Igor Naming Agency is an American naming agency. Based in

Sausalito, California Sausalito (Spanish language, Spanish for "small willow grove") is a city in Marin County, California, Marin County, California, United States, located southeast of Marin City, California, Marin City, south-southeast of San Rafael, California ...

, Igor is known for its "almost militant embrace" of using real and natural-sounding words in naming. Among others, the company has named Gogo Inflight, ''

Cutthroat Kitchen ''Cutthroat Kitchen'' is an American cooking show hosted by Alton Brown that aired on the Food Network from August 11, 2013 to July 19, 2017. It features four chefs competing in a three-round elimination cooking competition. The contestants face ...

'',

TruTV TruTV (stylized as truTV) is an American basic cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel primarily broadcasts comedy, docusoaps and reality shows. The channel was originally launched in 1991 as Court TV, a network that focu ...

, the Aria Resort, and consumer products for

The North Face The North Face is an American outdoor recreation products company. The North Face produces outdoor clothing, footwear, and related equipment. Founded in 1968 to supply climbers, the company's logo draws inspiration from Half Dome, in Yosemite ...

and

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

History

Igor Naming Agency was founded by Jay Jurisich and Steve Manning, who met while working at the Sausalito naming agency, A Hundred Monkeys. In addition to naming, Jurisich and Manning worked with agency founder Danny Altman to create The Shinolas, an annual award given to the year's worst brand name. Judged by Ben Cohen of

Ben and Jerry's Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc., trading and commonly known as Ben & Jerry's, is an American company that manufactures ice cream, frozen yogurt, and sorbet. Founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, the company went from a single ice cream p ...

Jerry Harrison Jeremiah Griffin Harrison (born February 21, 1949) is an American songwriter, musician, producer, and entrepreneur. He began his professional music career as a member of the cult band the Modern Lovers before becoming keyboardist and guitarist ...

of the

Talking Heads Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991.Talkin ...

, Bob Camp, co-creator of ''

Ren & Stimpy ''The Ren & Stimpy Show'' (also known as ''Ren & Stimpy'') is an American animated television series created by Canadian animator John Kricfalusi. Originally produced by Spümcø for Nickelodeon, the series aired from August 11, 1991, to Decemb ...

'' and others, Shinolas were awarded to products including the

Oldsmobile Achieva The Oldsmobile Achieva is a front-wheel drive compact sedan and coupe that was introduced by Oldsmobile for the 1992 model year. The Achieva was based on the GM N-body platform, which it also shared with its siblings the Pontiac Grand Am and Buick ...

, and Cruex, a cream to soothe itches. Jurisich and Manning left A Hundred Monkeys in 2002 to co-found Igor Naming Agency. In addition to established companies including

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporatio ...

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" ...

, and

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

, Igor worked extensively with companies founded following the dot-com downturn of 2000. They advised against the industry-standard practices of using invented words, convening focus groups for market research, and choosing company and product names based on the availability of a

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

. In late 2002, Igor launched ''Snark Hunting,'' a blog about company names, product names and the impact of naming and branding on popular culture. As more blogs related to branding began to appear online, ''Fast Company'' wrote: "The best stuff comes from ''Snark Hunting,''" highlighting a post which "riffed on The Gap's new Forth & Towne store concept for middle-aged women, noting that it uses an ampersand rather than risk the acronym FAT." In 2004, Jurisich and Manning co-wrote ''Building the Perfect Beast: The Igor Naming Guide.'' Regularly updated, it is available as a free download. It has been used as a resource in academic settings as well as by

B2C Direct-to-consumer (DTC) or business-to-consumer (B2C) is the business model of selling products directly to customers and thereby bypassing any third-party retailers, wholesalers, or any other middlemen. Direct-to-consumer sales are usually tr ...

companies, startups, and incubators. Jurisich left Igor in 2011 to found Zinzin, also a naming agency. Manning has served as CEO and managing director since Jurisich's departure.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Igor Naming Agency

''Snark Hunting'' archives
2002 establishments in California Companies based in Marin County, California Branding companies of the United States