149. How do you name a brand?
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Stumped on a brand name? ✍️ You're not alone! In this Brand Therapy episode, brand strategists and hosts Phil and Lauren dish on their tricks for creating business names for clients. You'll learn their non-negotiables (including being easy to remember), techniques for brainstorming, and a can't-miss tool to get the ball rolling. For anyone who wants to finalize a business name, you're going to love this episode!
Episode transcription
Phil
Hello there. Hello, you. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I'm Phil.
Lauren
And I'm Lauren.
Phil
And this is a podcast where we help you position, build, and promote. And in this episode, name, your brand. Welcome. You picked a good episode. This is picking the brain in incredible detail, well about 20 minutes worth of my trusty namer co-host, Lauren Moore. Really this is your area of expertise not to throw the apple over on you, but.
Lauren
Geez, I thought we were gonna have a group discussion here.
Phil
Nope. Well, it's true, though I don't name things. I mean, we can talk about it. And I'll brainstorm with you. But that's not really my area of genius.
Lauren
I don't know if it's mine either, to be honest, but I'll do my best here with at least sharing the process that's helped me with naming client brands. But it's quite inspiring actually, before we get into the episode, there are professional namers out there. If you Google some of the interviews with them, it is so interesting. Even the thought that goes into deciding what letters or sounds you should explore to hit the right emotion with a name. It's fascinating. So I also encourage people to do a nice little Google around for brand naming experts and read those interviews because they're really, really cool,
Phil
I didn't know about that.
Lauren
Yeah, there's one guy whose name is escaping me right now, but he was featured in, I think the New York Times a few years ago. And he's a driving force behind almost every major brand you can think of and it talks through his entire process of naming companies. I wish I knew the name because it would probably make what I'm saying a bit more interesting.
Phil
I found it, I googled it, did you? Yeah. His name is David. Placeck, Lexicon Branding.
Lauren
Yes, and the New York Times article is called ‘what's in a name, call in the brand consultants’.
Phil
He's done Intel, Apple Procter and Gamble, Coca Cola.
Lauren
Yes. And there's another article about the weird science of naming new products. Really good. Okay, Phil, why is your brand name important?
Phil
Well, it's important because the whole point of all of this crap is to stay top of mind. Right? So when someone thinks, oh, I need a lawyer, oh, I need a nutritionist. oh, I need to go buy Q tips from the pharmacy. Right? Your brand name is what's communicated. With ourselves, in our minds, between people, in front of a stage. I'd say a brand name isn't everything. It isn't everything. It doesn't maybe matter as much as some people think it does. Right? If all kinds of examples Google what kind of a word is that?
Lauren
It has an interesting story behind it.
Phil
Can you tell us a story in 15 seconds?
Lauren
Yeah. So to Google, spelled G O O G O L is a kind of computer coding binary name of the I think the numbers that come after you search for something. I believe. It's some nerdy, nerdy throwback to some sort of developer thing. And but then they changed it to L E. But it is phonetically a very strange name.
Phil
Yes. Good job. That was almost 15 seconds.
Lauren
Thank you. Here's why a brand name is important. And this doesn't matter if you're going by your name individually, or a company name. Your brand name is your brand experience. It helps people know they're in the right place. It's like an invisible business card or handshake. And you want people to know it and remember it.
And really, I think that your brand name can make you or break you. I'm going to go into a little storytime here to give some examples. Now, as a disclaimer, I was not involved with the naming of any of these companies that I'm about to mention. But I do think it's important to know the origins of certain brand names out there of really big companies, because you can see the power of branding.
As an example I listened to the audio book Shoe Dog by Phil Knight earlier this year, one of the best best books I've ever consumed in my entire life highly recommend. It's about the story of Nike, how Nike came to be what it is today from the words of the founder. And what I found fascinating during the book was that Nike actually didn't operate as Nike, for its first I think, maybe even 10 years in business. Nike went by the name Blue Ribbon sports. Can you imagine? Can you imagine Nike being called Blue Ribbon Sports, it's like wild. But anyway, I guess one of his employees felt very passionately that they needed to have a brand name change, and that powerful brands are short. And they have a certain combination of letters like K that have a strong sound to them. And so then they, they changed it to Nike to as a nod to kind of Olympians and Nike is the goddess of victory and Greek mythology. So it really speaks to that aspirational appreciation of sports that both they and their customers were very dedicated to. And now what's interesting is that Blue Ribbon Sports that represents, like the big ribbon that you want to attract practices, that also suggests victory. But by changing to Nike, instead of Blue Ribbon Sports, I feel like it just completely elevates the brand in an entirely new way, even though it's basically sharing the same message.
Phil
Interesting. That's an interesting takeaway. Maybe I need to read that book.
Lauren
It's so so good. It's so good. Okay, storytime number two. Amazon. Do you know the original business name of Amazon? No. Cadabra as in Abracadabra? I'm not even joking. Yeah. It was later renamed to Amazon because Jeff Bezos got some feedback that Cadabra sounded very similar to cadaver.
Phil
Oh!
Lauren
True story. And then he ended up naming it as Amazon because he was originally inspired by the Nile and thinking of how the Nile was kind of one path that took products from A to Z. But then he ended up going with Amazon, which I think is a great, great brand name.
Phil
I like it. I like these little storytimes.
My other favorite brand names is goop. Because I think it's just so clever how it takes G and P, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s initials, and then adds the two O's in between. I just think it's so cool. And what's also very fascinating to me is that Google and Goop, they both start with the same three letters. But if you think about the brand experience of saying either of those company names, it's totally different. Like Google seems really freaking weird and inquisitive and kind of nerdy. Just the fact that it's two syllables that it ends in a very strange light like Google. It's like very strange and kind of abrupt and interesting. Whereas goop is just single, confident, strong. And while there are so many similarities, character wise, between those two names, I think the experience is completely different.
Phil
Mm hmm. You've made your case.
Lauren
Wait, can I take us off track for a second?
Phil
You can take us off track.
Lauren
Okay. Well, first, I guess this is sort of on track, given that we're talking about all things brand names. There is a brand whose name I freaking love.
Phil
Say it.
Lauren
Magic Mind. Isn’t it good?
Phil
Magic Mind, the latest biohacking tool. That's what we're calling it. That's what they call it. We've tried it. We're talking about it. Lauren, I you have to tell your story about trying this.
Lauren
So I wasn't totally sure what to expect with the taste and just overall experience of Magic Mind. It's basically a drink that you can take that helps you focus. It's a productivity drink. It's not an energy drink. And it arrives in these little bottles like almost like in Alice in Wonderland. You know how at the Tea Party, she takes those little sips and then you don't know if she's gonna become a giant or shrink down to the size of a teacup. Anyway, so it was like that, and I tried it at first and it definitely has that kind of matcha flavor that bitter macho flavor. It is sweetened with honey and it does grow on you on time. I'm not a super big matcha flavor person. So I was it was a little bitter at first, but the taste grows on you with the honey that it has. And after a few days of using it in a row, I found that it really got me into the zone. Like I was really really focused.
Phil
It gets into the working zone after 10 to 30 minutes, it increases your mental energy. You said something important. It's not an energy drink. And it's not a caffeine drink. It is a productivity drank. And by the way people drink this differently. You're a bit of a sipper, sometimes people will chug it, if the flavor isn't something they love. I personally love matcha. So I'm also a sipper. Let's talk for a second about the ingredients. Matcha as you mentioned, which is naturally occurring, l theanine to help you keep going and keep focused nootropics all the rage right now. All the rage right now, which boosts blood flow and cognition. And there's a few other things adaptogen, ashwagandha. You've said that to me before.
Lauren
And what's really cool about all of these ingredients together, is that it doesn't crack you out, like some energy and caffeine drinks might, because this is not one of those things. It has this really cool combination of ingredients that help you focus mentally, but also keep you calm, like ashwagandha and turmeric decrease stress and they it decreases inflammation in the body after you exercise. So it's this kind of perfect little melody of ingredients that help you focus.
Phil
Topped up with honey, natural, sweet tastes. I feel like you're doing a great job of selling us, which is a good thing since they're our sponsor in this episode. But listen, Magic Mind, we've tried it, you have to try it. Best news for you, we've got a discount code and a link magicmind.co/brandtherapy use code brandtherapy20 for 20% off, that's code brand therapy brandtherapy20 all lowercase for 20% off, so you can also try Magic Mind.
Lauren
Yeah, do it. Do it. Okay, well, I guess we should probably get back to the lesson.
Phil
Let's get back to that lesson.
Lauren
Let's move on. A brand name is your brand experience. Let's move on. Okay, so there are four main principles that I consider when naming a brand. First, most important, it's got to be easy to remember, it has to second is availability in a domain. Now you don't necessarily need to have your brand name.com. That's great, but you don't necessarily need it. A good example of this is quip toothbrushes. Yeah. quip.com is actually not going to the toothbrush company, it's getquip.com that goes to the toothbrush company. So you can use a verb with your brand name.com. And that works great. Now Phil, you have a surprisingly open mind about domains and .com. Could you expand on that?
Phil
I do. I think that domain names, which we could have a whole separate conversation about, I think domain or we would say top level domains, they are such a great opportunity for branding. So I just love creative domains I loved a few years ago when we started to see those instead of .com, .com, .com everywhere. And even though I own philpallen.com and it's not my primary domain, philpallen.co is and the reason I love it is because the company is called Phil Pallen Collective. So I get really excited by top level domains creative ones. .pizza is a top level domain. Like there's so many you know, this year 2021, we went beyond, there's so many amazing top level domains that are exciting. If you don't or cannot purchase a .com I mean, most of them are taken. I also have to mention that my house, which is rented on Airbnb in Florida, is philpallen.house, and I'm working on a project in Mexico. And before I even bought the condo, I already secured the domain philpallen.casa.
Lauren
Okay, so, domains aside number three, it's not taken by anyone else. So let's use Amazon as an example. Amazon is everywhere. It doesn't matter how different your company is from what Amazon does, there is simply no way that you're going to be able to name your own company Amazon consulting, if there is an Amazon out there. There's just it's like going to be just so competitive. So do a good search on social media really and online to make sure that there isn't an overt competitor that would wash away any potential brand recognition that your brand name could have.
Phil
If you're in the US, it's a good idea to go to uspto.gov and do a basic trademark search just to see what is live or dead. If nothing appears when you do your search, that's a very good sign. If something appears dead, that means and it has a status listed right beside it. If it's dead, it means that it was once a trademark, but the owner let it expire. And it may be up for new ownership. Or if it's live, that's not a good sign. Live means that it is a live and active trademark, you would click into it to see what industry it's in, that there's still a case for being able to use that domain if you're in a completely different industry. But it gets a little murky. And that's when you don't need a brand strategist, you need a lawyer.
Lauren
Great. And then my final principle of naming a brand is that the brand name must speak to your brand personality. So this is obviously less definitive, but it's still incredibly important. You need to think about how you want your customers to feel when they're interacting with your brand. As an example, do you want to emit a sense of calm, then you want to stay away from like, harsh sounding words, and harsh sounding syllables, and instead go for smoother words. So a brand I think of that is calm, but energizing is Lululemon. The way it rolls off the tongue is really easy to remember, it's very smooth. There's a very consistent quality between the Lu and Lu and let, it's just smoother. Whereas if you're wanting to omit a sense of history, if you think about like the Ritz Carlton, or the Four Seasons, those sound like very, like layered kind of snobby brands, because I don't know that I can't even explain why. But they just evoke a sense of history and status. And then if you think about if you're you want your brand to seem a bit more curious or a bit more tech savvy, I think repeating sounds and kind of like, interesting sound combinations are good, like Google again, bring up that that is like the G sounds are kind of interesting. The hard G or TikTok. Yeah, that seems very young, quirky, energetic. Okay, shall we move on to steps for brainstorming a name?
Phil
Let's do it. I think that's one of the most interesting parts.
Lauren
So my number one rule of thumb is do not censor yourself, you need to do a big, free flowing brain dump. And you cannot edit yourself during this process. You want to get everything on paper, even if you think it's the dumbest idea in the world, because I sincerely believe that good ideas can come from bad ideas, and you need to have those concepts down in the first place. As an aside, it's late at night while we are recording and Phil is literally sitting in the dark, like a spooky creature.
Phil
I know. We've been sitting here listening, I haven't even gone up to like turn the light on.
Lauren
Your face is a glowing in the shadows. Okay, so don't censor yourself. Generally when I start brainstorming for clients, I will create a few different buckets, and then do a brain dump within each bucket just to kind of guide me a bit.
So as an example, first, our symbols, names, emotions, idioms, yada, yada, yada. So for symbols, I’ll explorer, like literal symbols that are related to the brand. So I look up a lot like the meaning of certain flowers, the meaning of plants, the meaning of certain animals in dreams, artifacts, religious symbols, like anything that could be a literal symbol of the brand, I put it down and explore within that, but and associated words to so let's say the brand was all about bravery. Well, I might think of lions because lions are very brave. And then I might think of words associated with lions such as Serengeti, like I don't know, I just I just get all those words down on paper, no judgment. The next source of inspiration for me are names, specifically human names. So names all have a deep history, and they often come from very cool historical words, like certain Latin words, and what have you. So I like to also explore baby nameless, and see if I can get inspiration from anywhere. For example, if you want your brand to image to be about happiness, I might look up baby names that mean happy, and then just write them all down. And then there's also another site that's called behindthename.com. And you can look up any name and then see the original origins and family history of that name. So let's say I find like, I think the word or the name Zoe means life or something. So if I looked up at I was wanting a brand name that means life. I see the name Zoe, I go to behindthename.com and I look up the history of the name Zoe and of any of the names that I see there. And they can be weird. The weird strange names. If I say any names that peak my interest there, I will write it down on paper.
Phil
I didn't know that. I like that tip.
Lauren
When we did that the name exploration for the jewelry company in Hong Kong.
Phil
Mm hmm.
Lauren
Most of my suggestions came from baby names, baby names. Okay. Next up, the emotions category. So that's really when you want to put a name to the emotion that you want your customer to feel. And so basically, you'll want to look up, like for bring up happy again, if you want your customers feel happy. Look up happy and a thesaurus and look at all the interesting words that pique your interest from what you see there. And just go on a thesaurus, little rabbit chase.
Phil
A little adventure.
Lauren
A little adventure. Okay, okay. And lastly are idioms. So I will actually look up like puns with the word happy, or idioms with the related to happiness. Because there can be a lot of catchphrases that you aren't necessarily aware of that could also inspire a brand name. So Phil name and emotion or a word for me.
Phil
Something that you would use for a brand, something like, efficient.
Lauren
Okay, great. So I just looked up idioms about efficient, and there are 38 that come up. So on the ball, up to snuff, grace, the board, ball of fire, big time, busy as a beaver, by the book, dime a dozen, there's like tons that come up. And you can see like another one that is interesting to me is worth your salt. So it makes me think of the name salt worth as a brand name. There's just some interesting stuff you can play around with there.
Well, that's my process. And then I just get it all down on paper, and then I start crossing out ones that definitely have nowhere to go from there. And then sometimes I'll look at combining words too or combining names, but kind of give like some kind examples?
Phil
Please. Okay, so one of our, it's going to be strange to introduce them without saying their brand name, because now I think of them as a brand now. But we have a client, his name is Marcus. He's a pilot. He specializes in risk management being a pilot. Pilots cannot afford to make mistakes, and they have all these incredible systems to mitigate risk. So his dream when it came to us was to really create a network of pilots that were speakers and ran workshops for hospitals and governments and businesses to teach them the principles of pilots so they could lower risk in their own organization. Fascinating stuff. The original name he came to us with was Crewmate UK, which is fine, but I found it really hard to remember I can't even explain why. I don't know if you found that Phil.
Phil
Yeah, it's generic.
Lauren
Mm hmm. And we wanted something special. So we, I did my whole naming journey. I had like 100 different names and ended up crossing them off. And we presented about 20. But I'm just going to name five for now. The first was ‘cloud sourced’, which is like you're sourcing information from people who've been time in the clouds, which is kind of fascinating. Plain as day but spelled P L A N E. So it's pilots making risk management easy to understand. Early Bird which actually was my favorite because birds fly but also birds that start the day early and prepared get the worm that was my favorite. Bye Mistake. B Y E like saying goodbye to mistakes because it's immediately addressing what clients fear the most. And then plane spoken which is upon on being easy to understand. So spelled P L A N E again, you can see those idioms, right? The fright at work and these examples, but with the plane, so Phil you can say which one Marcus went with.
Phil
Marcus chose Planepoken, which I still love to this day.
Lauren
Me too. So you can check it out planespoken.co.uk
Okay, client number two example. And then we'll wrap this episode, Maria and Jodi, two interior designers based in Wisconsin, both very successful independent interior design careers, decided to join forces and create a partnership and a new business. So the challenge here is that we needed something that spoke to each of them because they both bring such great experience to their clients. But we also needed something that spoke to their sense of practicality with interior design. I think a lot of clients when they're considering to hire an interior designer are scared of just getting a random am bill and things being late and things going wrong. And when you hire Maria and Jody, there's that would not happen. Those two are on it. So they had said that they wanted a brand name that was really easy to remember, like, Dream Kitchen, I suppose is a brand that I wasn't aware of that Phil probably was. And they were also open to a name that spoke to their home state of Wisconsin. So we presented a bunch of different name options to them, but I'm going to share the five we explored here. First was Virtue Home to speak to their integrity and moral standards. Next was Mojo Home Interiors, because the word Mojo kind of Gwyneth Paltrow style combines the first letters of the founders names m and j. So Mo Jo. And the word Mojo means like a magic charm or spell. That's kind of like the magical home experience, Robin interiors and renovations. So the Robin is a state bird of Wisconsin, which is their home state, but it also symbolizes wisdom, guidance, growth, renewal, and all those words are related to interior design. Profound renovations, I like this one because it had the word pro in it, which is kind of fascinating. And then just classic J M interiors and renovations. So it's more of a monogram approach. And I feel like it's also important to say that not every brand name needs to be brilliant, sometimes just going with your name, like Phil Pallen Collective does the job as well. Yep. So finally, you can say what they ended up going with.
Phil
They ended up going with mojo home interiors, which we loved. It's so that it was again, fit the brand personality, and perfect for the brand experience.
Lauren
I remember when I was presenting the brand names. I was a little nervous, because they're both very, very smart, savvy people. And I thought I was gonna say the names and they're gonna be like, Oh, these are awful. But I said Mojo. And before I could even explain why I remember Jodie said, I fucking love it. Yeah. And then I was like, so happy.
Phil
know, well, because it's such a deeply creative process. Things aren't like, right or wrong, or even better. It's like very creative. So that's the other thing is like when we're naming projects, I say we've It's really you.
Lauren
You help with bouncing off.
Phil
I do help. But it is one thing to name a project yourself. It's another thing to get hired to do it for someone else. It's really, it's tough. But now you shared your secrets on the process in case someone wants to go through this themselves.
Lauren
Now my last resource, which I really recommend is kind of the very last resort is namelix.com. So it's n a m e l i x.com. And it's a name generating site. Kind of wild so you can type in any word and then you can decide if you want it to be a short word, if you want to be a made up word, if you want it to be in a name like Giorgio Armani kind of style, and it just populates a whole bunch of different names. Have you been to that site before?
Phil
No but I'm about to check it out.
Lauren
Great. So if I type in the word angry as a keyword. I can decide if I want a short name, medium name or long name so I'll do short. And then I can choose if I want a brandable name. non English words, missed spellings like liftor flicker. Real words person names, compound words, etc. So if we do brandable names of angry, angry belly, which I'm kind of obsessed with. Let's see. Angry one, angry army, angry fire, histon, mocker. I don't know. There's just some fun, fun ideas here.
Phil
How do they do this?
Lauren
I have no idea. I have no idea. But sometimes what I'll do is I'll use this not to get the actual brand name, but just to give me an idea that I can play around with.
Phil
I love it all these little tricks up your sleeve. Now listener, you know how to go and do this for yourselves. Or you can just hire us. Let us know how your journey goes with naming your brand. Let's continue the conversation #brandtherapy. I'm @philpallen.
Lauren
I'm @thelaurenmoore
Phil
And by the way, we've made it this far together. You should, you should leave us a review five star five star that helps other people discover this podcast so we worked very hard to create for you that review in iTunes. Great jam packed episode. You better believe I'm turning this into a YouTube video. Thank you for unveiling your secrets and you'll see us back next week, next episode on Brand Therapy.
Lauren
Bye bye.