Have you ever been involved in naming a company or a product? It’s an interesting adventure, and so many things can go wrong—or right. Consider the legendary Chevy Nova. A sturdy, functional little car, with nothing really bad that could be said about it. Except its name, which means “won’t go” in Spanish.
In writing of Kauai Farmacy, for example, marketing guru Marcia Yudkin extolls the company for choosing a name that conveys where it’s located, what it does, and its driving spirit. On the other hand, there’s Amazon, for which such a straightforward approach might not work. According to Ms. Yudkin, Jeff Bezos chose the name because “he did not want to signal what it sold.” Hmm. I’ve always liked the Amazon logo, because the company has grown into it. You look at the little arrow that sweeps from A to Z, and you think, “Yes, Amazon does sell everything from A to Z.” Although if you think again, you realize that the logo might not signal that unless you’d already visited the website and made a purchase or two.
In a recent “Marketing Minute”—How well named is that? —Ms. Yudkin recommends starting with a “solid, distinct idea of what you want the name to accomplish, indicate and imply.” She also recommends brainstorming and not rushing through the process. I’ll add to that by suggesting you check my recent post “Better than Brainstorming” for a brief intro to the ideas of Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack. Even better, you should hop on over to Catchword Branding for some truly dandy ideas about creating brand names.
I’ll end this post by with confession time. For about six months, right after I started my business, I operated with free Vistaprint business cards. You know the ones. Turn them over and on the back you’d see “Business cards are FREE at Vistaprint,” or some such. After getting shredded for using them by a thoroughly unpleasant person—who actually did me a huge favor—I went back to Vistaprint for the $29.95 special. Late one evening, faced with the prospect of running out of freebie cards and the need to come up with a card template and a company name fast, I plucked “Written Right” out of the ether. Still works for me.
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