Are your company or product name brainstorming attempts long on storm and short on brains? Wordlab is ready to help you name whatever needs naming — most have very low mileage, are hardly ever driven during the week, and are used only sparingly on weekends to scan refrigerator contents and such. Our collection of brains can be picked through in the forums belonging to the Wordlab Groups, where you’ll find lots of free for naming and branding brainstorming fun. Jump in and pick the brains!
Tips for picking a brain:
1. Do not pick if the skin is too green–it’s not ripe yet.
2. The brain should be viscous and phlegmatic, yet hold up to a good thumping. Not too firm, not too soft.
3. The end that was twisted from the brain stem should be pliable when you poke your thumb through the outer membrane. If you can’t break the membrane with your fingernail, the brain was picked prematurely.
4. Smell is the most reliable indicator of freshness.
Actually it’s better than Yellow, naming-wise. Usually, we would advise against using the word “Green” as a modifier to a business name as a way of conveying “echo-friendly”. It’s done so much that Green noise becomes White noise. It’s hack naming, and only appropriate for hacks, hence Green Cab of San Francisco.
It’s the perfect name for a cab company comprised entirely of Toyota Prius’, and it also leverages the until now untouchably iconic Yellow Cab brand against itself. Nice. And success is guaranteed by the fact that by simply calling Green Cab instead of Yellow, the customer feels like they have done something honorable.
Are we biased in our opinion? Absolutely. We believe strongly that the name a naming company names itself is a clue to the kinds of company names they believe in. And if a naming company cannot manage to give itself a distinctive, memorable name that sets itself apart from the slew of competitors you see here, a company name that can evolve into a strong brand within the industry and come to represent more than just the goods and services being offered, how can they possibly convince others that what they fail to do in their own company name they can somehow magically do for their clients?
So a call to arms is in order: Namers, name thyself well! Because you’ve got company.
Landor Associates, one of the world’s leading strategic branding and design consultancies, today announced the appointment of Anthony Shore to Global Director, Naming & Writing. Shore was previously Creative Director of Naming & Writing at the San Francisco office of Landor.
In 2006, Shore was charged with establishing and leading Landor’s first naming-oriented Global Knowledge Sharing Team to optimize processes and resources worldwide. This resulted in a significant increase in naming assignments and an advancement of Landor’s capabilities in this area.
When asked about his goals moving forward, Shore said, “Developing great names for a global audience requires a deep understanding of many local languages and cultures. It also requires exceptional creativity and a strategic brand focus. My vision is to maximize the individual creativity and collective effectiveness of the two dozen brilliant namers Landor Associates has worldwide. With fantastic naming work, we provide a fantastic return for our clients.
Nova Spivak, CEO of Radar Networks, is off to Singapore. He is fulfilling a lifelong desire to meet, “date”, and marry the Singapore Girl from those old airline ads. His quest is akin to Borat’s longing for Pamela Anderson. The “Semantic Web (???)” hooha is just a desperate cover story. From his blog:
I’m sitting in the Dynasty Lounge in Taipei, en route to Singapore where I will be addressing around 100 ministers of the government there on the potential of the Semantic Web…
…We also chose a brand for our product, with help from the mad geniuses at Igor International. The new brand is SECRET but really cool — we love it, and you will too! We’ll be announcing the brand close to launch.
If you want to be invited to our launch and be one of the first to see how useful the Semantic Web really can be — sign up for our mailing list at http://www.radarnetworks.com/ — and feel free to invite your friends to sign up too. Only people who sign up will get on our waiting list. We already have around 2000 bloggers and other influencers pre-registered, and more are coming every day, so don’t wait — it will be on a first-come, first-serve basis. We’ll be letting people into the service in waves.
What’s the category killing product name going to be, or better yet, how do you cut through all of the Web 2.0 and 3.0 nonsense names and redefine the space with THE perfect name?
Or perhaps you need to rename an existing business? Let’s say, perchance, that you opened up a drinking establishment, and giddy with excitement you thought, “The Loose Stool would be a good name”. But now your little bar has become a bistro, and the chili is selling poorly…
Wordlab to the (free) rescue! Yes our sister site Wordlab has a number of specific naming groups with free forums where registered members can post their naming needs and other members will help you name anything, at no cost.
Igor was hired to create the new name for Court TV, which is…truTV. This excerpt from Variety tells the story:
Turner Entertainment Networks is rebranding Court TV as truTV, a moniker reflecting its ongoing conversion to an entertainment network heavy on reality shows and true crime.
“This gives us a focused brand and a wide playing field,” said Turner prexy Steve Koonin. “We felt the Court TV name was limiting us in defining what we are and what we are delivering.”
The name change marks another step in the channel’s conversion to an entertainment-focused web targeted at a demo the network refers to as “real engagers,” or those interested in true stories, widely defined as news, true crime, reality shows or nonfiction entertainment.
Crochet cachet: Of all the fetish magazines on the market, this one makes us feel the naughtiest. Crochet Fantasy, by virtue of its absurd name, has made the mundane oddly compelling. And disturbing. And sublimely subliminal.
Simultaneously squeaky clean AND tawdry. It’s so bad, it’s good. Perfect.
Or maybe it’s just our predilection for coarse, mustard-colored yarn…
James Joaquin, a Venture partner at Bridgescale, wrote a thoughtful article comparing Google and Microsoft’s naming architectures. Here are his recommendations for Microsoft:
How could Microsoft learn from Google’s branding simplicity? Here are my five suggestions to move “Live” in that direction:
1. Stop using Windows to brand Web services that run on any computer in any browser. Simply brand those “Microsoft Live.”
2. Don’t add “Live” to the names of products beginning with “Vista” or “Office”–ever. Not even one. I’m serious. Let Vista and Office continue to mean PC Desktop and help differentiate Live to mean Web.
3. Rename “Microsoft Office Live Basics” to “Microsoft Live Business Site.” See No. 2 above.
4. Rename “Windows Live OneCare” to “Windows OneCare.” Remember, it only works on a Windows PC.
5. Rename “Windows Live Mail” to “Windows Mail 2.0″ and bundle it with future releases of Vista. I know it seems short and simple, but that’s the whole idea.
