We wrote a book and made a deck of cards about naming things. Either you’ll end up with a great name—or the knowledge that paying us to do the work is well worth it.
One of the joys of this role is getting a glimpse into a whole slew of industries and wearing a different hat every week. One week we’re learning about the nuances of LLM context windows and the future of AGI, and the next week we’re channeling our inner tweens for potato chip inspiration. This kind
A lot of branding people like to employ archetypes as a way to model and build brands. Nike is often referred to as a “Warrior” brand. Harley Davidson is an “Outlaw” brand. So what are brand archetypes? Where did they come from? Most importantly–are they useful? What are archetypes? Archetypes are models or symbols. Hercules
Branding is supposed to represent what a company believes in and how they see the world. It’s a series of signals to customers and potential customers showing what’s valued. But most brands have competing interests. If a brand isn’t making money, it probably isn’t going to be a brand for too much longer. So while
For the brave souls who have decided to launch a consumer packaged goods brand in the past few years, brand naming was likely as important as their proprietary blend of herbs and spices. In the increasingly diverse and thoughtfully branded consumer goods world, standouts no longer whisper. They leap off the shelf, label forward, with
In 1988 poet Billy Collins wrote Introduction to Poetry which was included in his collection of poems titled The Apple that Astonished Paris. It goes: I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a
Let’s say you’re founding an AI company or launching an AI product. You’re going to change how people work, think, and create. And you know exactly what you want for your name: “short, memorable, punchy.” Ideally a real word. “Think Apple,” you say. “Think Stripe.” I get it. I really do. I’ve lived versions of
We often say the name is the one thing that shouldn’t change. At the same time, we expect most other brand elements to change over time—brands evolve, logos change, typography gets updated, art direction shifts—but generally, we presume that they stay the same for a while. And it’s usually just one logo, or a small
It’s an appealing idea, naming your company a letter. While there are over a million words in English, depending on what counts as a word*, there are only 26 letters. So if you can equate your company with one of these elemental building blocks, it stands to reason that you’ve just acquired a pretty big
Credentialed crowds. Cinematic intros. Surprise celebrity cameos. Awkward live demos. By now we all know the hallmarks of a major tech launch event, like the “Made by Google” hardware showcase, the Meta Connect developer conference, Apple’s annual iPhone release, or Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked. As namers with one foot in the tech industry, we treat these
Descriptive names have a reputation for being boring. It’s well earned. Many descriptive names are very boring indeed: Mailboxes Etc., Discount Tire, Lamps Plus, AirTran and The Water Store come to mind. All of these companies use their name to answer the question “What can I buy from you?” In the case of Mailboxes Etc.,
