Let's assume a medium-sized company. Marketing has to find a name for the latest product. The management thinks that their creative marketing people can easily manage this. So, highly motivated, they organize an internal naming competition or naming workshop to get as many of the company's employees on board as possible.
The positive result leads to a range of approaches and ideas. The only thing is that the desired name "that blows everyone away" is not yet in sight. What many people need to learn: Name ideas - even good ones - are not enough. Some nasty traps are lurking on the journey to a favorite name. Let's take a look at them.
Intensive Team Naming Session: Ideen finden, kategorisieren, bewerten, selektieren.
The search for a name is always first about finding words. A typical brainstorming session leads to long lists of terms describing the product or project in question. Suppose you are looking for a name for a software product. In that case, you will come up with digital, internet, app and other apparent keywords. For a cosmetics brand, the words beauty, style and perfect come to mind. These buzzwords, however, can only be used to create somewhat interchangeable names that have been heard and seen many times before. The solution: you must move away from these apparent words and then return to the topic. It would help if you had creative techniques and methods, such as those we describe in detail in our naming book. We use these ourselves in our practice and are constantly developing them further. If you want to find strong name ideas on your own, with or without a team, please forgo the standard brainstorming and try one of our easy-to-use techniques.
As a rule of thumb for developing a name with trademark protection in Germany: out of 100 ideas, 98 are gone! And that's if you search correctly, i.e., also consider similar trademarks and protected classes with the potential for confusion.
If you've been on a name hunt for products or brands before, you know the problem: even if you've found some promising name ideas that meet all the requirements and are available, the naming journey continues. After all, you must still decide on the "one and only" name! And this is often a tricky business: individual founders ponder their options, startup teams struggle with different tastes, and in companies, the vote - and the presentation to the executive floor - becomes a shaky affair. Hot name candidates are worn down or "burned" by spontaneous criticism and too many opinions. Democratic voting ensures the lowest denominators. To ensure this doesn't happen, we've sorted out a strategy how to avoid discussions and disputes when voting and deciding on names.
Always brood over proper names: Mark Leiblein, Gila Dassel, Marcel Hiller.
Do you know the above described or similar situations? We don't want to discourage you from searching for a name alone. On the contrary, we are always happy when our customers have done a lot of research beforehand and have dealt with the naming intensively. That puts them on the right track or already on the home stretch. When the search for a name comes to a standstill, it is often enough for us to take a "fresh look with expert glasses" at the previous work results, and we quickly know where to start to find the desired name.
Above all, we want to sensitize you to the fact that a naming project for an important project definitely has nothing to do with a one-time, creative brainstorming round or is even finished with it. It is an introduction to the topic. But it is even better to plan the naming process from goal setting to decision making and to be prepared for the possible obstacles.
Contact us at an early stage if you would like to have a new name developed, if you need a coherent naming system for your product portfolio, or if you are about to change your name.
With naming consulting from Namestorm, you will find the right name and, thus, a real communicative secret weapon for your brand, company or product!
I'm Marcel. Don't hesitate, fire your questions my way!
