiptoes Toward the Quirky:

Old Navy is the first well-known American client for StrawberryFrog, which was founded in Amsterdam six years ago by Scott Goodson, a Canadian. Mr. Goodson, president and creative partner at StrawberryFrog, has been evangelistic in his belief that new types of agencies – more nimble and Web-based, less bureaucratic and hierarchical – are needed to help mainstream marketers reach consumers in new ways.

“I’ve been talking about it for years,” Mr. Goodson said in an interview. “There’s definitely an understanding now that there’s a changing landscape.”

“It’s not the soup du jour,” he added. “It’s a fundamental shift, both in what clients are looking for and how agencies are working.”

StrawberryFrog was among the first in a new wave of smaller, mostly independently owned agencies remaking the advertising landscape. They specialize in campaigns that are distinctive creatively, often quirky, and that typically extend beyond traditional media like television commercials. Some of the agencies, like StrawberryFrog, bear distinctive names meant to signal their different approach; others in that vein include Amalgamated, Mother and Taxi. Other new wave agencies carry more traditional names, like Crispin Porter & Bogusky, McGarry Bowen and Shepardson Stern & Kaminsky.

Whatever they are called, the new agencies have a couple of things in common. One is their focus on business as unusual. The other is their growing success, often at the expense of mainline agencies that find themselves sharing clients with the upstarts – or worse yet, losing assignments to them.

The names of many of these new agencies – Amalgamated, Mother, Taxi and even internety random pairings such as StrawberryFrog – are another clear sign of business as no longer usual. Sounding like an old-guard agency by naming the company after the founders will quickly become baggage even an upstart will have to overcome. Because, fundamentally, this business is not about the ego of the agency, but servicing the needs of the client, and we all know how much fun servicing is.

The article continues:

“We’re a challenger brand in our space and StrawberryFrog is a challenger brand in its space,” he [Charles N. Piermarini, president and CEO of HarrisDirect, another StrawberryFrog client] added. “In a cluttered space, we wanted to make sure we’re working with someone with the ability to help set us apart.”

This is a key point we’ve been advocating for years, that if an agency is claiming to set your company apart from the competition, shouldn’t they be able to demonstrate that ability by first differentiating their own brand? Otherwise they risk ending up like so many others fighting it out in the lower left corner of this taxonomy of naming and branding agency names.

From Nationmaster’s John Doe page (Nationmaster – Where Stats Come Alive!) comes the names of Mr. and Ms. Anonymous all over the world:

One of the more interesting takes on naming and branding to come dribbling down the binjo ditch today is from an article in Brandweek:

The airline that will evolve from the proposed merger of America West and US Airways will have to fight off perceptions of a brand — currently reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act — dubbed “Agony Air” by passengers and get all employees on board in defining and delivering a satisfying customer experience.

If a bankruptcy court approves and the deal closes, the carrier will operate as US Airways out of Tempe, Arizona. Leading the new company will be America West CEO Doug Parker, who transformed a dysfunctional legacy airline into the No. 2 low-fare flyer behind Southwest. The US Airways name has more brand equity than geographic limiting America West, but its aura is negative. Remember this is the airline that had to dangle free trips and other perks just to get disgruntled baggage handlers to show up for work during the disastrous Christmas travel season when thousands of passengers arrived at their destinations but their luggage-toting holiday presents didn’t.

“I don’t think the name matters,” said David Melancon, CEO of FutureBrand USA, a New York branding consultancy. “Consumers have shown us that you can slap a made up name like JetBlue and people love it because of the experience. We have lots of airline companies on our roster and one thing we learned is the brand is the experience, it’s not the advertising, the logo on the tail; the brand isn’t the name.”

FutureBrand’s CEO is clearly elucidating a contrarian viewpoint here, which is refreshing. The FutureBrand website lists naming as a specialty, and devotes an entire paragraph to the subject beneath the header “Defining new brand ideas”:

A name is the most immediate and lasting articulation of what a new brand is all about. A great name will advance the business strategy, justify premium pricing and set the tone for the personality of the brand. But with the proliferation of global trademarks, naming is also getting harder. FutureBrand combines creative excellence with a robust legal and linguistic process to develop powerful names that work in the real world.

Once more for effect:

FutureBrand CEO:

“I don’t think the name matters,” said David Melancon, CEO of FutureBrand USA, a New York branding consultancy. “Consumers have shown us that you can slap a made up name like JetBlue and people love it because of the experience.

FutureBrand Website:

A name is the most immediate and lasting articulation of what a new brand is all about. A great name will advance the business strategy, justify premium pricing and set the tone for the personality of the brand.

A third time for humor, and because cutting and pasting makes it so dosh garn easy:

FutureBrand CEO:

“I don’t think the name matters,” said David Melancon, CEO of FutureBrand USA, a New York branding consultancy. “Consumers have shown us that you can slap a made up name like JetBlue and people love it because of the experience.

FutureBrand Website:

A name is the most immediate and lasting articulation of what a new brand is all about. A great name will advance the business strategy, justify premium pricing and set the tone for the personality of the brand.

To the novice, FutureBrand’s inclusion of the qualifier “names that work in the real world” in describing their naming specialty may seem unnecessary. But naming is a niche full of micros. For instance, Landor creates names, taglines and slogans that work in the buoyancy sacks of spiny northern pike, as signals to light the fire at Croatian cremations (Solekia! Acterna!), and on girls named Rhonda.

The Anchorage Daily News reports a new food branding initiative:

While most fishing regions of the state are promoting their own brands of red and king salmon, a Kodiak group is singing the praises of pinks.

Besides trying to increase markets for locally caught silver salmon, the Kodiak Brand and Marketing Committee has been striving to create high-end markets for pinks.

“The pink project is something new and that doesn’t even exist in the domestic market right now,” said marketing director Leslie Smith. All of the fish are iced, bled and otherwise handled according to the strict Star of Kodiak quality-certification program, she said.

If only the pink project had a viral, catchy tagline….

We’re guessing Frosted Flakes. Or perhaps a Swanson Hungry-Man All Day Breakfast, unless God worries about eating too much fat. Probably not. We’ll go with the Hungry Man.

One breakfast food with God on its marketing team is Ezekiel 4:9. The biblical quote referenced by the product name is,

“Take also unto thee Wheat and Barley and Beans and Lentils and Millet and Spelt and put them in one vessel and make bread of it.”

Sounds perfectly reasonable for a health food brand. What they don’t say is that Ezekiel has some further breakfast preparation tips. Those of you with little time to make the bus to work in the morning, may want to skip this last step in the recipe, from Ezekiel 4:12:

“And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.”

Sounds like Devil’s food to us. But Zeke here isn’t the first national brand to be changing money in the temple. Chevrolet has had God as its co-pilot for years.

Here’s a great name for a janitorial services company.

There is a new product in the hair gain game, and its name is Brow Gain. As reported in Newsday:

In Beverly Hills, they call Damone Roberts the eyebrow king. Now the rest of the world gets to see what the fuss is all about. Roberts has just come out with a line of products to whip unruly brows into shape. There’s a pencil, natch, that comes in colors like Latte and Beverly Hills Blonde ($18 each), a highlighter in Gold Digger and Bling Bling ($20 each), along with several shadows, brushes and his own tweezers.

The most intriguing product, though, is Brow Gain, described by the personable Roberts as Rogaine for the brows. He says that, with six to eight weeks of use, the cream will create fuller brows and actually stimulate regrowth to correct overplucking. It’s $45, but if the stuff actually works, a lot of us will pay gladly. It’s all available at www.damoneroberts.com.

But even the eyebrow king would be throne for a loss at this next hair raiser, a clipping from the South Africa Star that we just couldn’t help calling …… Hell Toupee:

Los Angeles – An Oregon member of the Hair Club for Men has accused the company of failing to warn him during monthly visits to reglue his hairpiece that a malignant tumour was developing on his scalp.

James Milner says no one but Hair Club employees saw his scalp during the 10 years he was a member, but none of them told him “of the black, expanding growth” on his scalp, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Portland.

Milner finally saw the tumour after insisting that a Hair Club employee remove the hairpiece so that he could point out the source of a painful rash.

Milner had the tumour removed in May last year. The lawsuit seeks more than $450 000 (about R2,7-million) in compensation.

Makes you think, don’t it? The consequence of vanity, the fragility of life, hair today …

When is a corporate photo not a corporate photo? When it’s an effective and compelling branding, marketing and PR vehicle. One way to take a normally banal bit of collateral and amp-up its efficacy is to jettison those same old same old corporate photos of your staff and replace them with photos that people will actually engage with, that help to define your brand attitudinally and emotionally. In order to pull this off, you need the right photographer.

We just had a fantastic experience with San Francisco-based photographer Jon Hope who came to Igor headquarters to take some people shots for an article in the July edition of Arrive magazine. Check out his portfolio and ask yourself, “Is our corporate photography working hard enough?”