What does it take to create the right name for a company or product?
We create names that are potent and immutable.
CASE STUDY / NAMINGServices
Research + Analysis
Concepting + Refinement
Tagline Writing
Due Diligence + Clearing House
Regulatory Clearance
We’ve been asked time and time again to create names for startups, M&A, and new products. As it is one of the more mysterious and scarce creative services, we’re almost always asked to do so after our clients have tried and failed on their own.
A great company or product name can spark curiosity, start a conversation, and raise the next question. We make the calculus of company and product naming less about hoping for a moment of creative clarity and more about process. The right name is out there, and we’ve built a trusted approach that engineers the right names, rather than conjuring hopeful ones.
CONTEXT + STRATEGYWe begin naming with a deep dive, gathering the hopes and dreams of key stakeholders, reviewing the ideas that our client has already been through, and learning about positive and negative words in the client’s industry. This contextual research allows us to plot the competitive and adjacent sets and better understand where we may uncover an unclaimed conceptual direction.
Applied Services
Marketplace Research
Competitive Analysis
EXAMPLESera
Sera Global promises to see what can be, rather than what once was. Navigating possibility requires wisdom, diligence, experience, and imagination — the name declares the spirit to hold all four in proportion and balance.
This is Sera: ever ascendant with our clients toward a bolder future.
CONCEPTING + REFINEMENTOur initial naming concepts are categorized in sets such as portmanteau, initialism, acronym, associative, literal, metaphoric, and others. Where a first pass may contain over 100 potential names, due diligence will exclude well over 75%, no matter how unique we believe our options to be. This process culls the set to a short collection of presentable, potentially ownable, and legally defensible names.
The presentation of names to a client may include real-world exercises and the delivery of tools designed to overcome subjectivity. Often, we will write taglines that, although they may not be used in public, help to further contextualize the names and imbue meaning for stakeholders.
Applied Services
Naming Concepts + Refinements
Tagline Writing
EXAMPLESLocal Planet
The only privately-owned international media network, Columbus Media International, was rebranding to better harness the spirit and hunger of local independent media agencies. This external restructure differentiated them from global media agency solutions and allowed them to increase their coverage by engaging additional local agencies and clients across the global.
Our challenge was to make them feel large enough to compete with the reach of global agencies, shed the negative connotations of the old identity, and highlight their unique and authentic local connections.
Qualia
A company named ‘Local Response’ was evolving from geo-location targeting to becoming a pioneer of ‘intent targeting’ in advertising technology. To create a new brand that shined as an industry leader, we had to discover a name that would dispense industry jargon, and humanize and simplify a complicated and highly-technical industry.
Check out how we applied a brand visual identity to the name: Qualia Comprehensive Branding
DUE DILIGENCEWe’ve formed strong partnerships with legal teams who specialize in both domestic and international trademarking. Our process allows us to manage the due diligence and legal clearance exercises for our clients. With trademark clearance, registration guidance, and the identification of potential threats both in and out of the industry, we are able to achieve a degree of certainty needed for a company to press forward with confidence.
For those clients who operate in regulated industries such as finance and medicine, our partnerships can also overcome additional regulatory clearances and international law considerations.
The naming process concludes with a name that is well-crafted, unique, exciting to our client, and legally sound.
Applied Services
Due Diligence
Clearing House
Regulatory Clearance
EXAMPLEAMP
As both a white label garment manufacturer of global scale and a market entry fashion brand, American Manufacturing Partners (AMP) needed a name and identity that straddled the B2B and B2C divide and prepared them for whatever comes next.
Check out how we applied a brand visual identity to the name: AMP Branding
WRAP-UPWhether it’s an acronym, a clever portmanteau, or a fabricated word, the truth is that a name is just the start. A name acquires meaning only when the company or product behind it gives it meaning. When the company stands by its purpose, demonstrates value, and consistently satisfies its customers, peers, and employees, then, and only then, does a name become great.