category: name changes
Igor East’s Managing Director John Clutterbuck (left) poses with our new Massachusetts crew on May 5, opening day:
Remember, “It’s Igor East for all of your naming and sintered metal needs.”
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
.. but they still can’t name to save their ass.
However, that is a nice pic of Anthony Shore on the hompage. And as hard as it is to believe ladies, he is straight and available (Post-ops considered).
Anth’s interests include phlebotomy, Harry Potter and calf massages (we forgot to ask which definition of “calf” he intended).
If in a vulnerable moment you do find yourself in bed with Landor on your next naming project, be safe, use a mental dam.
Should you wake up and realize you’ve been badly screwed by a “full service
agency”, there is always Plan B or Plan B.
But for those looking for a really spectacular hump, there is no substitute for Plan A.
Buzzing around the blogosphere, there’s an interesting post about the evolution of tech companies’ logos that caught our attention with this story about the Nokia logo.
In 1865, Knut Fredrik Idestam established a wood-pulp mill in Tampere, south-western Finland. It took on the name Nokia after moving the mill to the banks of the Nokianvirta river in the town of Nokia. The word “Nokia” in Finnish, by the way, means a dark, furry animal we now call the Pine Marten weasel.
The modern company we know as the Nokia Corporation was actually a merger between Finnish Rubber Works (which also used a Nokia brand), the Nokia Wood Mill, and the Finnish Cable Works in 1967.
Before focusing on telecommunications and cell phones, Nokia produced paper products, bicycle and car tires, shoes, television, electricity generators, and so on.
Source: about-nokia.com
Recently, Nokia evolved its naming and branding strategy, as well, with evocative product names, such as Luna and Arte and Evolve.
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.
Sometimes things are perfect.
This is almost a good article on company and product names, except Igor is interviewed. Via yesterday’s Sacramento Bee.
Igor’s own Andy Valvur on NPR this morning.
The rabbit hole is open for business. Via The Washington Post:
Many tech companies tend to follow two naming strategies these days, says Anthony Shore, global director of naming and writing at Landor Associates, a San Francisco design company: the “nonsense” name (Joost) and names that use familiar-but-misspelled words (Flickr).
Shore, for one, likes neither strategy: “It just feels like they’re throwing in the towel. It’s easy to find an existing word and drop out a letter. It’s easy to come up with arbitrary sounds, or to just add an ‘oo.’ It’s far more difficult to come up with names with real words that have meanings and connections with people.”
Yup, that’s Landor, as in the creators of names like Uniqa and Solutia. I write this post with a heavy heart, as Anthony Shore is a good friend of mine. All right, was a good friend of mine. And okay, I have no heart.
Via the Pittsburgh Business Times:
Dick Corp. restructuring brings new name, new owner into fold [sic]
Dick Corp., the region’s largest construction company, is planning a restructuring that will bring a new name to the family-owned firm and give a nonfamily member an ownership stake.
Instead of carrying the last name of co-chairmen David and Douglas Dick, whose family has owned Dick Corp. for more than 80 years, the firm is expected to introduce a new name, DCK Worldwide LLC, within the next few weeks, according to Nadine Lee, Dick Corp.’s marketing manager.
DCK stands for “Diversified Construction Knowledge,” according to an e-mail sent by a Dick Corp. executive to members of the local construction community. The e-mail also included an attachment with a new company logo. [entire article]
Nice spin, but “It’s a shorter Dick” would have sufficed.
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 ]
Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP, an international law firm with approximately 600 attorneys in nine key markets, announced this week that the firm will now be known simply as “Thelen” for branding purposes. “It rhymes with wheelin’,” says The Wall Street Journal Law Blog.
Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner had well-laid plans to rechristen itself with the shorter and catchier “Thelen” but was held up by a Korean cybersquatter. The marketing move, which launched Monday, was threatened by the distant owner of the “thelen.com” domain name. But if there’s one thing a Web entrepreneur should know, it’s this: Don’t register a domain name of a 600-lawyer law firm and expect nothing to happen. “We did get pretty heavy-handed with him,” says Thelen partner Robert Weikert. [via Law.com]
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Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 - 10:54am |
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