LG Thrill and Marquee: Smartphone naming gets smarter

With a huge appetite for evocative names based on real English language words, mobile carriers have put OEMs in an difficult position: to locate something ownable in an increasingly picked-over namescape. The resulting names, while resourceful, sometimes also come off as a bit ludicrous—to the endless delight of critics in industry pubs. (How many 10 Worst lists can you find?)

LG Electronics asked Applied Storytelling to address the naming bottleneck at several levels, from assessing the “state of naming” category-wide to refining LG’s own process to actually developing names for LG’s newest devices and technologies.

Thrill and Marquee are the first outcomes to go live from this ongoing effort. Debuting in 3Q 2011, the LG Thrill™ 4G is the first glasses-free 3D smartphone from AT&T. The name has enjoyed ready acceptance as a fitting cue for 3D-and-more capabilities the phone delivers.

Likewise, the LG Marquee, marketed through Sprint, has set the stage for a story around the smartphone’s ultrabright 4-inch Nova display as well as for its sleek, lightweight fusion of fashion and technology.

Ultimately, we see a world in which carriers and manufacturers come together to develop more truly brand-centric naming solutions. Until that day, we’re pleased to provide LG with a naming platform that supports an ambitious product roadmap while responding to the realities of smartphone naming today.

RealD: from startup to stock offering

Working with startups requires special attention—and can provide unique satisfaction. Last week, we celebrated the kind of milestone we hope to see with every startup client when RealD went live on as RLD on the NYSE after a successful public offering that raised US $200 million.

We started with RealD when it was just the founders sitting in two chairs in an otherwise empty room, named them and helped them at successive stages of growth.

Even better than the pleasure of seeing the RealD logo across the screen at every new 3D movie is the unique level of trust that develops over the course of working together from those early stage days.

The Toledo Region: Positioned for growth in the New Manufacturing Economy

Live, learn, work and play attributes set to drive economic development

At a time of increasingly intense competition between cities and regions for talent, funding and resources, a broad consortium of companies and organizations representing the Toledo Region has adopted a platform communicating the region’s unique appeal from an economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism perspective. Applied Storytelling led the ten-month initiative.

“For those of us who have a stake in this region’s well-being, its strengths have always been clear,” says Joe Napoli, President & General Manager of the Toledo Mud Hens and a member of the Toledo Region Committee. “Until now, however, we literally haven’t been on the same page in communicating those strengths. Now we have the ability to do so.”

A consortium committed to adoption

The newly defined regional brand was introduced to local media and a group of more than 100 business leaders and local media on June 16. The committee is currently developing a plan for large-scale implementation. Significantly, each of the committee member organizations has committed to integrating key messages of the brand platform into their own communications.

Adopting a best practices approach

As part of the development effort, Applied Storytelling conducted a series of six community forums throughout the region, convened six work sessions with regional opinion leaders and conducted a public survey that generated several hundred responses. At the same time, Toledo-based Great Lakes Marketing conducted a research effort geared to gathering opinion and insight from more than 100 regional business leaders.

“From the outset, the committee was committed to pursuing a best practices approach,” says Dave Nolan, President of Destination Toledo, the region’s tourism and convention marketing organization, who convened the committee in early 2009. “We knew that the keys to widespread adoption and long-term success rested in an effort that was as inclusive and transparent as possible.”

Unified story, differentiated positionings

The communications platform developed by Applied Storytelling included distinct positionings, messages and storylines for economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism, with economic development identified as the lead component of the region’s overall brand story.

“On one hand, the region will benefit from a cohesive story that is emotionally engaging and easy to understand,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “On the other, the days of one-size-fits all messaging to serve the many agendas of an entity as complex and diverse as an entire region are long gone.”

Competitive research validated the committee’s decision to focus overall brand positioning around leadership in the New Manufacturing Economy—manufacturing enabled by digital technologies, sophisticated systems and processes, and a highly-trained workforce. In addition to being highly differentiating, the clarity and sharp definition of this positioning reflect a level of brand discipline that relatively few regions have been able to achieve.

Creating an open, accessible content hub

The Toledo Region brand platform will be placed on the initiative’s initial web site, www.toledoregionstory.com, together with other background materials. Initial implementation plans call for developing a robust site as a dynamic communications hub and content-rich resource for any individual or organization seeking to integrate the region’s story into their own brand marketing initiatives.

Applied Storytelling adds Russell Banks & Gail Brackett to lead Los Angeles office

Applied Storytelling, a brand consulting firm with offices in Berkeley, CA and Detroit, MI has added two senior brand communications experts—and long-time collaborators—to open Applied Storytelling’s new full-time office in Los Angeles.

Beginning this month, Russell Banks is now Director, Brand Engagement and Gail Brackett is Director, Brand Strategy for Applied Storytelling. Most recently with the Los Angeles office of Gensler, the world’s largest architecture and design firm, Banks and Brackett led the Brand Design business practice firm-wide. While at Gensler, Banks and Brackett oversaw multi-disciplinary teams in brand initiatives for MGM Mirage CityCenter (Las Vegas), The Beverly Hilton and the City of Calgary, among others.

Previously, the two also teamed for several years at the Los Angeles office of strategic brand and design firm Siegel & Gale, directing engagements for global brands including Lexus, Technicolor, American Express and Herbalife.”

“We’ve enjoyed a solid decade of exciting work partnering with Russell and Gail on many of our respective firms’ most important efforts,” said Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “We know each other’s strengths and sensibilities, and we’ve put them to the test literally dozens of times.”

While strengthening the firm’s overall ability to work with clients in a range of business sectors, Banks and Brackett bring particular depth to Applied Storytelling’s growing destination brand practice and expand our firm’s brand management offering.

“Our clients have expressed a growing interest in mapping how their brand lives beyond the approved strategy,” says Matthew Kruchko, Managing Director for Applied Storytelling. “We’ve worked to continually strengthen our brand management offering to support this and now have added two new team members who are leaders in this area.”

Established in Los Angeles in 1992, Applied Storytelling has continued to maintain a strong client base in Los Angeles and Southern California more generally since relocating its main office to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004.

“Los Angeles has always been a place of inspiration and opportunity for us,” says La Brecque. “And we are delighted to be strengthening our day-to-day presence in the region once again.”

About Applied Storytelling

A leading independent brand and name development firm,  Applied Storytelling has developed corporate and product brands and corporate and product naming systems for organizations ranging from startups to top Fortune 50® companies. Dedicated to the development and refinement of new tools and methods, Applied Storytelling has also recently focused on helping clients to increase the value of their brand development initiatives by using the brand as a lens for identifying prospective business partners, new business opportunities, and additional sources of revenue.

Genoptix introduces NexCourse, a comprehensive approach to solid tumor testing

Genoptix Medical Laboratories, a specialized laboratory diagnostics company focused on delivering personalized, comprehensive assessments to community-based hematologists and oncologists, has released its first bundled set of evaluations for solid tumors under the NexCourse™ name.

According to a company spokesman, the new solid tumor offering will play a significant role in the Genoptix’s goal of expanding its customer outreach in 2010.

The company turned to Applied Storytelling to develop a comprehensive brand messaging and naming framework that included the new name.

“Like many companies, Genoptix reached a point where an organic, one-off approach to product naming would no longer suffice,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling.

“The new offering needed to be seen not only as important in its own right but also as part of a meaningful system—and an overall business strategy.”

Supplemented by external insights from Frymire & Associates (Menlo Park, CA), Applied Storytelling worked with a cross-section of company’s C-level executives and departmental leads to arrive at a new product naming and messaging solution. To succeed, the company needed to maintain the loyalty of its existing customer base as it reached out to a broader array of oncologists.

“In the oncology diagnostics space, as in so many other categories of service business, the pressures towards commoditization are tremendous,” says Matthew Kruchko, Managing Director of Applied Storytelling. “Those pressures can increase even further as a company diversifies its offering.”

In the life or death battle between diversification and commoditization, companies must often find ways to port their brand’s core strengths into their new offerings, Kruchko adds. Carefully considered messages, together with a compelling, credible, brand story, can play a vital role in making this translation possible.

Spring Design’s dual display Alex enters the fast-growing eReader marketplace.

Winner of best-of-show at CES 2010, Spring Design’s Alex Reader has a lot going for it: It’s the only dual screen reader based on Google’s Android platform to fully integrate web browsing and reading. From the outset, it gives readers access to over one million Google books. And it will be heavily promoted in the US through Borders.

Of course, Alex needs a lot going for it, too. While hardly mature, the eReader marketplace now features entries from all of the major players, with several lesser-known contenders weighing in as well.

Heading the new reader’s brand, name and identity development, San José, California-based Liquid Agency engaged longtime collaborator Applied Storytelling to provide the messaging framework to support the eReader at launch.

Geared to bring clarity and consistency to communications that must be perfectly tuned to create a space for the reader amidst the din of the burgeoning category, messaging focused on Alex’s target: the “real reader” (versus, say, the skimmer)—the individual who reads as a matter of habit, and a way of life.

Beyond individual messages building on the eReader’s distinctive features and benefits, Applied Storytelling also crafted a Real Reader Credo, which begins with the premise of “reading unlimited” and states a belief “in the power of the curious mind unfettered.”

Sample headlines and copy concepts, a common feature of Applied Storytelling messaging deliverables, also gave a boost to pre-launch creative.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County raises the profile of its first-ever capital campaign.

Seeking “to revitalize and expand…so that it may live up to its potential as the region’s indispensable hub for connecting people and nature”, the Natural History Museum has embarked on a capital campaign to re-imagine key exhibits, restore landmark architectural features and inspire visitors and others to make deeper and more meaningful connections to a changing world.

Teaming with Los Angeles-based KBDA, which developed the museum’s overall brand platform in 2008, Applied Storytelling first developed the campaign’s communications framework and has since gone on to collaborate on communications geared to securing contributors as well as inspiring the public. These have included concept development and writing for an overview video that first aired in August on the museum’s YouTube channel as well as an awareness campaign displayed throughout the museum itself. Additional communications are forthcoming.

The public will begin to see the first enhancements to the museum made possible by the campaign later this year, with the effort slated for completion by 2013.

The museum’s NHMNext fundraising initiative comes at a time when charitable giving to cultural institutions has declined, a casualty of the current economic downturn. More broadly, museums are asking hard questions about how to remain compelling, vital institutions in an increasingly media-driven and digital landscape. In this landscape, a strategic approach to communications becomes even more vital to a campaign’s success.

“Ultimately, the museum experience itself must engage many different types of visitor who come to the museum for many different reasons,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “But the campaign story has a vital role to play in exciting the imagination—and, to donors, communicating lasting value—long before that experience takes shape.”

Guided by criteria established at the assignment’s outset, the campaign messaging framework builds on the museum’s own overall mission and strategic plan. Messaging elements include a campaign vision, mission and promise as well as supporting value propositions and a call to action. Applied Storytelling also developed the NHM Next campaign name andJoin the evolution slogan.