This year marks the tenth anniversary of Agent Smart’s death, and consequently the ninth anniversary of when “schwing” stopped being associated with namers. He was our Austin Powers, our Keith Richards, our Richard Branson. Most of the official record seems to have disappeared from the Web. We found only a brief account of his death:

John Smart, unarmed, shot to death on Oct. 6, 1998 when police fired at least 13 rounds into his Mercedes convertible.

That was a late model Mercedes convertible. According to published reports at the time, he was stopped in San Francisco (our fair city) for suspicion of either soliciting a prostitute or drugs or both. Police said that Smart tried to run them down, at which point his legend was eternalized. For a full, rollicking year afterwards, namers of every ilk had to add extra memory to their Palm Pilots just to handle the overflow from their social calendars.

But that equity has faded, and it’s time for another high-ranking naming superstar from a big San Francisco shop to go out in a blaze of glory. We’d happily volunteer, if we thought Igor would rate better than a small mention on page eight of the San Francisco Chronicle. No, it must be someone from a page one agency, an agency like Landor. Any takers? Anthony?

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.

Charlie Wrench, Chief Executive Officer of Landor, said, “Over the course of Anthony’s career with Landor, he has shown nothing more than absolute passion for his work and an increasing determination to transform Landor’s worldwide naming network into the most accomplished and catalytic group in our industry. I trust that in just a few years time, this goal will be reached and Landor will be recognized as the world’s leading naming network.”

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.

Though they weren’t invited to “Get In On It” themselves, many Baltimore advertising experts are keen on the city’s new slogan to be unveiled on Wednesday at the Hippodrome.

“Get In On It” is the city’s new tagline developed by San Francisco’s Landor Associates on behalf of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. The nine-month, $500,000 branding campaign was met with resistance from some members of the Baltimore advertising community who thought a local agency ought to have been selected to craft the campaign.

Though some advertising executives said that a hasty reading of the tagline might make it easily confused with an invitation to “Get It On,” many thought the slogan was provocative.

Yes, “Get it on” would have been provocative, but then the slogan would have cost 167k per word, which was more than Baltimore had budgeted.

Says Blandor the Imponderable: “B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!, B’more!”

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