Helpful words

The powers (and limitations) of names in defining a category

  • About: Naming

One of the best parts of this job is the newness of it all. Naming is one of the first milestones of a newborn idea. That means we get unique insight into some groundbreaking developments, from AI systems to krill-derived protein supplements. Most of the time we’re trying to help founders stand out in a…

What kind of painter are you?

  • About: Naming

Ellsworth Kelly or Kelly Moore? There are a lot of models for how creative professionals interact with their clients. I want to introduce one that we’ve been using at A Hundred Monkeys recently. We have found it useful when trying to understand the relationships we want to have, and the relationships that clients are looking for….

We play well with others

We’re lucky to have some talented friends and partners in the branding world—design studios, strategists, consultants, freelance designers—who think of us when their clients have naming needs. Typically, this means working together to figure out how to seamlessly incorporate naming into the rest of their branding work. This is our jam. Working with a longtime…

The Name of the Game: Decoding Gamer Babel

I’m an average gamer. I’m generally detached from gaming culture — community jargon, development lingo, the latest industry news, genre names. Nonetheless, I’m interested in making the most of my limited leisure time and the games that I purchase. Happily, there is ever-increasing nuance to gaming, with subgenres cropping up within subgenres seemingly every week….

Same, But Different

I sold records before I sold names. In my 20s, I worked at record stores dotted around the country: Amoeba in Hollywood, Cheapo in Austin, Everyday Music in Seattle. The job mostly consisted of being brooding and standoffish with an occasional request for actual customer service. A lot of the time that interaction would be…

brand-equity-header

Brand equity: a river in reverse

Understanding the flow of brand equity within an ecosystem We have a saying at A Hundred Monkeys that “brand equity flows upstream.” It’s something we remind ourselves whenever we work on naming ecosystem projects. Essentially it means that any sub-brand or branded element (feature, service, tool, etc.) that doesn’t get a name sends the brand…

Is “Lifestyle” A Four Letter Word?

As the saying goes, there are two types of people in the world: those who think lifestyle is a four-letter word and those who don’t. I find myself squarely in the second camp but have never really asked myself why? Perhaps it’s because when I first heard the term lifestyle in the early 2000s, brands…

The hardest questions in branding

And how to tell if you have the right answers Most branding projects start with questions. Sure, it’s called Discovery or Intake or On-boarding, but it’s just asking questions. Some of these questions are about understanding how a company operates and what their offerings are. Then there are a bunch of questions about the brand — values,…

WTF is gravitas?

The nature of naming work is subjective. Names are liked or disliked for all kinds of reasons, some gut feel, some logical, some not so much. As such, we’ve engineered parts of our process to remove some subjectivity, because when we’re being more objective we can agree on success or failure.  One request has come…

E-volution: Vehicle naming in the all-electric age

As the hottest summer ever recorded comes to an end, it’s logical to focus our attention more intently on the climate crisis. For many people in wealthier nations that means redressing everything from recreational habits (air travel and gas consumption) to purchasing decisions on appliances, consumer goods, and vehicles. In response to the growing global…

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