category: industry insider

Minimally-unique, high-performance naming!

Oh no. IBM has an algorithm for creating unique names in a performance-sensitive manner. We’re screwed!

Igor is big in Croatia

Apparently, there is a country called “Croatia”. Why they exist is a mystery. But we are big there.

From “The Land of The Grudge” (with pics of some Igor staffers):

Jay Jurisich radi u San Franciscu i među najboljim je stručnjacima za brendove. Jutarnjem je otkrio što je danas presudno za poslovni uspjeh te zašto će neke hrvatske tvrtke uvijek ostati samo regionalneSve je u imenu. Za jedan brend ništa nije toliko važno kao ime”, poslovna je filozofija Jaya Jurisicha koji je s tom krilaticom prije šest godina s kolegom Steveom Manningom u San Franciscu osnovao kompaniju Igor koja se bavi vjerojatno najzabavnijim, ali prilično unosnim poslom u svijetu biznisa.

Complete article

Downoad Here Free!

We just picked this up from the Live Feed at Agenda:

Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, and author of The Long Tail is pre-releasing large sections of his new book Free online this week. The book examines the rise of pricing models which give products and services to customers for free.

Free! We love free stuff. The only thing we like more than getting free stuff, is giving it away!

We created the Igor Naming Guide in order to demystify the naming process. In it we show how and why great product and company names work, when focus groups and standard ways of thinking about them might have predicted otherwise. Igor’s own naming process is presented in excruciating but logical detail.

The Naming Guide is regularly updated; download the latest version of “Building the Perfect Beast: The Igor Naming Guide to Creating Product and Company Names” FREE HERE!!!

CourtTV to change name to truTV on January 1

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.

Igor’s latest naming work with Nokia

naming companies nokia arteIntroducing 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.

Where did Alibaba, the brand name, come from?

alibaba.comEarlier this year, the International Herald Tribune put the spotlight on Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba.com:

“I’m a normal guy,” he said during a recent interview in Singapore. “I feel ashamed because I feel I’m stealing the contribution of my team. They made it; my job is more, ‘Let’s go do it.’”

Started in 1999, Alibaba International is now the world’s largest online business-to-business marketplace, with more than 500,000 people visiting the site every day and 2.5 million registered users from more than 200 countries. By targeting small and midsize companies, the site, for example, allows a mom-and-pop toy maker in China to sell directly to a shopkeeper in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Alibaba China has become the largest Chinese-language business-to-business marketplace with around 14 million registered users. The privately held company does not reveal its financial data. However, Alibaba’s deals with Yahoo in 2005 — in which Yahoo took a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, while folding its own China business into Alibaba’s — valued the Chinese company at about $3 billion at the time, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.

Today, it was announced that Alibaba.com Ltd., operator of China’s largest trading Web site for companies, and its parent may raise as much as HK$10.3 billion ($1.3 billion) in a Hong Kong initial public offering that attracted investors including Yahoo! Inc., according to this Bloomberg article.

So, you might be asking, “Is this where the forty thieves come in?” alluding to the tale of The Thousand and One Nights. We’ll leave that for the financial analysts to consider. But what of the brand? Is it not counterintuitive for a trading company to choose a name that might be associated with thieves? More about that later, but first: where did Alibaba, the brand name, come from? On a company forum on the Internet, we found this discussion quoting an interview with Alibaba.com’s CEO, Jack Ma:

LH - Now Alibaba… Fancy name, catchy too! But it conjures up, at least to me, something to do with thieves, not legitimate business. Why Alibaba?

JM - One day I was in San Francisco in a coffee shop, and I was thinking Alibaba is a good name. And then a waitress came, and I said do you know about Alibaba? And she said yes. I said what do you know about Alibaba, and she said ‘Open Sesame.’ And I said yes, this is the name! Then I went onto the street and found 30 people and asked them, ‘Do you know Alilbaba’? People from India, people from Germany, people from Tokyo and China… They all knew about Alibaba. Alibaba — open sesame. Alibaba — 40 thieves. Alibaba is not a thief. Alibaba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village. So…easy to spell, and global know. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies. We also registered the name AliMama, in case someone wants to marry us!

Alibaba is a provocation.

All the best names are provocations: Virgin, Yahoo, Caterpillar, Fannie Mae, Gap, Banana Republic, Crossfire, Igor. To qualify as a provocation, a name must contain what most people would call “negative messages” for the goods and services the name is to represent.

Fortunately, consumers process these negative messages positively. As long as the name maps to one of the positioning points of the brand, consumers never take its meaning literally, and the negative aspects of the name just give it greater depth.

Nothing is more powerful than taking a word with a strong, specific connotation, grabbing a slice of it, mapping that slice to a portion of your positioning, and therefore redefining it. This naming strategy is without question the most powerful one of all.

Read more about provocative names and Igor’s theory of negativity in successful naming and branding here.

The ABCs of Naming Diseases and Drugs

Impotence is now ED and painful bladder syndrome is IC/PBS. Naming specialists brainstorm to come up with innocuous acronyms for embarrassing diseases to be associated with name brand drugs.

And then, pharmaceutical companies have to come up with memorable names for drugs their customers can associate with those syndromes, and ask their doctors if it’s right for them.

For drugmakers, finding a name is more art than science.

It’s the job of drug consultants to create a name that’s not already taken, won’t lead to medical mix-ups and can help cut through the marketing clutter.

What makes a good name?

“A lot of it is more art than science,” said William Trombetta, professor of pharmaceutical marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. “There are certain letters that express power and control, like Z, M or P. Other letters, like S, are more passive. Depending on what the drug does, you want to give the name certain features.”

Want to sound high-tech? Go for lots of Z’s and X’s, such as Xanax, Xalatan, Zyban and Zostrix.

Want to sound poetic? Try Lyrica, Truvada and Femara.

Want to suggest what it does? Flonase is an allergy medicine that aims to stop nasal flow. Lunesta, a sleeping drug, implies “luna,” the Latin word for moon — a full night’s sleep.

Then there’s Viagra, the erectile-dysfunction drug made by Pfizer. It uses the prefix “vi” to suggest vigor and vitality. The word rhymes with Niagara, suggesting a mighty flow.

“You know exactly what Pfizer (PFE) was trying to say with that,” said Andy Valvur, senior brand strategist at Igor, a San Francisco branding company.

Drug names can suggest, but under FDA rules they can’t come right out and make medical claims. That’s why you won’t see TumorBeGone or CureAll.

For the latest thinking on naming and branding in the pharmaceutical industry, there’s Better Naming Through Chemistry by Igor.

Web 2.0 Company Name Generator

“Time-waster of the day: Sim Web 2.0. It’s a little flash game that automatically generates a name for your Web 2.0 startup, like Twitcast or Youcrunch, a press clip, and a list of things to do to build the company.” [via TechCrunch]

The Joy of Lex - more juicy details

The Pulp.

There’s a new hotel name coming to the Chicago skyline

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:

Goats gone wild!

company namesIgor and Eat My Words are hosting an extravagant affair for those in the naming business. It’s happening on February 13, and the confirmed guest list includes sentient beings from Catchword, Salt, Landor, Interbrand, Metaphor. Lexicon, Idiom, Imagineering, Stoked Brands, etc.

So if you work at a naming firm or you are a domesticated farm animal, or both, send us an email and we’ll try and get you on the list.

THE MENU

  • Pesto baked brie & imported cheeses with fresh fruit, rustic breads & olives
  • Miniature filet mignon with balsamic caramelized onions & Roquefort
  • Spicy crab & scallop cakes with a cilantro lime aioli
  • Mini phyllo cups filled with spinach sun dried tomatoes feta cheese & olive tapenade
  • Smoked salmon wraps w baby spinach sweet onions & goat cheese
  • Marinated mushrooms, roasted beets, artichoke hearts, grilled asparagus platter with a roasted garlic saffron aioli
  • Ahi tartars on crisp wonton chips with wasabi aioli & tobiko caviar

THE NAMERS

  • Abnu, Wordlab
  • Alexandra Watkins, Eat My Words
  • Alton Wright, Wright Brands
  • Amy Sherman
  • Andrea Michaels, Acme Naming
  • Anthony Shore, Landor
  • Aaron Hall, Catchword
  • Burt Alper, Catchword
  • Carol Miller, Red Pentameter
  • Daniel Edelstein
  • Eunice Park, Landor
  • Dave Hurlbert
  • Deborah Schatten, Brandese
  • Frank Binney
  • Jay Jurisich, Igor
  • Jonathan Littman, Simmer Branding Studio
  • Lisa Awrey
  • Marc Hershon, Simmer Branding Studio
  • Maria Cypher,Catchword
  • Mark Gunnion
  • Marty Neumeier, Neutron LLC
  • Nan Budinger, Metaphor
  • Nancy Friedman, Wordworking
  • Reed Kirk Rahlmann
  • Sandra Lee Messer
  • Shannon De Jong
  • Steve Cecil, Wherewords
  • Steve Manning, Igor
  • Steve Price, Lexicon
  • Susan Manning
  • Susan Carp, Imagineering
  • Tate Linden, Stoked Brands

[ More posts about | More blogs about naming ] [ More posts about | More blogs about company names ] [ More about company naming ]

Furnulum pani nolo

We are always interested in what other branding agencies have to say about naming:

When your customers read your ad, look at your business card or browse your web site, a conversation is initiated. And that conversation begins when they first hear or see your company name. Surprisingly, the name is one of the most under utilized, challenging and yet possibly the most evoking element of a brand. A good name or tag line isn’t about a good idea. Vocal brand expression announces and ignites your Brand Verve™, engages your customers, positions and differentiates your company and becomes the catalyst that resonates your message.

The name of the naming company that brings you this thoughtful paragraph on the importance of a company name? Check it out.

This company also lays claim to as many proprietary processes as we’ve seen, including Voice Catalyst™. Visual Cue™, Brand Verve™, Evocative Ambiance™. Brand ROI™, “Brand Irresistibility™, and Brand Developer™.

At least they have a catchty domain to help smooth things out. Imagine giving this out over the phone.

This is either one of the better parody sites we’ve seen — or not. It gets harder and harder to tell.

[ More posts about | More blogs about naming ] [ More posts about | More blogs about company names ]

« Home | industry insider


previous »