Mysterious, Unexpected, Conversation-Starter Branding

This isn’t a name per se, but rather a diminutive chunk of text in quotes (“33”) that’s been on the back of Rolling Rock beer bottles since the 1930s. Nobody quite knows what it means, and the brewer has been smart enough never to reveal a meaning, so “33” for us stands as shorthand for “mystery” and “the unexpected” in naming and branding. It well represents the “X-Factor” category in Zinzin’s Name Evaluation process: “33” is that certain something that makes people lean forward and want to learn more about a brand, and to want to talk about the brand with others. It’s been a powerful conversation starter for nearly a century.

[ Rolling Rock's “33” page ]

A Beautiful, Elegant Las Vegas Resort Hotel Name

An aria is an elaborate melody sung solo with accompaniment, as in an opera or oratorio. Aria is beautiful, elegant name for a beautiful, elegant, major resort hotel on the Las Vegas strip, which we created for MGM Resorts International. It definitely captures the “not a typical casino” vibe of the resort, as you don’t usually associate opera, or any “high culture,” with Las Vegas. This hotel, and this name, changes the conversation about the resort experience of Las Vegas.

[ Aria: case study | website ]

An Elemental And Direct Television Channel Name

A name we created for DirecTV that is elemental, almost primal, in its direct invocation of a television channel’s reason to exist: pleasing its Audience. Powerfully direct, yet never done before, and full of resonant possibilities.

[ Audience: case study | website ]

The Friction Of Negative Meanings Can Elevate A Brand Name

This is the grandaddy of all names with negative meanings, as it is a slang phrase that is entirely negative, connoting a poor, hot, corrupt Third World dictatorship utterly beholden to outside interests. You could imagine a naming committee choking on this name: “It’s so negative, maybe even racist!” “People will picket us!” “We’ll come off as arrogant imperialists!” All seemingly valid points, and yet…no picketing. No protests, no rage against The GAP, no boycotts. Why? Because consumers don’t take names literally! And, metaphorically, the “imperialist” flavor goes a long way toward making khaki and loafers something that Banana Republic can charge a whole lot of bananas for. It’s one of the best examples of something we firmly believe, that a little friction can make for a very powerful, memorable brand name.

[ Banana Republic ]

A Name With New Life And Meaning In A New Context

You might think, “Cashmere Blazer?” What’s a boring, descriptive name like that doing in The CAN? Well, you’d be right to ask that question, if this were just a overly obvious name for a cashmere blazer. Instead, thanks to Compendium favorite Crumpler, it has been re-purposed as a name for a spacious and comfortable messenger bag, the kind you might casually throw on and wear anywhere, like, well, like a cashmere blazer perhaps. A great example of a banal, generic descriptor given new life and meaning by changing the context around it. Brilliant.

[ Cashmere Blazer ]

A Sports Car Brand Name With “Negative” Meanings That Work

The Crossfire was a rear-wheel drive sports car marketed by Chrysler as both coupé and roadster from 2004-2008. Crossfire is a great, powerful name, and a big part of that power comes from the type of “negative” connotations that naming committees often cite when killing off a edgy name: “A crossfire is a hail of bullets that innocent people are killed in…” “It sounds like a misfiring engine…” and, “It is (now was) a famous political talk show.” Add to this the fact that the car was produced during the height of the Iraq War, and you realize just how gutsy Chrysler was to adopt this name.

Chrysler was able to overcome the objections to potential negative meanings because they had the right filters in place during the naming project, and stuck to their brand positioning: that this is a sporty car targeted at executives with perhaps boring careers, but who nevertheless have a “James Bond / danger-is-my-middle-name” fantasy life. And for all that, the “dangers” evoked by the name Crossfire were a perfect match.

[ Crossfire ]

A Descriptive Brand Name That Became An Icon Over Time

Arguably the most iconic of classic American brands, Coca-Cola was invented in 1886 by Atlanta pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton. The name was a suggestion given by Pemberton’s bookkeeper Frank Robinson. Here we have a name that seems to break all the rules of great names: it is descriptive (for the first nineteen years the soft drink contained extracts of cocaine as well as the kola nut); it has a hyphen; and it was named by a bookkeeper (no offense). But what the name Coca-Cola does have is great poetic alliteration and symmetry, and an iconic hand-drawn flowing script logo still used today, also created by that multi-talented bookkeeper Frank Robinson.

The name also morphs into a classic nickname brand, “Coke,” as famous now as “Coca-Cola,” and used much more in vernacular speech. So add “brand dilution (being known by two names)” to the list of “mistakes” above that add up to make this brand so great. If only all brands could fail this successfully!

An Edgy Software Product Name With Many Associations

Crossfire is a powerful name that we created for a breakthrough eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) product. The names maps to the enterprise cross-functionality nature of the product and the way if “fires” data quickly into many different buckets, as needed. Most important it’s a cool, edgy name with lots of associations, not all of them positive, which gives this name an edge.

[ Crossfire: case study | website ]

An Hip, Confident Name Exuding Wry Humor

Another great, outrageous product name from Compendium favorite Crumpler. How do they get away with it, you ask? By creating a rock-solid brand positioning that’s all about attitude, sass and cool factor, and then creating names that support that positioning, damn the torpedoes. This allows Crumpler to demonstrate, rather than try to explain, that they are hip, cool and confident, with a liberal dose of wry humor. The Dreadful Embarrassment is a laptop messenger bag, part of a little family group that also includes such embarrassing names as Moderate Embarrassment and Considerable Embarrassment.

[ Dreadful Embarrassment ]

An App Name That Warmly Dips Into Our Collective Soul

Fondu is a mobile app that’s “a fun and easy way to share bite-size restaurant reviews with your friends.” Think Yelp + Twitter + Instagram for restaurants. Says Fondu CEO Gauri Manglik, “I wanted to make people feel like food critics the way Instagram makes people feel like photographers.” (Fondu app combines best of Yelp, Twitter). Fondu enters a crowded field, and there’s no guarantee it will succeed in the long run, but at least it has a great name. This app could have been called something very boring and predictable, like “QuickBites” or “DineSocial,” but fortunately Manglik had the good sense to name it Fondu, which not only maps to food, but to food as a social experience. “I named Fondu after the food,” Manglik said. “Fondue is a social food experience. You don’t eat it by yourself, you share it with your friends.” And the name dips into the collective soul of the past, cajoling warm, hazy memories of swinging 1970s fondue parties to come back out into the dark of night to play. Very smart, and very tasty.

[ Fondu ]

A Name With Great Energy And Attitude That Just Flies

A name we created for an inflight wi-fi Internet access product, now used by numerous major airlines. This name has is all: meaning, energy, attitude, and it maps to the experience of using the product and of travel in general. This name flies high, and both name and service have been hugely successful.

[ Gogo: case study | website ]

A Unique Name That Is Memorable And Wonderfully Weird

What would otherwise be a boringly descriptive (though mildly poetic) name for a carpet store, for a protective laptop computer sleeve Goldschlager’s Carpet is completely unique, strange, memorable and wonderfully weird. It’s another winner from Compendium favorite Crumpler. This name conjures up a short story, and the mind begins reeling when imagining the carpet of Goldschlager in all its glory (or infamy). Brilliant.

[ Goldschlager's Carpet ]

An Amazing, Cool Name Employing Alliteration and Poetry

Manufactured by Corning, Gorilla Glass is “an alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass engineered specifically to be thin, light and damage-resistant. Its primary application is portable electronic devices with screens, such as mobile phones, portable media players, and laptop displays.” (Wikipedia.) It’s a cool product with a lot of potential, but of course its name is what really turns us on. By metaphorically evoking gorillas, which are the ultimate combination of strength plus intelligence, in a name with a great sound, look and poetry through its effective use of alliteration, Corning has created a winner that has already become the standard-bearer in the industry.

[ Gorilla Glass ]

A Juicy Name That Really — and Metaphorically — Flows

Gravy is a hyperlocal event listings mobile app we named that is all about finding great things to do near you, wherever you live or plan to visit. Gravy is the good stuff, the “secret sauce,” a source for discovering all the juicy things going on around you. Like the gravy you eat, the event listings in the Gravy app flow smoothly to your mobile device, and the feeds are customizable in a variety of ways. It is all about serendipitous discovery, finding your fun, getting the scoop with “insider information” about cool happenings near you. Think of it as your very own hipster tipster!

Pass the Gravy, please.

[ Gravy: case study | website ]

A Groovy Name With Many Idioms And Great Cultural History

A groovy name we created for a Camelbak water bottle that fills the straw “groove” with an inline filter, so you can get your fresh filtered water Groove on wherever you go. Taps into lots of shared culture and idioms, from “Get your Groove on,” to “Groovin”, “Groovy,” and “In the Groove.”

[ Groove: case study | website ]

The Perfect Name For A Cardiac Surgery Medical Device

We created this absolutely perfect name for a cardiac surgery device that is literally a coiled string temporarily inserted into the aorta during bypass surgery. Besides being descriptive, Heartstring because has a secondary emotional meaning (“tug at heartstrings”), and when the procedure is complete the surgeon literally “tugs on the Heartstring” to uncoil and remove the device from the aorta, leaving no trace. This kind of alignment, in which a name is Evocative, Experiential and Descriptive all at the same time is one of the holy grails of naming.

[ Heartstring: case study | website ]