Helpful words

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…

Percentage-wise: Meditating on the 10% Happier Brand

Dan Harris would like a minute of your time. In fact, he would like any amount of time you would be willing to dedicate to the age-old contemplative practice of mindfulness meditation. If you’re using his 10% Happier app, even better. The ABC news anchor turned meditation evangelist has been on a crusade to convince…

AI sucks at naming. There, I said it.

Tools define eras. The cotton gin, nitrogen fertilizer, the internal combustion engine, the internet—all changed the lives of millions of people. New tools bring great capabilities and promise. They also introduce new risks and problems. Tools aren’t inherently good or bad–that comes down to who’s using them and how. Nuclear energy comes to mind. France…

A namer’s travels: The Louisiana wordsmiths

My current home base is Houston, which means New Orleans is a straight shot down I-10 and an easy long weekend. For anyone who loves language, etymologies, and wrestling with new words, a drive through Louisiana is a visual feast. It’s something like a history lesson and an international excursion combined, with more Arby’s. I’ve…

Front of house: The power of foreign language naming in hospitality

Many people are drawn to foreign language brand names at one point or another. Whether it’s an exotic sports car, a fine wine, or a chic restaurant, the attractive phonetics, excitement of cultural exploration, or simply the mystery of the unknown can capture our imagination. Today, some light fare: we’ll dive into several courses of…

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