For the 4th and final video in our Building Brand Names series, we focus on the critically important step of CLEARING name options, or vetting them. For starters, don’t let yourself or any clients fall in love with just one name. You have to make sure the name can clear!
Step 4: BUILDING BRAND NAMES – CLEARING
We talk about the multi-step vetting process and also debunk a widely held misconception. If someone already has the URL you want, that does NOT mean the name is necessarily dead to you.
This video originally appeared in LinkedIn
If you enjoyed this video, check out:
Step 1: BUILDING BRAND NAMES – STRATEGY
Step 2: BUILDING BRAND NAMES – IDEATION
Step 3: BUILDING BRAND NAMES – SELECTION
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey guys, it’s Rebeca with BrandTrue. And this is the last in our series around the 4 steps of building a brand name. This is all about CLEARING a brand name because the best name is the name that you can actually have. So there’s a lot of work that goes into it and I keep commenting on how each step requires a different skill set. That’s true here as well.
This is a very detail-oriented, organized, analytical step. It’s a research step. It’s not necessarily the same person or the same skills as the other 3 steps, which I think is interesting. And what we do, what I think is what everyone does in the naming business is actually a multi-step piece of research to figure out in a lot of different places whether or not a name is available including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s incredibly ugly and cloogy and horrible database including Googling, a lot of different steps. And the most important step that I want to talk to you about is checking the domain availability, NAME.com. Because NAME.com might not be available but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have the name.
You want to look at who has it, are they competitive to you? Even if they’re not competitive, are they going to be an embarrassment or inappropriate? If who has it is not in the same business as you, say it’s Yellow Mug Pottery and you want to be Yellow Mug Coffee, maybe you can both be Yellow Mug, but you can’t have .com. That’s okay. You can still have the name and do something else for your URL.
So, yeah, super important step, not one to be taken lightly. You do need a lawyer to do the final trademark search but you can do a lot to figure out if a name is likely to clear so you don’t waste money with a lawyer searching lots and lots of names that don’t work. You can increase your likelihood of getting a hit. That’s the 4 steps of how you build brand names. I’d love to hear what you guys think. Thanks!
