Case study.

Igor’s Senior (very) Brand Strategist Andy Valvur is pictured below in China. He is on a quest to find a Sifu who will help refine his already well-honed skills in The Immobile Arts. Here he takes a lesson from The Great Wall.

Additionally, Andy is the organizer of The Global Scavenger Hunt, a convoluted tax dodge.

Via The San Francisco Examiner:

The organizer of The Global Scavenger Hunt, a race around the world that begins in San Francisco on Friday, is tight-lipped about the countries and challenges that await 15 two-person teams raising money for charity during the three-week competition. Valvur, 53, won a similar race in 1989. He works as a branding manager in San Francisco and writes for CNN’s humor blog, Capitol Punishment.

After winning the 1989 race, why did you decide to stay involved? Who is not going to enjoy trips around the world? I also like watching people come back in and say, “Did you see? Did you go there?” when they discover something new. The thrill of discovery that you turned somebody on to something new is really cool.

How is The Global Scavenger Hunt different from “The Amazing Race”? In “The Amazing Race,” you have to get from one country to another and have to scramble to the airport. This doesn’t have that craziness — it’s pretty fast-paced, but the challenges start and end in the same city — then we all travel together to the next location.

What traits make for winners in The Global Scavenger Hunt? You got to be quick on your feet, and you have to be able to look at a town and figure out the local transportation system really quick. It’s a lot of map reading and time management.

Why did you think this race should raise money for charities instead of offering a big monetary prize to winners? Instead of ugly Americans running around the world, you’re traveling and at the same time giving a little bit back. We’ve had such a bad reputation in the world — it’s a tiny measure of repairing some of the damage.

And he has done a lot of damage.

Igor created 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.

In fact, they have already flipped the switch on their website.

Via CNN:

At the annual Nokia World conference today, Nokia outlined its vision for the mobile industry, predicting rapid change driven by the convergence of mobility and the internet, and the need for the industry to make an increasing contribution to environmental sustainability…

…This was against the background of the launch of the Nokia 3110 Evolve, a mobile device with bio-covers made from more than 50% renewable material. The device is presented in a small package made of 60% recycled content and it comes with Nokia’s most energy efficient charger yet, using 94% less energy than the Energy Star requirements.

More of Igor’s work with Nokia.

Igor’s own Andy Valvur on NPR this morning.

Introducing the Nokia Arte and the Arte Sapphire, both named by Igor.

Just in time for Christmas, the entry level Arte makes the perfect stocking stuffer and will only set you back $1475.00 U.S.

Via dialaphone:

The 8800 ‘Arte’ and the 8800 ‘Arte Sapphire’ are the two new models in question, easily differentiated by colour, the ‘Arte’ is black and the ‘Arte Sapphire’ is brown and by the whole sapphire mounted in the centre of the ‘Arte Sapphire’s’ D-pad. Both are 3G phones and have 3-megapixel auto-focus cameras and a massive 1GB of internal memory! Their elegant slider design helps maintain a fuss-free front panel, broken only by the D-pad control and inside the flashy box, a linen-lined pouch to keep your phone safe and warm and a Bluetooth headset can be found.

As always, it’s the special touches that make the duo stand out. For example, a couple of taps on the steel fascia wakes the clock up on the display, which also has something called ‘living wallpaper’, first seen on the Nokia 7900 Prism (pictured below), which changes and adapts to time, battery power and signal strength. The coolest new feature has to be the ability to silence you ringing phone simply by turning it face down on the table! To further set these two apart from Nokia’s more run-of-the-mill phones, they feature exclusively created videos, sounds and ringtones.

As with the previous Nokia 8800 phones, the ‘Arte’ pair are constructed using the highest quality materials and have a special fingerprint retardant coating on the panels, with the ‘Arte Sapphire’ going one better by having a soft-touch Indian Goat-hide covering too! One can never accuse Nokia of not thinking differently!

Some of Igor’s previous work with Nokia can be seen here.

Or perhaps reading this blog has created in you a powerful hunger for words that read good.

Either way, our OLD, OLD friend Yannick Murphy will be reading from her latest novel, SIGNED, MATA HARI, this coming Wednesday night. The particulars:

Wednesday, November 14th 8:15 pm
Columbia University
Rm 413 Dodge Hall

Of special interest is that she will be reading with Diane Williams.

Last time these two shared the stage a really cool cat fight ensued.

Fingers crossed.

Twine.

As announced today at Web 2.0 in San Francisco and brought to you brought to you via Great Britain, the land o’ cheese and buggery (and Welshmen named Lucian):

Today, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Radar Networks is announcing an invitation-only beta test of its new “semantic web” application, Twine. The press release says:

Twine provides a smarter way for people to leverage and contribute to the combined brainpower of their relationships. “We call this ‘knowledge networking,’” said Radar Networks Founder and CEO Nova Spivack. “It’s the next evolution of collective intelligence on the Web. Unlike social networking and community tools, Twine is not just about who you know, it’s about what you know. Twine is the ultimate tool for gathering and sharing knowledge on the Web.”

It’s being touted as a The Start of Web 3.0 which is almost annoying enough to make me ignore it. However, Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web says “while the app isn’t ready yet for the public, I was impressed with what I saw in Nova’s demo.” He says:

The aim of Twine is to enable people to share knowledge and information. At first glance it is very much like Wikipedia, but there is a whole lot more smarts to the system. Spivack described it to me as “knowledge networking” — ie it aims to connect people with each “for a purpose”. It’s not based around socializing, but to share and organize information you’re interested in. Using Twine, you can add content via wiki functionality (there are many post types), you can email content into the system, and “collect” something (as an object, eg a book object).

[ More posts about Twine ]

Igor’s Press page currently has 80 articles about naming and branding.

“Death By Chocolate” began as a wonderfully evocative, powerful product name. Circumstance has twisted it into a negatively descriptive name; the absurd has become literal, and non-warning warning shots have been fired. Via FoodConsumer.org:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued a warning on August 30 to ask consumers with allergies to walnuts not to eat Bella Cucina Death by Chocolate cookies.

The warning was issued after walnuts were found in the product without declaration on the label. Walnuts can cause life-threatening allergic reactions in people who are allergic to the nuts.

I dunno, seems like the name was fair warning.

Only twice have we predicted the demise of a product based on its name and brand positioning; Song Airlines and Gap’s Forth and Towne. We are confidant that the inevitable failure of Crayons juice drinks will put our record at 3-0. On the surface the name seems plausible – crayons are fun and multi-colored, much like these fruit drinks. But we all have the visceral memory of chewing on a crayon as kids, and well, not good. The final nail is the fact that the juice is even using Crayola design cues. Ugh.

This video has no connection to naming or branding, but is tangentially relevant in as much as The BBC hired Igor to promote Ricky Gervais’ first show. It’s big stretch, but damn, this clip is brilliant: