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About Branding

Why is it so hard to hype AI at launch?

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…

Branding for the Head and the Heart: An Interview with Made of Millions’ Esther Fernandez

Passion projects are a hot topic around here. We often daydream about which companies or products we would be enthusiastic to name from minor league sports teams to hammocks. Even though we mostly concern ourselves with working with kind and communicative folk, we all individually hope that our one dream project comes in the door….

What your merch says about you

In this role, few things are quite as satisfying as seeing a newly-launched name in the physical world—whether that’s on product packaging, a billboard, or a business card. Suddenly the intangible has become tangible, part of an environment where it can be observed, manipulated, and, hopefully, remembered. After recently being asked to evaluate names based…

What happens when every brand on the shelf is designed to be different?

That’s the question raised by Pop Up Grocer, a curated retail experience in NYC described as “all the buzziest brands on Instagram under one roof” and “playland for packaging nerds.” It also asks, what if the inside of your pantry was edited by Dieline?  Sandwiched between Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods, Pop Up Grocer…

More brand, less celebrity

Brands that could survive without big name backings There’s a special kind of paradox at the intersection of celebrity and branding. Fame, especially when wielded as an endorsement, is a shortcut: a fast-track to relevance, a built-in audience, a persistent spotlight that attracts attention before it might be justified. Brand building, on the other hand,…

Our brand could be your life: A look at why some brands dominate people’s lives

Credit to Michael Azerrad and Mike Watt of Minutemen for the title of this blog, a nod to Azzerad’s book “Our band could be your life” and the opening line of “History Lesson – Part II”, a song written by Mike Watt of Minutemen. What is it about some brands that seem to take over…

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…

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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…

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…

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