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About Naming

Naming Conventions: When To Follow, When To Stray

If you are old enough to remember rock music from the 1980’s, you can probably remember band names that seemed created just to be memorable. While having an unforgettable name is a good thing, shouldn’t your name say something about what you do and who you are? Think about bands like R.E.M., The B-52s, and…

Successful Online And Social Media Marketing Business Names

Successful Online And Social Media Marketing Business Names When you envision business names, you may see them clinging to a handsome marquee, or hovering above the entrance to a building on a well-lit sign. But as a business owner, you should also see them emblazoned across the homepage of a business website and neatly printed…

Picking a company name? Context is everything.

Outside the confines of a company naming process, people aren’t used to seeing names all alone. In the real world, names are surrounded by subtle and not-so-subtle cues that channel our perception. Logos, imagery, packaging, environment – they all play a role in defining the context in which we understand names. Looking at a potential…

Creative product names: Mechanical Turk

Amazon has a knack for naming. The company is named after the longest river in the world – a fitting moniker for the biggest shop in the world. They have creative product names as well. Kindle is easily the best-named e-reader. A9 is a bit of a dud, but we’ll let that one slide. But by…

company-name-machine

The greatest company name generator ever invented

There are a lot of company name generators out there. Pick a few prefixes and buzzwords and ta-da: 20 crappy name options. If you’ve ever used any of them you realize pretty quickly that you’ll probably have better luck finding a name by throwing darts at the phone book. Anyway, along comes a team of…

Is Facebook Home a good name?

It’s not a phone. It’s not an app. It’s something much more ambitious: software that integrates with your existing phone and brings your Facebook news streaming right to your home-screen. Instead of seeing your lock-screen as soon as you turn on your phone, or the rest of your apps when you unlock it, Facebook Home…

Oh the HuManatee!

Target is looking to expand its clothing footprint with a foray into aquatic mammal fashion. That’s not just the setup to a weird and tasteless fat joke — it’s what Target actually called the color of some of their plus-sized clothes. The company was put on the defensive last week after calling the color of…

Adventures in bias: Why focus groups will kill your brand

“Apple is famous for not engaging in the focus-grouping that defines most business product and marketing strategy. Which is partly why Apple’s products and advertising are so insanely great. They have the courage of their own convictions, instead of the opinions of everyone else’s whims.” — Dan Pallota, “Real Leaders Don’t Do Focus Groups” In…

Tip of the hat: Branding Bulleit Bourbon

This is the first installment of Tip of the Hat, a new series where we give a tip of the hat to brands who are doing it right.  The branding of Bulleit is delicious. Branding alcohol can be tricky. Sure, some people are willing to try whatever the barkeep is mixing, but on the whole…

The top five bumper stickers that bum me out

In a car, we’re a captive audience. This is probably because driving requires the use of our eyeballs, so we end up looking at a lot of bumper stickers. This is how we become acutely aware that the person in the red Subaru is really passionate about kale. Ultimately, I’m fine with someone trying to…

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