PROJECT: Re-name the online education service company Coursekit to create a broader, higher-level, evocative brand that will become synonymous with learning.

THE NAME: Lore is knowledge acquired through education or experience, shared between people and passed down across generations. Literally the body of knowledge, especially of a traditional, anecdotal, or popular nature, on a particular subject; folklore. Learning, knowledge, or erudition that transcends book learning.

POSITIONING: Coursekit began life in the fall of 2011 as an online course management service for college students and professors. Offering a experience far superior to all existing course management products, Coursekit was a big hit, and its growth and word-of-mouth buzz has been tremendous. But the company’s mission was greater than just the nuts and bolts of course management; it is about the bigger idea of sharing and transmitting knowledge itself between people. The name Coursekit was too narrow, linear, and failed to rise above the goods and services being offered, which is a requirement of powerful brands with full audience engagement.

Joseph Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of Coursekit, hired Zinzin to create the perfect name for his Big Idea, and we delivered with Lore, a transformational name for a transformational company. Here’s how Lore announced their new name to the world: “Coursekit started as a toolkit for courses. Courses became communities of learners. We’ve seen that people learn by sharing. Our mission is to connect the world’s learners and educators. We need a name that reflects our ambitions. Lore means knowledge shared between people. That’s what we are about.”

Simple, direct, and to the point. The company also created an advanced blog to function as “a discovery engine for meaningful knowledge, fueled by cross-disciplinary curiosity,” which is all about exploring knowledge. The added bonus of the name Lore, after having secured the exact-match .com domain name, is that this discovery engine, edited by Maria Popova of Brain Pickings fame, is called Explore, and can be found at the  subdomain exp.lore.com.

Here’s a powerful bit of knowledge: Lore is going to revolutionize the higher education and learning experience. Pass it along.

VISIT: Lore | Explore

PROJECT: Name Shaw’s next generation telecommunications network, offering high-definition television, on-demand programming, high-speed Internet and advanced telephone capabilities.

THE NAME: Derived from the prefix “exo-,” meaning “outside of” (exoskeleton, exosystem). Shaw Exo is short, sweet, cool, futuristic, and works great as a graphic “bug” on TV, computer and mobile device screens.

POSITIONING: Shaw Communications, the leading cable television and Internet provider in Canada, wanted a name for its next generation television and communications network that was short, powerful, and different from the competition. Exo deftly delivers, positioning the product as beyond the usual, beyond expectations, beyond what has been done before in this space, and “outside the box,” both figuratively and literally (the TV cable box). The name is aspirational and future-forward:

“Shaw Exo is a promise that we will continue to innovate, lead, and provide the latest in technology and entertainment offerings to customers,” said Peter Bissonnette, president of Shaw Communications. “With Shaw Exo, the power of our network allows us to continue delivering the products and services that our customers are looking for.”

“Above and beyond” the parameters of the competition and most definitely outside the box, Exo is the perfect name for Shaw’s network of the future. Available now.

VISIT: Shaw Exo | Shaw Exo 2012 Super Bowl commercial

PROJECT: A revolutionary new wi-fi service for commercial aircraft.

THE NAME: From “go-go” — full of energy, vitality, or daring; stylish, modern, or up-to-date.

POSITIONING: The name had to be memorable, fun, short, universally known, be available for trademark and easy to pronounce globally, and map to both the travel experience and the Internet connectivity experience.

VISIT: Gogo

PROJECT: New name for Nokia’s top-of-the-line 8800 mobile phone.

THE NAME: State of the art, a work of art.

POSITIONING: The new Arte and Sapphire Arte, mobile phones that are truly works of art, among the most beautiful consumer objects available.

VISIT: Arte

PROJECT: New solid state drive (SSD) product and product family name.

THE NAME: A evocative astronomical term meaning “one of several hundred known celestial objects, generally believed to be rapidly rotating neutron stars, that emit pulses of radiation, esp. radio waves, with a high degree of regularity.”

POSITIONING: Seagate needed a name for a new product family that captured its futuristic essence and conveyed key concepts of speed, small footprint, power, capacity, durability and reliability. Pulsar is the perfect metaphorical name for this product family.

VISIT: Pulsar

PROJECT: A defense contractor that developed vision systems for soldiers, police officers and firefighters, needed a new company name to reflect broader product offerings.

THE NAME: The earliest, original and most elemental state.

POSITIONING: The company provides simple interfaces to complex technology with a minimalist design. This results in ultra high-tech systems that work with the operator in an intuitive, organic and primal way. Primordial was the best word to capture all of those ideas in an interesting, never-been-done way, provide the company with clear separation from their competitors in the defense industry, and be a strong competitor in the consumer market.

VISIT: Primordial

PROJECT: Name a new sales/CRM software platform. So successful was the chosen name it ultimately became the new company name too.

THE NAME: Overwhelming success (a landslide victory); great energy; a force of nature; powerful and unstoppable.

POSITIONING: Maps to software and service that prepares you for a shifting sales landscape, setting you up for overwhelming success, a Landslide victory over your sales quota. The name has great depth and multiple meanings; the negative meaning adds friction, which helps make the name even more engaging and memorable.

VISIT: Landslide

PROJECT: Name a new advanced-technology hearing aid and audio products company.

THE NAME: An interjection that’s an expression of wonder, and a play on “sounds.”

POSITIONING: An early appearance of Zounds in Shakespeare’s King John (1623), act II, scene 1, line 466: “Zounds! I was never so bethumpd with words since I first call’d my brothers father dad!” That certainly maps to an advanced hearing aid product that allows the hearer to process words in a crowded room in a way they were never able to before. Zounds is an exciting name that is by definition an “expression of wonder,” that when combined with the obvious play on “sounds” and the oblique allusion to German hi-tech engineering, makes it the perfect name for this company.

VISIT: Zounds

PROJECT: Name for a new eco-friendly mobile phone.

THE NAME: Move boldly into the future; transformational; a call to action.

POSITIONING: Nokia wanted a name that would describe the environmental benefit of this particular model, but also serve as a rallying cry for environmental awareness both within the company and among consumers.

VISIT: Evolve

PROJECT: Name a new personal and group information manager web application.

THE NAME: Twine ties all your information together.

POSITIONING: Web 3.0, AKA the “semantic web,” promises the next generation of web intelligence and advanced data mining, connectivity, and meaning. The mission of gathering all this information and “tying it all together” led to Twine, the perfect name for this new kind of information manager. An elegant word for a deceptively simple physical object, Twine is also a verb meaning,”to twist together; intertwine; interweave.” Twine it, Twine me, Twining all my information together.

PROJECT: Name a new set-top box optimized for recording high-definition movies and TV programs.

THE NAME: A Showcase for content.

POSITIONING: The name Showcase elegantly maps both to the experience of “showcasing” selected content by recording and archiving, as well as the functional attributes of being a “case” for holding “shows.”

VISIT: Showcase

PROJECT: New company name for The Training Camp, a UK and Germany-based IT training company that decided to go out on its own and become independent of the American company that shared the same name.

THE NAME: A concept, idea or person that challenges outmoded beliefs and methods.

POSITIONING: Going independent required a new name, and the company wanted a powerful name that captured its spirit as philosophical and tactical disruptors within the IT training industry, pioneers of an intense, immersive, accelerated approach to IT learning that is far ahead of its competitors in the European market. The new name had to work specifically in the UK and Germany, as well as across the whole of the European IT community that the company serves. Firebrand perfectly suits the company’s philosophy and the way it delivers industry-leading training.

VISIT: Firebrand

PROJECT: Naming a revolutionary new advertising display media.

THE NAME: Zeno of Elea was the famous Ancient Greek philosopher (circa 495-430 BC) who formulated paradoxes that defended the belief that motion and change are illusory.

POSITIONING: This startup company required a name with global trademark availability, reach and pronounce-ability. They created a unique new advertising display medium that delivers moving ads to moving people. Still frames from short video clips move optically with the viewer, following and responding individually to each and every viewer, without the use of any electronics or moving parts. The perceived “motion” is illusory. A paradox. A Zeno box. Zeno is the perfect name for an enigmatic paradox of vision, a uniquely personal interactive experience coming soon to a public space near you.

VISIT: Zeno

PROJECT: Naming a breakthrough new “open MR” product. Open MR devices are not fully enclosed, and therefore are more comfortable for patients (less noise and confinement); open MR devices also have a greater imaging range than traditional, “closed” systems.

THE NAME: Emphasizing comfort, a refuge from the tumult of the usual MRI experience.

POSITIONING: The positioning goal was to highlight the idea that this device, rather than being a source of patient discomfort and physician frustration with scanning limitations, is instead a refuge from such drawbacks of the past, a haven where the physician can more accurately diagnose a patient’s medical problem without causing the patient to suffer more discomfort in the process.

VISIT: Oasis

PROJECT: Create and evocative name for the Nokia 8600 mobile phone.

THE NAME: Roman goddess of moonlight who was often represented as a mysteriously captivating beauty encircled in a soft, yet radiant light.

POSITIONING: Luna is the prefect name for this phone, with its radiant lighting effects and mysterious, otherworldly beauty.

VISIT: Luna

PROJECT: Name a new integrated XBRL software product.

THE NAME: Lots of activity coming from multiple directions.

POSITIONING: Crossfire is a powerful name that maps to the enterprise cross-functionality of this breakthrough integrated XBRL product. When corporations fire up Crossfire, they can be assured of the highest quality financial reporting every time, in full compliance with the SEC, in a user-friendly package that makes it all much easier. All of the financial activity of a large enterprise reported from points across the globe can be translated into the XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) language using Crossfire.

VISIT: Crossfire