Creative

We’ve offered product and company naming as part of our creative services for years. We have named dozens of products, services and companies, mostly in the software, IT and Internet sectors. Often we get asked for how-to advice by clients or prospective clients. While it’s true great names and the inspirations for them can come from anywhere, including some surprising sources, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to count on your name to descend deus-ex-machina from the sky on a silver platter. Uh-uh. You can’t plan for serendipity. Instead, create a purposeful creative process oriented toward reducing the risks of creating and choosing a bad name. And YES–of course you can ask for customer input. But it’s better to poll them to pick a best of three than to crowdsource the process outright, IMHO.

For anyone taking the do-it-yourself approach, here’s my advice:

Since domain names are so important, START there. Check what’s available and integrate the checking realtime into your brainstorming. While cycling through candidate names, sit in front of your screen and check domain availability as you go. This saves you from wasting enormous energy on unavailable names.

Don’t go with a nonsense name or fabricated word–if you can help it. That risks misspelling and SEO problems, and doesn’t usually adequately describe your value prop. The same goes for abbreviations and hyphenated words, unless they are very commonly used. Remember that the only remedy for a weak name is throwing scads of budget at promotion (in whatever form), and even then, sometimes it doesn’t work and often that’s not an option anyway.

Realize that, other than the URL and legal stuff, there are mainly just 4 variables to be concerned with. A name can describe: 1) what you do, 2) how you do it, 3) what the benefit is to the buyer/user, and/or 4) be memorable. Mediocre names only do one of these four. Solid, serviceable names can do two. Killer names do three out of four, but are extremely rare and unusual. I have never heard of any names that can do all four.

I recommend against crowdsourcing for naming, with one important caveat. IF you can actually find a way to survey actual prospects of your product or service, then their input into naming would be very valuable (even if not decisive). If you had 10 of them, it can act like a focus group. But if you’re asking friends/employees/colleagues/vendors, etc., not so much. (As Wisdom of Crowds author Jim Surowiecki notes: in order for it to work well, everyone participating has to agree fairly closely on what question they’re being asked to answer. With politics, or creative processes, getting that agreement is difficult.)

Don’t let morale boosterism spoil your creative process. It’s popular in high tech to run names and logo designs by all the employees as sort of a feel-good “inclusionary” exercise. (Kum-baya!) And it may accomplish that, however it also results in a lot of crappy names and logos–for two reasons: 1) the people involved don’t do creative work for a living (so it’s unusual for them to be any good at it) and 2) they are not the intended audience. Crowdsourcing doesn’t work here because it’s a complex creative process. This is why, if you want to write a better book, you don’t add more authors.

Deal with the trademark, service mark and copyright stuff last. That way you only have to run that gauntlet for the final name you choose rather than for a large set. This saves time and money.

Try to assemble a small group of smart people with diverse interests and talents if you’re going to do a brainstorming. Whatever you do, DO NOT involve any of the following in your naming process (don’t say I didn’t warn you):
• In-laws
• Interns
• Intensely passionate but empty-headed people
• Frequent misspellers
• Former siding or used car salespeople
• Web designers (or anyone concerned primarily with visuals rather than words)
• Hardware engineers (software engineers can be OK–they’re better with abstraction and interpretation)
• Anyone who thinks picking a “nonsense” word will make you the next Google (By the way, the name “Google” is only a nonsense word in part. It was derived from the actual mathematical term “googol.”)
• Employees in groups larger than 100
• Your banker
• Your tax accountant
• Your lawyer (except for the trademark part)
• Your (take a deep, slow breath…) spouse or S.O.

The reason for that last bullet?. If the name winds up being a dud, what’s the only thing that could make matters worse? “Honey, sorry, but that name you came up with sucks and we have to…” Really, just Don’t. Go. There.

Hey, if it all seems just too daunting, there’s always the automated approach. (Good luck, though.)

[Based on a post that originally appeared in Steve Parker's Marketing Dissector blog.]