Yes, this is a real product name, Nad’s Hair Removal. At least you’ll be able to
avoid awkward coin purse requests like this:

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.

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Here’s our streamlined naming architecture diagram ideas for Microsoft:

And option two:

It doesn’t happen often, but the current edition of The Conference Board Review contains a thoughtful article about naming companies and products.

Igor’s naming guide, “Building the Perfect Beast”, was just updated last week. The latest version of our free 91 page naming guide PDF can be downloaded here.

The corner of State and Lake will soon be home to Chicago’s newest luxury hotel, and it sports a very unusual name.

In other Igor naming news, our first national television network name launched last week- there are two more in the pipe so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, over on the seedy side of town, the good folks at Landor launched their corporate HQ webcam today, where it’s just another day at the orifice. Enjoy:

Black Single Love

“The group that made a dream a reality” (click pic to engorge):

Remember the descriptive compound names of the doomed search engines of yore? LookSmart, InfoSeek FindWhat, AllTheWeb, etc? Failing to understand the lessons of the past, AOL has brought back generic naming and branding with their new search engine name, “FullView”.

At first glance “FullView“ might seem merely a literal translation of AltaVista, but that would be “HighView”, and quite different, of course.

Here is the hysterical PPT that AOL used to sell this dog internally. Note slide number four, where they say the name needs “to signal new, different” and “generate intrigue”.

FullView was named by “best of breed naming agency” Lexicon.

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Thankfully, we don’t have to make this stuff up. 666 Cold medicine is available everywhere.

The 666 spokesperson has not as yet responded to our request for comment.

GAP announced today that their latest bad idea, F.A.T., is fat no more. Here was our take on GAP’s “fourth brand” (get it?), when it was announced two years ago:

Forth & Towne is the name of Gap’s new store for women over 35. What aspiration is the name tapping into for women in this middle-age demographic? We don’t know. But it’s worth noting that they chose to present the name with an ampersand instead of spelling it out as pronounced, a la Forth And Towne. Why is anybody’s guess.

In the article, Gap President Paul Pressler weighed-in, calling F.A.T. a “sizable opportunity”.

Oy. We love the smell of hubris in the morning.

Thanks to Tom Whitwell of The Times of London, who waved this one under our noses first thing in the morning. Tom e-mails:

If you’re going to have a brand name like Eat Fussy, you have to be very careful which fonts you use.

Lower case was probably a good call…

We’re sold. And after you meet Annabel Karmel, you will be too.

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Searching for bleeding edge naming news, we turn to that eternal source of befuddlement, the Landor naming portfolio. Landor proudly lays claim to a total of 18 naming jobs on their website, 16 of which date from 2001 or earlier. The remaining 2 are proving difficult to date:

Fillboard (TM filed 1998)

Astrium (not a gay bar – 2000)

Tality (again, not a gay bar – 2000)

Chancellor Academy (date unknown. only web reference to this name change resides here)

Certegy (2001)

Clarica (1999)

Exostar (2000)

EverCare (1999)

Advantix (TM filed 1995)

Durex (yes, the penis people – 1998)

Midea Group (“Formal registration and application of the brand” – 1981 )

ProNational Insurance (1998)

Spherion (2000)

Techint/Tenaris (2001)

Pactiv (1999)

Flipside (circa 2000, dead dotcom)

Uniqa (1999)

Wildlife Conservation Society – We can’t pin a date on this donkey, but they had been calling themselves “WCS”, an acronym for Wildlife Conservation Society. Landor stepped in and “Landor urged the Wildlife Conservation Society to boldly and consistently embrace its full name, and forego the acronym.”

We’re not ready to officially classify advising the Wildlife Conservation Society to call themselves Wildlife Conservation Society as a naming job, but without it Landor is left with Chancelor Academy as the only possible naming job since ’01 in their portfolio, so we’ll let it slither in.

Says Blandor the Imponderable: “Fools! Naming is about quality, not quanity! I’ll stack my portfolio up against any random name generator software anytime! As for not being currant, it’s cranberry juice I need, and in copious quantities. Your ignorance has inflamed my condition”

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