Naming & Branding Manifesto

Communication began with grunts and squeals, crude vocalizations, painted images and a lot of hand waving. From this names evolved to identify the bison to be hunted or the ideal cave for shelter and ceremony. Names are the beginning of language, and from language sprang culture and civilization. But it all began with a name, and it’s a good bet that the first name was probably “I”. I am hungry. I want you. I need a new name for my cave painting business. The first “iBrand.”

The way we write and speak today would have made people living in the 17th century, never mind Neanderthals, think us aliens from a far off galaxy. Things change, culture changes, languages are born and die, names come and go – today’s “Google” is not your grandfather’s “International Business Machines.”

If you’re looking for stability, go somewhere else. Language is on the move. It is a living, breathing organism, always changing, morphing, evolving. Don’t fear this change – revel in it.

Language is the fruit fly’s view of evolution – rapid change, mutation, morphogenesis. It is capable of being influenced, molded, formed, deformed and reformed before our eyes and ears. It is a mutant made to be torn asunder and reconfigured.

As William S. Burroughs wrote, “Language is a virus from outer space.” We all have the capacity to be language biologists, creating new life from the wreckage of old text.

We talk a lot about brand positioning and how important it is, so let’s define our terms. Simply put, the positioning of a brand is the set of core messages the brand demonstrates to the world, through tone, personality, emotion and narrative. So a better way to think about your task is in these terms: you are not naming a company or product – you are instead naming the positioning of a company or product. Once you determine the brand positioning, only consider names that map strongly to that positioning. In fact, any names you consider must support the brand positioning in order to be successful.

Great names demonstrate your brand positioning. Weak names force you to explain your brand positioning, and that’s called advertising. It is very expensive, and not nearly as effective as demonstrating. Bear this in mind when considering the cost of a naming project; money saved now may cost you much more in future advertising expenses.

Clients often say to us that they got stuck when trying to name a company or product themselves because they are “not creative enough.” We tell them, no, you are just as creative as us or anyone else, but your problem is that you have the wrong filters in place. The key is to focus on the positioning of your brand, and then look for names that best support that positioning, being careful not to filter out potential naming directions or, conversely, to allow anything and everything through.

Just because naming should be fun, doesn’t mean it always is. But it’s important that you have an open mind and allow yourself to be alive to the possibilities of what a name can do. You have to set a positive tone for this exercise right from the start – if you’re stuck in a miserable naming rut and the experience seems like torture, realize that you are doing something wrong, and change your approach. Companies and products are not born from misery or ennui, and neither are the best names.

When naming, companies often make a fundamental mistake about the nature of risk. The faulty assumption is that they need a descriptive name in order to “describe what they do,” or what their product does, because they “don’t have a huge marketing budget” to do this describing. In other words, an evocative name that doesn’t “describe what they do” is considered too “risky.”

This kind of thinking is prevalent across all industries, and it’s also completely wrong. That’s because a powerful name will create brand awareness, get the press to write about it, generate word-of-mouth buzz, engage with your audience and convert them to fanatic devotees of your brand. The generic descriptive name, on the other hand, will drown in a sea of sound-alike clones, and you’ll end up having to pay a lot more money for advertising in a vain attempt to get the brand noticed by your glazed-over audience.

It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s true: in terms of the bottom line, “safe” names are risky and it’s the “edgy” names that are actually a much safer choice, because of what they can do for your brand and the value they’ll create.

It’s a very simple calculus: if your competitors are all doing the same thing, then you will stand out if you do something different. And the first and most visible point of differentiation is with your name. That’s why every naming project should begin with a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. Look for all the obvious and subtle ways in which your competitors do and say the same thing, and then find a new, uncharted place to plant your flag.

We live in a culture with so many signals coming at us so quickly, that most messages, including brand names, just get buried in the avalanche of tweets, calls to action, toll-free numbers, friend requests, dinner conversations, infomercials, podcasts, IMs, talking heads, talking points, advertorials and webinars. Everyone is in a hurry all the time, with advertisers and content providers often accelerating their signals to stay “up to speed” and lodge their nuggets of information into our minds before competing messages can take root. In this cultural feeding frenzy, individual messages can easily be lost. Notice an opportunity here?

Old cliches never die, but they can often be turned inside-out. So while it’s true that a picture might be worth a thousand words, a great name is a word or two that can paint a thousand pictures in the minds of your audience. If you want proof of this, hand a few leading names over to your graphics team to play around with. If they come back to you with, “We had so many ideas for what we could do with this one,” it’s likely a strong name.

If your name is different for the sake of being different or extreme in any way just for the sake of being extreme, then it is doomed. The most powerful names are those that best support the brand positioning, no matter what, and depending on the circumstances, a name might be “extreme” or it might not. If your name is trying too hard to be different just in order to stand out, it won’t — it will blend in with all the other names that are also trying too hard, and failing, to stand out. Vive la différence.

Beware “experts” who cloak their methodology in the jargony garb of fancy proprietary “black box” naming “solutions.” Naming is hard work, and to do it right requires focus, passion and persistence, but rocket surgery it is not. If a consultant has a rigorous process for creating names, they shouldn’t be afraid to share that with the whole world. You’re better off hiring a couple bright high school students than an MBA wielding a Magic 8-Ball.

Many a troubled naming project began with a brainstorming session, but it’s possible to do brainstorming right and add value to your naming process. Use this opportunity to get outside of yourself and hear divergent opinions; avoid being restricted by internal naming filters, preconceptions, or office politics; consider suggestions as concepts as much as potential names; and don’t get emotionally invested in any given name before it has been properly trademark screened. A well-run brainstorming session can give everyone on your team the discourse and information needed to propagate, nurture and support strong names.

The lesson of snowflakes is to never confuse structural uniqueness – the “genetic code” of an individual name, its unique sequence of letters – with semantic uniqueness, its “uniqueness of meaning.” Any name has meaning on some level – witness the linguist’s parade of sibilants, plosives and fricatives that often accompanies a new name unveiling. The trick is to create names that are meaningful, not just names that have meaning.

When a successful brand has years of positive history and stories behind it, that is known as brand equity, which is something to be treasured and nurtured. But if a brand has been struggling, has grown tired, or has been damaged, its brand equity might better be described as baggage. If you have a successful brand in spite of a poor name, a new, powerful name can only help, and your customers will gladly follow your lead. But if your brand has fallen on hard times, then you have no real brand equity to worry about – you’ve got nothing to lose, and you’re free to reinvent the brand.

It’s not enough to just “produce” products for “consumers” to consume. You need to foster engagement with your audience. Live in the big world and be a part of it, treat individuals with consideration, and be open, transparent and helpful. That includes creating brand names that respect your audience’s intelligence, are entertaining, memorable, and add value to the culture. Never forget that it’s individual people, not demographics, who buy your products. People like you.

Stories are how we connect with each other, and how people become emotionally engaged with brands. Successful brands tell the most and the most compelling stories. Since your name is the face of your brand, names that tell stories are much more powerful than names that don’t. Part of that story value comes from what is inherent in a name before you adopt it, and part of that value comes after, with the stories you create and invest in your brand.

Storytelling never ends — it’s how you turn a name that might belong to any company or product into a brand that can only belong to you.