Fritinancy

On the Visual Thesaurus: How to Name Anything

What exactly do name developers do, and how do they tackle a naming assignment? In my latest column for the Visual Thesaurus, I look at the naming process and share some tips for naming products and companies.

Full access is restricted to subscribers (so subscribe!). Here’s an excerpt:

Like a writing project, a naming project begins with research. What is being named — a company, a product, a feature, a program? Why was the company founded or the product invented? What does the name need to communicate — playfulness, security, speed, luxury, practicality? What's the competitive namescape — that is, what do rivals and partners call themselves? Who is the customer or audience — hospital managers, software developers, single parents, international travelers? Where will the name appear — website, magazine ads, T-shirts, trade-show booths, packaging? Will you require an Internet domain? Trademark protection?

Then define the personality of the company or brand. Big and serious, like a global cybersecurity company? Cute and friendly, like a children's clothing boutique? If the business is new, ask about the founders. Are they professors, gourmands, rock-climbers? What makes them tick and what turns them off? Do they share an interesting connection? I once was hired to name a startup whose founders were five brothers; “five,” “brother,” and “family” gave me lots of ideas for an initial round of creative work.

Read the rest of “How to Name Anything.”

Why I Can't Tell You My Fee (Yet)

A couple times a week, at a minimum, I get an email from someone who needs a business or product name. Sometimes the sender has seen my blog; usually he or she has plucked my name from a Google search. Ninety percent of the time the email reads, in full: “We need a name. How much do you charge?”

Now, if you’ve never worked with a professional name developer, that may seem like a reasonable question. You may imagine I have a sack of names that are all (magically) available and that I’ll pull out the one that (magically) suits your (unknown) requirements. And then I’ll send you a bill for—shazam!—$39.95.

Unfortunately, professional name development is not a magic trick. Nor is it a one-price-for-all bargain basement. Every process is different, if only in its time constraints. So before I can send you a proposal and estimate, I’ll need answers to these very fundamental questions:

When to Change a Name -- and When Not to

In some ways, naming a startup is easy: you have a blank slate and nothing but potential. Renaming an established company or product can be a trickier proposition. Your customers and employees know you by the original name, and selling them on a new name can be costly, arduous, and even alienating if it isn’t done right.

That’s why it’s important to know when to undertake a renaming project and when you’re better off focusing on other business matters. Here are some guidelines and caveats.

But That’s a Car Name!

A few years ago I was hired to name an apple. Not an Apple: an apple, the kind that grows on a tree. This particular apple was a new cultivar that needed a name to compete against Golden Delicious and Pippin and Winesap in supermarkets. My client was the growers’ group that had developed the fruit.

I presented several names, including one I thought was an especially strong candidate: Avalon. The name had an excellent and appropriate story, I told the client. It comes from Welsh afal, which means “apple.” (Etymology doesn’t always matter, but in this case it was too perfect to ignore.) In the Arthurian legends, Avalon is the island where Excalibur was forged. (Power, magic, legend: all positive attributes.) Avalon was sometimes called “the Fortunate Isle.” (Happy apples!) Add to that, I said, the fact that the word rolls deliciously off the tongue.

There was silence on the other end of the phone line. Finally, the client’s spokesman spoke:

“Avalon,” he said tentatively. “Isn’t that a car name?”

What Makes a Bad Name Bad?

I write about all kinds of names, including the bad ones. I believe every company and product deserves a distinctive, memorable name—and no company deserves a name that’s embarrassing or awkward.

But what makes a bad name bad? Well, unlike Tolstoy’s unhappy families, each bad name is not bad in its own unique way. Here are the badness patterns I see most frequently:

Counterintuitive spelling. A coined name like Nyoombl needs to be pronounced phonetically (if at all), but it isn’t—not by a long shot. Reasonable assumptions about English pronunciation dictate that Virgance be pronounced with a hard G, but it isn’t. We look at Brayola and mentally rhyme it with Crayola, but that’s not what the company wants us to do. Moral: Don’t make us work this hard. It’s a name, not a cryptography test.

Inappropriate connotation. If you know nothing about what Infegy actually does, you might deduce that it had something to do with “infamy,” “effigy,” or “infect.” When I look at Reniquity, all I see is “iniquity”—over and over again. FlubIt suggests failure, GloSmart evokes furniture polish … and those interpretations have nothing to do with the companies in question. (Don’t even get me started on Analtech.) Moral: Consult several dictionaries, not just one. Make one of them a slang dictionary. Then get some advice from someone who understands language.

Awkwardness. These are the names that put the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble or force incompatible sounds to cohabit. They’re a frequent consequence of machine-generated names, most of which simply fuse word parts into artificial blends without considering logic or ease of pronunciation. But humans can create awkward names, too: consider Herdict, Mathnasium, and AbbVie. (And see The Name Inspector for more examples.) Moral: If the name flunks the telephone test, it’s not going to inspire positive word-of-mouth.

The bandwagon effect. So many names end in -ly. So many names end in -ify. Remember, a name needs to be distinctive and memorable, and you won’t achieve those goals by doing what all the other kids are doing. Moral: Do some research into naming trends. And get a professional opinion.

What about cross-cultural naming gaffes, you may be wondering. Contrary to widespread belief, they are relatively rare. (That story about the Chevy Nova doing poorly in Spanish-speaking countries? It’s a myth.) If you’re taking your company or product global, you should certainly invest in a linguistic screen to rule out a major blunder. But, as we’ve seen, people can accept a brand name that means “cease and desist” in Swahili (Hulu) or one that suggests “oral sex” in Russian (Mondelez). The bad names I see—and I do see a lot of them—are making mischief in English, not Swahili or Thai or Malay.

Building a Better Tagline: Part 2

In Part 1 of Building a Better Tagline I gave some examples of effective taglines and listed the ways in which a tagline can support your brand. I also analyzed the elements of tagline style, including rhyme, parallel contrast, and positive ambiguity.

Now it’s time to build your better tagline. Here are my guidelines:

Building a Better Tagline: Part 1

Congratulations—you finally have a name for your company/product/organization. Take a bow, but don’t put away the thesaurus just yet.

After the name, the tagline—sometimes called the slogan* (or, if you’re in the UK, the strapline)—is the most visible language in your verbal brand. And yet taglines are too often lazily or hastily slapped together from tired formulas: A Passion for X, X Just Got Better, People Profit Performance (or Performance People Profit).

Worse, some marketing gurus have decreed that because most taglines are bad, no tagline is worth the trouble. That’s simply untrue, and “Just Do It” isn’t the only evidence.

Before I share some tips for building a better tagline—and by “better” I mean “better for your brand”—here’s a reminder of some of the ways in which a tagline can be worth the investment in time, money, and brainpower.

Seven Ways to Go Wrong with Naming

This is a post I originally wrote for How to Split an Atom, Steve Spalding’s fine blog about the intersection of technology and society. With his permission, I’m republishing it here with a few updates and modifications.

~*~

I’ve been naming products and companies since—well, let’s just say my first assignment was pre-Web. I’ve seen naming trends come and go, but some things never change. Like these common blunders, pitfalls, and wrong turns on the nomenclature trail:

1. Mistaking your mission statement for a creative brief. Yes, you want to dominate your market. Sure, you’re cool and innovative. Guess what? Your competitors say the same things. We’ll need more and different information—way different—to develop your name, because your name needs to express something unique about your business. An experienced naming consultant will ask you questions that reveal what’s really distinctive and important. (Want to know what goes into an effective naming brief? Read this.)
   
   
   
2. Expecting an overnight sensation. Want a memorable, trademarkable name next week? Let’s do a reality check. Interviews, brand analysis, creative work, domain checking: they all take time. So does the back-and-forth with you and your team. And the trademark lawyers need time to weigh in, too. Figure on five to eight weeks from start to successful finish.
   
    
3. Delegating the assignment to an engineer. That is, unless you really, really want a name like “XQ326.” No doubt s/he’s brilliant, but most likely even your smartest engineer doesn’t shine at etymology, phonetics, cross-cultural semantics, and all the other factors that go into creating meaningful names.
   
    
4. Cutting corners. Allow me to put this as succinctly as possible: good naming ain’t cheap. If you’re hoping to scrimp on your naming project—if you think you can get a great name, fast, for $129.99—consider how many times, and in how many places, your name will appear. Think about how valuable that exposure is. Then think about how silly you’ll look if the name is unpronounceable or means something unspeakable in one of your target markets. Bonus tip: There’s a lot of room between $129.99 and those six-figure naming fees the big branding agencies charge.
   
    
5. Looking for love in all the wrong places. Aha! moments are as rare in naming as they are in romance. Instead of a love match, you should be going for an arranged marriage: a name with a good background and excellent prospects. Passion fades. Find an honest, suitable name and soon enough find yourself deeply in love. Trust me. (For more about this, read my 2010 post “Forget About Love.”)
   
    
6. Focus-grouping to death. Getting to yes with your management team is a good thing. Sending the top 50 names to your entire address book isn’t. You’ll be awash in opinions, half of them snarky and the other half too subjective or uninformed to be useful. Here’s something else professional naming consultants are good at: helping you evaluate names and make decisions. Bonus tip: On the other hand, don’t leave anyone out of the decision process who has the power to cast a no vote.
    
7. Picking a name “because it was available.” Of course you want to secure a presence on the Web. But believe it or not, domain registration is actually the easy part of naming. Here’s the key point: a URL, no matter how weirdly spelled, is not a brand. And it isn’t your story. Even if you have to buy a “taken” domain, you may not have to spend a lot of money to do so. So here’s my advice: Instead of torturing the language to arrive at an “available” .com domain, concentrate on your brand story and on trademark issues. And let us—your hard-working, experienced, language-savvy naming consultants—find you a domain that fits.

That’s the bad news about corporate and product naming. The good news? With the right leadership, the creative process can be fun, stimulating, enlightening, and productive. And a whole lot less costly than a naming mistake.

How to Write a Naming Brief

A couple of years ago I published a post about the importance of writing a naming brief before you start your naming project. I thought I’d said all that needed to be said on the topic, but I continue to get queries that suggest more advice may be needed. So here are detailed guidelines for anyone (a) embarking on a do-it-yourself naming exercise or (b) planning to engage the services of a professional name developer.

Here, for starters, is what a naming brief is not:

• A naming brief is not a business plan. Your cash-flow projections and exit strategy are vitally important to your business, but they aren’t relevant to the naming exercise.
• A naming brief is not an elevator pitch. A naming brief is longer, for one thing. And it isn’t a pitch.
• A naming brief is not a design brief. Getting warmer, but a naming brief focuses on language rather than looks.

Two recommendations as you prepare to dive in:

1. Write the naming brief in the third person, even if it’s for your own company. This will help you take a step back and look objectively, even skeptically, at your own project.

2. If you’ve been using a placeholder name or a code name for your company or product, stop. Now. Instead, use “NewCo” or “NewProduct” or “XYZ” throughout the naming brief to talk about your project.

Got it? Let’s get started.

Does Creative Spelling Make a Name More Protectable?

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: Sometimes there are good reasons to alter the spelling of a name, but trademark protection is never one of them.

This persistent myth—“If we misspell the name we can get the trademark”—resurfaced this week amid the fuss over Netflix’s newly announced movies-by-mail service, Qwikster. (If you managed to miss the kerfuffle, read my post about it.) An MBA student tweeted that the kree8tive spelling of Qwikster made the name “trademarkable.” (I hope she wasn’t taught this in a marketing class.) And yesterday Brand New, the influential corporate-design blog, had this to say about Qwikster:

A silly name with such a ridiculous spelling that it makes Syfy and Cloo look like the authors of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Sure, it’s probably a breeze to trademark it but so would be Peenoz, that doesn’t mean it should be chosen.

(Emphasis added.)

Sorry, they’re both wrong.