Fritinancy

What’s a naming objective, anyway?

(Part of my Naming 101 series.)

I frequently talk with company founders and executives who need a new name but don’t have the budget for professional naming services. Because I believe that everyone deserves an effective, appealing name, I do my best to show them how to tackle the challenge on their own. Sometimes that leads to a phone call – I use the Clarity service – during which I direct the do-it-yourselfer to my evergreen post on how to write a naming brief, the essential first step of any naming process.

Mission accomplished, right? If only.

The D-words

Earlier this week I spoke via Clarity, an expert-advice service, with a CEO who was considering changing his company’s decade-old name. He told me he didn’t have the budget for professional naming services, so he and his business partner, both tech guys, had attempted to come up with a new name themselves. After 12 (!) months of brainstorming, they finally had a couple of candidates. One name, the CEO told me, was a great description of their product. The other name described what their customers wanted. They’d already bought a bunch of domains – some for more than $1,000 – related to both names.

I kept silent, but I heaved a private sigh. Within five minutes, my caller had mentioned the two troublesome D-words of naming: describe and domain. One of those words can doom a branding project; the other is almost always a distraction.

I’d hoped to hear a different D-word, the one that matters: distinctiveness. But my caller admitted he hadn’t known it was a factor in brand development.

That CEO is far from the only client I’ve worked with who has focused, misguidedly, on descriptive names and “available” domains and neglected (or been unaware of) distinctiveness. It’s such a common oversight that I wanted to take some time to talk about it.

But I won’t do that

I’ll willingly – nay, happily – answer a lot of questions about names and naming without charging a dime.

I’ll give you tips about strategy. I’ll offer examples of effective names and bad names. I’ll suggest an outline for writing a naming brief. I’ll talk about URLs and searchability. I’ll show you how to create names with emotional appeal. I’ll set you straight on naming myths.

I’ll do a lot without a signed contract and first-installment check, but there’s one thing I won’t do.

Creating names with emotional appeal

I’m working with a client who wants to change his startup’s name, in part because the company’s focus has shifted. But he cited another, equally important reason for a name change: the current name isn’t inspiring. It lacks an emotional charge.

My mission: to develop a set of names that meet this “more emotion” objective while also being appropriate, authentic, memorable, and legally available. Here’s how I’m approaching the challenge. Feel free to borrow these suggestions for your own naming project.

Five Naming "Rules" You Can Break with Impunity

Spend even five minutes searching for business-naming help and you’ll discover a lot of self-proclaimed experts dispensing free advice. In many cases, those “experts” are entrepreneurs themselves with one or two naming experiences to their credit—unlike professional name developers (me, for example) who’ve named hundreds of companies and products. As a result, much popular advice is of limited value (“Use a name generator”) or utterly untethered from reality (“Allow one day for the naming process”).

Now is the time to set the record straight. Here are five naming non-rules you can happily disregard:

Non.com

How are you doing with that search for a .com domain that costs less than $25,000? Mired in frustration, you say? Maybe what you need is a creative alternative.

I know, I know: .com is the gold standard. It’s the default. It’s traditional.

But it’s not the only option—especially if you’re a small business with a limited budget.

How to Present Names

There’s lots of advice out there for creating company and product names. (Some of that advice is available right here on this blog.) It’s much harder to find out what to do after you’ve developed and vetted that list of names. How should you reveal your top name candidates to your co-founders, the executive team, or the board of directors? How best to persuade and guide your audience toward making or endorsing a decision? How to respond if someone says, “I dunno … I just don’t like it”?

In my experience, this can be the toughest stage of the naming challenge. Here are five tips for making your case.

 

Naming Advice from a Cartoonist

And not just any cartoonist, either.

Bob Mankoff is the cartoon editor of the New Yorker, which means that, among his many other duties, he judges the magazine’s weekly caption contest. Since the contest went weekly in 2004, readers have submitted more than two million entries. Inevitably, Mankoff has pondered why some captions succeed and others fail. And in one chapter of his new memoir/history How About Never—Is Never Good for You?*, published earlier this year, he shares his advice about how to beat the odds.

Here’s the thing: the advice doesn’t apply only to cartoon fans and contest hobbyists. To my surprise and delight, I found that it’s highly pertinent to my own discipline of name development.

The Searchability Myth

As I’ve said before, quirky, “kree8tive” spellings do not facilitate trademark protection. But can a misspelled name help your brand rise to the top of search rankings?

Alas, no. And yet this myth persists among people who should know better.

Do-it-yourself naming: Doing it better

I’ve been partnering for several months with Clarity.fm to give short, focused phone consultations about names and verbal branding. I’ve talked to business owners in Mexico, Australia, England, Brazil, and the U.S.; I’ve answered questions about company names, product names, taglines, and even Twitter handles. Most of my callers can’t afford comprehensive name-development services; what they want from me—and my 20-plus years in the branding business—are tips and feedback.

A few themes have emerged from these calls—common naming challenges that many entrepreneurs face. I share them with you in case you’re struggling with your own do-it-yourself naming project.