What’s the biggest mistake you can do if you want to test a name?

A: Ask the public: What do you think of this name for product/service X?

People cannot predict what kind of names will be succesful. They can only manifest a preference towards what is acceptable – looking back in their own reference system, what’s already commonly known, rather than being excited about what’s really remarkable.

However, the purpose of naming is making things remarkable.

If you want to test the impact of a name on a target – which is convenient and civilized to do, pick some representatives, make them use the name (read it, write it, spell it), talk about it and even sing it but make sure they don’t get what the name is for. It’s the only way great names like Apple, Virgin or Yahoo! can pass the exam.

10 Tips for Your Naming Mojo

Got the talents? Like research? Know the usual mistakes? Writing doesn’t scare your underwear? Naming should be easy and fabulous (admitting the fact that there are maybe 2 concepts in the Universe that could hold these adjectives together*).

This is for when you get bored with the Chinese monologue of the Latin Dictionary  and need to focus on ways to startle your strategic imagination. Because if you’re not into selling Latin dictionaries to Latin teachers business you don’t have any good reasons to drive that far far away from the market.

1. Go get dirty

If it’s a hot dog add some mustard, and some onions and some bubble gum, and some music, and the latest newspaper headlines. See what the obsolete meat has to say about that.

2. Get deep

Look for mysterious words, taboo words or unusual words in your own language. Invent traditions and holidays, picture secret societies.

3. Go out, be the ball and play

What would you do if you were the product, how would you sound, where would you get naked?

4. Speak Customer

See how the potential client would interact with the product, ask, talk and complain. Note some frequent sentences in which X is the name you’re looking for. Find out all you can learn about X from these equations.

5. Speak “Special Customerish”

Translate the benefits, the actions performed with the product/company, the performers and the results for different kinds of creatures: the lover, the hater, the artist, the always arriving later.

6. Go explore

Invent characters, movies, needs, solutions, new worlds and then describe them.

7. Go alien

Imagine the product/service out of the context of today, without reason or functions. How would you perceive it?

8. Go no

Find out what is the competitors’ most used attribute of such a product or service and say exactly the opposite.

9. Go home

Talk to the ones that are actually making the product and listen to what they have to say about the meaning of life. They will surely relate things to their job. And then they’ll start telling good product stories and jokes about each other.

10. Go to bed

Do everything but naming for a day or two. It’s when the best solution occurs. Usually while you’re sleeping.

*And there is sufficient proof that the other one is Romania.

Those little things that make a difference

TomTom is another great example of a waving name. It is standing out for portable GPS car navigation systems, on a market where the main players are called Garmin Nuvi, Navigon, Magelan Maestro and Mio.

Imagine the scenery: busy roads, unknown territories, getting tired and anxious, fighting on the right direction. With a GPS system called TomTom – a funny personification achieved by the repetition of a popular personal name you simply loosen up. The name generates better user experience and enters the unsafe zone of mind and heart. Customers really talk about it and the conversation gets funnier and familiar: It’s not my fault, it’s TomTom, Ask TomTom, TomTom knows better, Thanks TomTom, TomTom says no. This way, technology gets sexy by giving clients something to believe in: an imaginary driving friend.

Names that talk to teenagers

Cutting Age – Ways for Refreshing a Trademark Name

To begin with, the choice of the title ‘Cutting Age’ is made on the observation that the most frequently used method to refresh a brand’s name can be compared to an aesthetic surgery technique. Popular brands use compression through abbreviation of their names in order to reach a young audience, e.g., KVL (Kenvelo), RVL (Ravioli), KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), FCUK (French Connection United Kingdom), D&G (Dolce & Gabbana), J (Janine), and MNG (Mango).

Another method of initializing communication with young customers is achieved by means of adding reference extensions, or metaphors, to the name, e.g., OrangeYoung, BRD – Student Plus, Nike Evolution. These are like bedtime stories on the Ipod.

So what do you do to talk to the young and restless? How can you make it simple for them to speak about your brand? You listen, obviously. You observe how they communicate, look at how they write and how they send messages, capturing all the differences and particularities. It will strike you how much things changed since high school. Then, you deliver the candies on their playground, using their own language on the label. They will come in parties. That’s the beauty of being young and unemployed.

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What is in a name? Loads of dreams and loads of juice.

One of the greatest names that fruits can buy.

names of great expectations

Waving

Trademarks are often used as visual “small talk” or “name flash”, a communication where communication itself is more important than what is talked about. When exposed on Outdoor, trademark names often have no other purpose than saying hello, wanna get physical?.

Learning that trademark names have to be remarkable, memorable, easily reproducible and able to tell distinctive stories in their marketing field, my opinion on the issue of names is that great names for identifying a business are acts of courage. I call such names waving names for emphasizing two attributes they have to possess.

1. Trademark names should be able to make themselves observed, to make a step forward and let people see them, as a person would wave to another in the crowd.

2. Trademark names should also be able to start a conversation, to generate reactions and continuity, as light, sound and electricity produce waves.

Waving names are brand names one can not miss, like Apple in the computer business, Orange in the telecommunications or Virgin in airlines. They are names you would ask somebody to repeat once again when you hear them for the first time and names you’d like to pronounce just for fun: Google, Cheese?Yes, please!, Bamboocha, Tom Tom, Giovanina Isopel*.

How can you create/choose a waving name? Reinvent the subject in a wider context. Go for the unsaid or the always said elsewhere, go faster and don’t look behind, go wild and go naughty. You’ll know when you got there. In an Emersonian way of speaking, in order to discover the world properly, one has to look at names like a child.

Although waving names are not so hard to find or implement, they are certainly the hardest to sell to business owners. Here, a dazzling list of good examples will work like apple pie in winter. But remember, you always have to add business numbers to great names of success. They go directly for a heart in sales.

Waving names are names with stories and the very magical thing about them is that people can create their own stories, given the context and the characters embodied.

To conclude, good names for trademarks in today’s economy landscape have to work like Modern Literature. Their impact should produce something similar to James Joyce’s epiphanies, should startle sensations and memories like Marcel Proust’s Madeleine and should affect the environment like Virginia Woolf’s magic moments.

*Giovanina is not a trademark.

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Word Wide Web

Particularities of Online Names

Names that are designated to be used online and website names require special attributes that must be considered from the very beginning of the creative process. Usual naming practice techniques are not enough to develop a name which will be successful in the online industry. The reason is simple: World Wide Web is represented by its users.

As a consequence, the name has to be extremely easy to write in order that the target is able to type it and find it easily through search engines. Considering these aspects, here are a few rules a namer must observe when creating a name for the online usage.

First of all, the namer must avoid using homophones and paronymes. The name has to be written exactly the way one can hear it and read it so that any possible confusion is avoided. Secondly, the web domain must be checked for availability, as it is important for the client to own name.ro, or name.com or name.eu. This way the consumer will easily and directly connect the name to the domain and find it in precious time.

If all top useful web addresses are taken and the name is already registered or the business owner does not want any changes, it will be necessary to create a web address which is slightly different from the original name. Usually, the chosen solutions are name plus extension, statement, slogan, or pun. In these cases using hyphens, familiar words or numbers should be avoided because they are frequently forgotten.

Moreover, the namer should elude words that contain double letters as they can generate typing confusions and are also hard to recognize.

In short, the best way of finding a new website name for an existent trademark has to be inspired on user behavior. One solution is using the real name extended with the location/placing (skiniasi.ro) because this is the way in which an interested individual would search for it, and thus, it will be very easy to reach.

Naming & the battle for your mind

One of the best names in Iasi for a Beauty Centre, a name with an attitude and a smart positioning criteria, via Graphicline.