Coming Up With Names Is Not Only A Creative Task

Coming up with names is a critical strategic exercise! In this installment of our tellthetruths video series, I dive into how the selection of a great name for a brand, product or service is far more than just a creative exercise.

Coming Up With Names Is Not Only A Creative Task

It starts with brainstorming lots of great ideas, sure. But your brand’s market position, what competitors are up to, and what’s most important for you to communicate both overtly and in tonality are all critical elements that need to be considered.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hey everyone, it’s Rebecca with BrandTrue and what I want to talk about today is the fact that coming up with names for brands, for products, for services is not only a creative task, it’s not only about brainstorming, it is an incredibly important strategic exercise. You need to be thinking about what it is that your name needs to convey, but it’s even more than that. You need to broaden your lens to think about how it is that your brand competes as well. If your category is very crowded, then you have to be thinking about a name that is going to differentiate and what are the strategies. Take a really long hard look at where the other competitor names are. What are the strategies that are going to pull you apart and really allow you to stand out?

Is this a new category that people don’t know how to interact with or that people have interesting energy, some fear. Apple has been around so long when we hear that word, we just think computers. But back in pre history when I was young and Apple was new, computers were really intimidating to a lot of people and that name was strategically chosen to be nonthreatening, friendly, an Apple. You can take a bite out of it. Oh, their logo has a bite out of it. How can that be scary? You have mastery over this. That’s quite strategic, right? That’s not just Apple and the creative exercise, the brainstorming.

This is something to think about in a lot of different ways, right? If your brand is something where heritage is important, where generations are important. Then family kind of names, names that sound like there’s the test of time behind your brand can be very, very helpful. And in technology, that’s probably a really bad idea. So the strategy of what’s going on in the category, what is the way you’re going to differentiate within the category? Like, there’s a lot to think about. It’s not just as much as I love for people to come up with as many names as they can. Yes, definitely do that, but it’s not just like, which one is good. You want to be very, very thoughtful about the list of names that you’ve generated. What are the ones that are going to be really setting you up for success?

Let me know what you think. Thanks for watching. Come check us out at brandtrue.com, where you can see all of our content, the videos, and learn more about what we do. We love helping brands with brand strategy, brand storytelling, and most of all naming challenges. So let’s meet, maybe grab a cup of coffee, see if there’s some good chemistry. Check us out.