Brand naming

In practice

A team that starts by listing favourites ends up arguing about taste. A team that starts by writing down what the name has to achieve ends up arguing about evidence, which is a much shorter argument. The criteria come first: the category it enters, the audience it addresses, the markets it has to survive, and the conventions it should either follow or deliberately break.

Names are usually sorted by how directly they describe the offer, and trademark practice uses a similar scale: fanciful coinages such as Kodak and Xerox, arbitrary words such as Apple for computers, suggestive names such as Coppertone, descriptive names such as Holiday Inn, and generic terms at the bottom. The further up, the easier the name is to protect and the more effort it takes to teach. The further down, the more it explains itself and the harder it is to own.

In a project this scale is a choice made early, not a verdict at the end. The usual failure is a longlist that sits entirely in one band, because that is where the category's names sit, followed by a team falling for the one candidate that explains itself before anyone has asked whether it can be owned. Writing down which band the name should come from, and why, turns that conversation into a decision.

Where this sits in the process

The studio treats this as part of a single run rather than a separate service: the category is read, the creative direction is chosen from what the research found, candidates are generated in volume and then cut against criteria that were written down first. See how the studio works for what that produces, or the naming module for the stages themselves.

Related concepts

• Naming brief: What belongs in a naming brief, and why the markets and languages have to be named before generation starts.
• Naming convention: Every category has patterns its names obey.
• Shortlist: What separates a shortlist from a longlist: not length, but the evidence attached to every survivor.

Further reading

• What is brand strategy? Why it starts with the name: Brand strategy is the decision about who a brand is for and how it differs. Why the name comes first, and how design, tonality and communication make it recognisable.
• Business name generation is more than just a name: A business name has to clear cultural, linguistic and competitive checks before taste gets a vote. What those checks are, and what each one rules out.