Jelly Belly Naming Gig - Yum!

I've been chasing Jelly Belly for the past year, trying to get a bite of their naming biz. (Always a good excuse to hang out at their booth at the Fancy Food Show, and my advertising students loved going on a field trip to their factory in Fairfield.) All that persistence paid off and we've been asked to help generate some new product names for them. Pinch me.

Namer Party Gossip

The first annual Bay Area's namers' summit was held at the Eat My Words party pad on Tuesday, February 13, 2007. Sponsored by Igor and Eat My Words, the event was a smashing success. So much juicy gossip was exchanged, but I am under NDA so you won't be hearing it from me. Attendees included hotshots from Landor, Catchword, Lexicon and more. More scandalous photos posted in the official party album. If you missed the fun, lick the screen to taste the menu...

SPECIALTY DRINKS

• iTini (Apple martinis - get it?)
• Mother Pucker (a lemon drop with a cooler name)
• Neopolitan (what we call a Cosmo around here)

FOOD (by Chef Pelle)

• 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 with 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

See you all next year. And remember, if you don't come, we'll talk about you.

No More Copywriting! 100% names & taglines

In my 23 year career, I have penned enough ad headlines, brochures, websites, and food packaging copy for the words to wrap around the earth six times. (Spaces included.) From Microsoft to Mighty Dog, I have done it all. So when California Cooler chose another writer's "romance copy" over mine, it was just the excuse I needed to break-up with my copywriting clients. As most of you know, as I landed more and more naming gigs, writing volumes of copy became less and less appetizing to me. Sure, writing about nutritionally void food was a blast. "Hey kids, how 'bout some ooey gooey Cinnayums!" But when clients tapped me to wax poetic about serious food, like wine (snore) and organics (snore), it sucked. My first hint of this was working on Seeds of Change and being forced to write really sappy things like, "we nourish our bodies." That's just not me. You will never find me at Whole Foods. Where you will find me is at Pizza Hut in every Americanized place in the world including Amsterdam, Bangkok, Vienna and Egypt (not the Pizza Hut overlooking the Sphinx - the one in downtown Cairo near the Victoria Hotel). Junk food, Baby! That's me. And my junk food is names and taglines. That's what I binge on. So from now on, I vow to never string more than 6 words together to sell a product or service, other than Eat My Words. (BTW, after tossing around some new names for my naming business, including Binge and Alexicon, I decided to stick with Eat My Words. Steve Manning of Igor and Anthony Shore of Landor gave it the thumbs up. Okay, you can't eat robots. But Eat My Consumer Electronics wasn't nearly as fun.)

I'll continue keep my super fun copywriting website on life support because I can't bear to unplug it.

Our Household Name Makes a Clean Sweep

No less than 48 hours after my Robot-naming marathon, (remember Botabing?), I landed another robot naming project - this time from Home Robots in Mountain View, CA who needed a new name for their company and furturistic product. Fast forward three weeks... they selected incredibly cool names. We can't let the cat out of the vacuum cleaner bag until September when they launch (and we quadruple our fees). Thanks to Steve Manning at Igor for giving us the ammo to help the client evaluate and select the best name. And to Cori Constantine and Anthony Shore of Landor, for being our cheerleaders.

Namer Convention at Eat My Words

Eat My Words and Igor are hosting a namer party/reunion/gossip fest at the Eat My Words party pad next week. We invited every namer in the Bay Area, and just about all of them are converging here to tell everyone how successful they are. In addition to the professional namers, a professional mind-reader will mingle with the guests and steal their ideas for me and the Bad Boys of Igor, since we don't have any ideas of our own. We're also spiking drinks with truth serum (more commonly known as sodium pentothal), to get namers to spill their guts and reveal closely guarded patented processes.

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
Beth Gerber, Gerber Creative
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, Mark Gunnion Names
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, Stokefire

Stay tuned for a full report...