Welcome to Igor's Naming and Branding Meta Blog,
aggregating posts from the other blogs we publish – Snark
Hunting and Wordlab – along
with occasional notes from Igor's lab.
If you thought a boogie board was a salt-water vessel that lets you skim the waves, think again. Improv Electronics’ Boogie Board is a pressure-sensitive tablet that uses a watch battery for power. It’s like a digital blackboard!
The Reflex LCD doesn’t need any power to keep the scribbles and drawings on the screen, with the watch battery only being put into use when the screen is erased. The watch battery will last for 50,000 erases, which makes the $29.97 board cost 15 times less for each erase than a normal sheet of paper. It’s ideal for kids, or perhaps artists who care about the long-term saving associated with the Boogie Board.
The centerpiece of CityCenter — the Aria Resort & Casino — will open Wednesday, marking a day of grand opening celebrations for the $8.5 billion project…
…The 4,004-room resort and casino will feature more than 150,000 square feet of gaming space, a 215,000-square-foot pool area with 50 cabanas and an 80,000-square-foot spa, the largest among MGM Mirage properties.
The resort also will include 10 bars and lounges, and 16 restaurants. Aria will be home to Cirque du Soleil’s newest show, “Viva Elvis,” which takes guests on a trip through Elvis Presley’s life and music, with first performances beginning Friday.
Until Wednesday, VIPs and company executives will be testing the waters at Aria, ensuring the resort is ready for its first public guests.
One of the funniest aspects of alleged naming & branding firm Landor, is the ridiculous rationale they cite for the work they produce. Oftentimes they will, with capricious authority, justify a design based on what certain colors “mean” or “communicate”. These “reasons” become all the more comical when parroted by the officers of their most recent victim.
Landor’s latest for a financial company is a re-worked logo. Fiserve’s Chief Executive Jeffery Yabuki, performs the squawk of shame for the Journal Sentinel:
The new logo, which is the word fiserv. – with a period – is orange because it’s different from the common industry logo color of blue and “has a certain heat and energy to it, but not the kind of danger you perceive when you see red,” Yabuki said.
No red menace here.
Red bad. Red is color of Danger. Danger bad for financial company image.
Unless of course you can sell it to another financial client. From the bowels of the Landor site:
Landor created an identity and retail space for HSBC Direct. The use of white communicates the simplicity of the brand, while red projects a contemporary attitude.
Don't be alarmed, it's just HSBC Direct's Landorian luminosity.
Landor founder, Walter Landor gazing inappropriately at his half-son, Blandor.
Says Blandor the Imponderable: “I fondly recall Poppy and I attending the semi-annual wisdom tooth convention. As we sat on our haunches, grooming each other and eating our sack lunch of turkey biscotti and marshmallow toast, we would randomly jump up and shout, “Wottle up the bull throttle!”. We would then travel the 3 hours home, in complete silence, until our arrival at Mandible Station.”
Are your company or product name brainstorming attempts long on storm and short on brains? Igor has over 18,000 brains in stock, ready to help you name whatever needs naming — most have very low mileage, are hardly ever driven during the week, and are used only sparingly on weekends to scan refrigerator contents and such. Our collection of brains can be picked through at the Wordlab Wordboard, our free naming and branding brainstorming forum. Jump in and pick the brains!
Tips for picking a brain:
1. Do not pick if the skin is too green–it’s not ripe yet.
2. The brain should be viscous and phlegmatic, yet hold up to a good thumping. Not too firm, not too soft.
3. The end that was twisted from the brain stem should be pliable when you poke your thumb through the outer membrane. If you can’t break the membrane with your fingernail, the brain was picked prematurely.
4. Smell is the most reliable indicator of freshness.
The viable bit of warm and snuggly insurance company AIG has been spun-off and dubbed “Chartis”. A bad name? Well, yes. But that is just what they needed. Sometimes a terrible name is the perfect name. In today’s Insurance Journal, a so-called naming expert spouts off:
According to AIG, Chartis derives from the Greek word for map, which the company said underscores the company’s 90-year history as a global insurance pioneer.
While AIG is apparently not alone in liking the name, is Chartis a name to remember?
Perhaps not, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One naming expert says the new corporate moniker is neither memorable nor snappy — and in that regard the name Chartis is perfect for what AIG wants to do, which is to distance itself from its old company and not draw a lot of attention to itself while doing so.
“It’s the kind of name that’s in one ear and out the other,” said Steven Manning, managing director for Igor, a well-known international naming and branding agency based in San Francisco. “It blends into the woodwork, which is just what the assignment was.”
Even the logo, a compass, is predictable, Manning noted.
Manning likened the move to Enron’s adopting Prisma Energy and Phillip Morris choosing Altria.
“It’s about breaking the association with AIG, like going into witness protection,” he said.
Chartis Insurance is using www.chartisinsurance.com for its Web site. Chartis Group uses chartis.com and chartisgroup.com.
Chartis Insurance, headquartered in New York, of course, has quite a head start on other companies picking a name. It includes the profitable AIG/AIU Commercial Insurance, Foreign General Insurance and Private Client Group operations. It had a combined statutory surplus of $32.1 billion worldwide at year-end 2008 and more than 40 million clients around the globe.
AIG/AIU hopes that the financially strong Chartis will be recognized for its success apart from the AIG name, which has been tainted by actions out of its London financial products unit that eventually resulted in a U.S. federal government bailout. The P/C units now being branded as Chartis did not get into trouble and did not require bailout funds.
As we gleefully pranced and flounced about, celebrating the 250 thousandth download of the Igor Naming Guide; we got a complaint. At 115 pages, the ultimate free, how-to resource for naming companies and products, had gotten too long.
Having nothing better to do, we responded. The naming guide is now available in two different lengths: soul-crushing (115 pages) and moderately-irritating (26 pages).
tablet that uses a watch battery for power. It’s like a digital blackboard!
