Naming
The Joys & Challenges of Brand Naming
Not all branding agencies offer brand naming services, and those that do vary widely in approach, expertise, and process.
We love working with client partners to name their brands and products, and we lead brand naming exercises with businesses across a myriad of industries each year. Choosing a name for your new brand is an important milestone, and client partners often say it’s when the ideas, inspirations, plans, and dreams they have worked on start to feel “real.” It’s an electric moment pregnant with potential.
Name development is a first step in the creative process of brand building, often coming just after research and brand strategy development. First steps require guidance and care to ensure success.
Because brand name development happens so early in the creative process, it can be the most challenging phase of brand building for businesses. A name on a page can be subjective, meaning one thing to a founder and sparking completely different connotations for another stakeholder.
This early in the game, there isn’t an amazing packaging prototype to hold or an immersive environmental rendering to explore. Choosing can be difficult. How do you trust a new name without seeing the vision for what it will become? The short answer is, you shouldn’t. Your brand naming agency should guide you through a process to understand how names work, share context for name options, and guide you in how to evaluate them.
A Process of Education & Empowerment
Over many years, we have developed a brand naming process that helps clients understand, evaluate, and confidently choose a name for their brand. One of the biggest aspects of the exercise is education. We guide our partners in understanding the different categories of names and when each is most successful. We teach teams the key considerations to use in evaluating names and coach them on what a brand name should accomplish—and what it won’t. We explain the power of lateral thinking and break down how names can connect with people in meaningful, memorable ways.
These are just a few of the ways to make the process smooth, seamless, and even fun. Without opening the entire playbook, here are some tips to keep in mind when choosing a name for your brand.
Different Categories of Names & When to Use Them
All names are not built the same. Knowing the primary name categories and when to use them is a big advantage when choosing a name for your brand. Names fall into four buckets: Functional and Descriptive; Invented; Experiential; and Evocative. Each category has advantages and disadvantages that are unique to your industry, audience, and product type.
An easy example is the first category, Functional and Descriptive names. These names describe the brand or product and what it does or offers. Pizza Hut is the hut where you get pizza, for example. These names typically do not pack a lot of pizazz, but they serve an important function in explaining what your product is to consumers. If you’re introducing a never-before-seen product or pioneering a new and unfamiliar category, a direct explanation can be a naming strategy that is valuable for customers.
Often, trailblazing or revolutionary products employ descriptive names for this reason. But are descriptive names right for products that are more common? Descriptive names are terribly unremarkable and easily forgotten for a familiar product, like coffee, for example. “Downtown Coffee” doesn’t exactly light a flame of excitement for customers. Another great example of a functional name with zero sex-appeal is “International Business Machines.” More than once we’ve lead rebranding efforts for businesses following a realization that their company naming needed more punch to connect with their target audience.
Each name category embodies its own unique maxims for success and guard rails to heed. These tips for finding the right fit are far too extensive to outline here, but knowing them allows naming agencies to make insightful recommendations—and empowers business owners to make smart choices in the moniker they choose for their brand.
Your Brand Name is a Signifier, Not a Descriptor
Because the name is often the first expression of a brand that client partners see, it can be easy for them to fall into the trap of expecting a name to do everything. No name can describe every facet of your brand—the people, culture, products, experiences, and aspirations it embodies. Nor should it try.
The primary job of a brand name is to signify your brand, not describe it. This can’t be overstated. Its role is not to paint a picture of every brand building block. A brand name should serve as a clear and memorable identifier that the public can grow to associate with your core values, attributes, offerings, and narrative.
The best names come from lateral thinking versus a linear process. Names that are unexpected, that pique curiosity, that surprise or delight are memorable, and start a conversation with your audience. When developing brand names, we set a benchmark: Each name should accomplish the above if it were printed simply, in block letters, across the front of a t-shirt with no context. Would you be curious to know more? Would you remember it, or tell a friend? Those extra few seconds of consideration leave a lasting impression, and that is an advantage for your brand.
Brand Names Need Context
With a clear understanding of how names work and what they can do, our client partners have the insight needed to evaluate options—which is the next step in the development process.
Our generation process for creating brand names is wild—it is equal parts smart logic, wild-eyed creativity, targeted research, absurdity, and magic. Absurdity may seem out of place in creating brand names, but it can often serve as a remarkable catalyst for finding the perfect name. We sometimes begin a naming project by coming up with the worst names we can imagine. It’s a great way to break the ice, loosen folks up, and get an initial list of names down on paper to build momentum. You would be surprised how considering a bad name can help naming experts with years of experience reason their way to an outstanding company name.
The product naming process is a wide-open “Yes, and…” exercise, and it’s open to everyone on the team. We develop dozens of names—good, bad, and ugly. We then put on our editor hats, weigh each against brand strategy, and assemble a short list of the best and brightest. Of course, not every name on our list is available. A legal search and trademark screening kill off the weaklings, producing a final set of the strongest and most ownable brand or product names. These top naming candidates are then presented to our client partners.
Context is the key to presenting brand naming in a thoughtful and productive way. We build a narrative for each name that exhibits the personality, point of view, and attitude we see within the name. We show use cases. We check domain name availability and social handles. We paint a rich image of what the name can be, helping clients get to know how it can walk and talk out in the world.
Building context around a name may sound like a lot of extra work, but it’s worth the effort. Context allows our client partners to see how their brand story connects to their new brand name. It’s the “why” behind the “how” of a name development process, and it clarifies intent and vision. Watching a room of people light up with the realization of what could be is a powerful moment—especially when the new brand name unites stakeholders with different opinions and preferences.
Key Considerations: How to Evaluate Names
With so many types of names and multiple stakeholders with different points of view, how does anyone ever agree on a name? Developing structured criteria for evaluating company names that everyone agrees upon and utilizes is a huge asset in aligning your team. Comprehension, uniqueness, structure, and relevance are just a few considerations we highlight to guide teams. Beyond these structural and semantic guides, we teach our clients a host of anecdotal criteria.
One anecdotal consideration that comes up often in our naming process is the idea of “love at first sight.” This phenomenon occurs rarely in brand naming (although we’ve seen it a few times). We let clients know to expect it, and lean into it.
Most often, it’s best to give names a minute, take some time, and let them sink in. If the names are good, they are likely new and unexpected. Anything new takes time to understand and become familiar. A great brand name begs consideration—which is exactly what you want from your audience. More often than not, the name a client partner loves in a first presentation will be bested by another after a weekend of reflection.
Another important maxim in brand naming is that “the name is just the beginning.” This ties back to avoiding expectations that the name will describe everything about your brand positioning, company, or product. In the visual identity development phases that follow, we build an entire system of icon and logo designs, color palettes, headlines, brand patterns, and photography to accomplish that goal. Are you worried a name you love is a tad too masculine? We can build a brand identity that offsets that with softer colors and visuals.
Remember that your brand identity will be a rich ecosystem, and the name is one piece of the puzzle. Naming and brand work together to create a comprehensive brand experience. Think of your future brand as a feature film rather than a one-dimensional snapshot.
Wrap Up
Not all branding agencies have experience and expertise leading naming development. The brand naming process can often be one of the most challenging exercises in developing a brand, and working with a seasoned brand naming agency can help make the process painless and productive.
The best naming agencies provide more than just names for businesses; they serve as trusted guides in educating and empowering client partners to make smart, informed choices. Naming and branding should be integrated together seamlessly, channeling foundational strategy and brand architecture into a cohesive brand process.
