The naming brief: what to write down before anyone names

The test is whether anyone has to ask you a question

A naming brief is finished when the people working from it have no follow-up question. That test is stricter than it sounds. Most briefs fail it on the second page, at the point where a team would need to know which countries the name has to work in, or who has the final say.

A naming brief is a creative brief for one specific job, and it caps the work done from it. Skill later in the process cannot recover a decision that was never made earlier. The six sections below are the places where decisions most often go missing.

The name is the first investment in a brand, and the longest

In 1955 David Ogilvy told an audience of advertising agencies that "every advertisement is part of the long-term investment in the personality of the brand". He credited the idea to the researchers Burleigh Gardner and Sidney Levy. It holds up: a brand's personality is not made by one campaign but by the sum of everything it does over years.

Apply that to the name and the consequence is plain. A campaign runs for a season. The name sits on every campaign, every invoice and every introduction for as long as the company exists. It is the first investment and the one all later ones build on, which is why changing it means starting the accumulation again.

It is also decided on day zero, before the product has a customer and before there is any personality to point at. The brief is therefore the only place where that personality exists in writing before anything has been invested. A brief of adjectives such as "modern, trustworthy, innovative" yields a name that could belong to anyone, and a personality that could belong to anyone is nobody's. A dense brief says who the brand is for, who it stands against and what it will not be, and a name can then be judged against something.

Start with the job the name has to do

Skip the description of the company. You know what it does, and so does everyone you will brief. Write instead what the name has to make easier: one sentence of positioning covering who it is for, what it replaces and why it is the better choice.

Say you are naming a bookkeeping tool for freelancers whose main competitor feels heavy and corporate. Then the job is lightness, and every candidate can be held against it. Without that sentence, each name is judged by whoever happens to like it most.

Describe the person who meets the name first

"Small businesses aged 25 to 54" describes a column in a spreadsheet. A brief needs a person: who hears the name first, where, and in what frame of mind. A persona written at that level of detail changes what counts as a good candidate.

A name first heard in a podcast ad has to survive being spelled aloud, which makes spellability a requirement rather than a nicety. A name first seen on an invoice has a different job. Write down which of these situations is the real one.

Name the markets, the languages and the goods before anyone generates

This is the section most templates leave out or make optional. One typical guide puts it as "you may also want to consider where you will do business and any languages or cultures the name will have to fit". We would write it the other way round. It is the one item you cannot add cheaply later, because linguistic screening and cultural screening can only run for markets someone wrote down.

List the launch market and the markets you might plausibly enter within a few years. Add what the name will be used on, now and later. Trademark rights are granted for specific goods and services, which the Nice Classification sorts into classes, so a name that is clear for today's product can meet a conflict when you expand. Trademark rights and register entries are outside the automated checks, so check the name for existing rights and protectability yourself before you adopt it.

Show the names that are already in the room

Include the names of your competitors, and include the names you have already considered and rejected, each with the reason. Rejected names are the cheapest information in a brief. They show taste and constraints that the person writing could not have stated directly, such as "too playful for a bank".

Competitor names do something different. They map the category's convention, and a team that cannot see the map will produce the fourth name that sounds like the other three. Seeing the convention is what lets a team choose whether to follow it, and that choice is where differentiation starts.

Keep the walls and the wishes apart

A wall is a condition that eliminates a candidate: it must be pronounceable in German and English, it must not sit close to an existing name in your category, it must have a domain or a defined fallback. A wish only ranks. It would be nice if the name were short. Write the two in separate lists, because mixed together everything becomes negotiable at the end of the project.

Include the type of name you are open to, since that is a position with consequences. The USPTO places descriptive marks in the weak half of its strength spectrum, "only registrable in certain circumstances". A descriptive name is a legitimate choice, and the brief should say it is a chosen one.

Decide how you will decide, before the first candidate

Write down who has the final say, who is consulted and who is only informed. Write the scoring criteria, and agree the tie-break while nobody has a favourite yet. After the names appear, every rule you add will look like an argument for someone's preferred name.

Say also what you expect to receive. A longlist handed over intact passes the work back to you, while a shortlist carries a reason for each name and the evidence that it passed. The brief is the place to ask for the second.

What to write when you do not know yet

Sometimes the honest answer is that the roadmap is not settled, or two people disagree about the audience. Do not leave the line blank and do not guess confidently. Write "undecided", then who will decide, by when, and the assumption the work proceeds on until then.

For markets that might read: launch in Germany, probably the UK within two years, a third market not yet chosen, so screen for all three. An assumption can be checked and corrected. A blank is discovered after the logo has been paid for.

A good brief is the first round of the argument

Return to the test from the start. A brief that survives it has already done part of the naming, because the arguing has happened in a document, where it costs an afternoon, rather than in a meeting with candidates on the screen, where it costs the project. It is also the only chance to put the long-term investment on a sound footing before it starts.

The briefing stage of how NamingStudio.ai works rests on the same idea: nothing starts until the brief is complete. If you are about to name something, write these six sections first and see which ones you cannot answer. Those are the decisions still waiting for you, and the features page shows what we do once they are made.