Brand naming (five tips to help break through the creative block)
Naming your kid is hard, naming a company is harder. If you’ve ever found yourself suffering from creative block when trying to name a new product or business then try some of these tips to get the creative juices flowing again.
Tip 1 – Define your scope
With over a million words in the English language it can help to pull up the guard rails before commencing with your first brainstorm. Start by defining the marketplace and the intended customer so you know who you’re aiming the new brand at. Next write out a few core values that are relevant to the new business or brand. Avoid highly clichéd business words like dynamic, professional or flexible and instead opt for words with a bit of character. These words can become your naming territories or areas to explore and focus on when creating names. For example, if your new brand is a new trendy home office furniture brand your territories might be ‘cozy’, ‘efficiency’ or ‘Zen’. You can then use each territory as a spring board for ideas when you begin your brainstorm.
Tip 2 – Go wild in that first brainstorm!
Getting the creative juices flowing in that first brainstorm session is really important. Creativity works best when you’re relaxed and unconstrained by worry or stresses, so don’t fret about writing down stupid or silly words. Plus you can always cull the bad ones in the next stages. Creative, memorable names are often the ones that sound wrong at first anyway, plus a prudish mindset would never have come up with a ‘Virgin’ or a ‘FCUK’ campaign, so loosen up. And remember to brainstorm in the manner that suits you best. Alone, in a team or at home in your pyjamas if it helps. Whatever floats your creative boat.
Tip 3 – Tool time
It’s hard to be creative in a vacuum. That’s why you should make use of every tool at your disposal. Luckily in the digital age there are plenty of resources online to give you a helping hand. Crank up the online reverse dictionary, thesaurus, idiom finder and standard dictionary, and write down everything that could be a possible avenue for your new brand or product.
Tip 4 – Go off road
The modern branding landscape is densely populated with existing names that are already in use, or worse, already trademarked. It can make finding an original solution tricky. This is why it’s good to venture off-road early on. Going off-road means moving away from standard English words that are frequently used and trying something different. Here’s some tactics that can help you create something more original:
Add prefixes or suffixes to normal words (think Spotify, Grammarly or Unsplash).
Frankenstein words. Combine two words together (Cinemax or FedEx)
Onomatopoeia. Create a name that imitates the look, sound or emotion (Yahoo! Bing or Gnaw.)
Alliteration. (Seriously Smooth haircare products)
Alternative spellings (Xero)
Made up words. Although these can feel like empty vessels and devoid of meaning, often if they sound similar to something relevant to your brand they can still work.
Build on top of your first brainstorm session by mashing up words and phrases in any way you can. It will result in names that are much less likely to be trademarked.
Tip 5 - Give it time
Quite often words you hated yesterday don’t seem so bad in the morning. And those ones you thought were too risky are the only ones you can remember. Give the process time. Show them around. Get feedback, but remember that asking for people’s thoughts forces them to give an opinion, whereas often if they experienced that name in the real world they would likely accept it without question. A final tip is to print out your shortlist and see if the names look right in black and white. Quite often the shape of a word can help make or break it too.
Do you have a naming project you’d like to talk about? Tell me what your business is, who’s involved, and how you want it to grow. It’ll be a pleasure to hear from you.
