In the beginning, brand naming is a simple invocation of your own personal universe. As an entrepreneur you will put countless hours of effort into something you can only believe to work out. For you to believe you have to find meaning and to find meaning you need to find at least a descriptive working title. Something like “I will offer Micro(computer) Soft(ware)” or “I love Macintosh Apples” or “I want to make Bytes Dance!”. Anything that works out for you is good because it is only your personal belief, your own personal universe. If it resonate with you and with your companions, you are all good and set to go!
Beware the boundaries
Working titles which implicitly state limits will be your ultimate definition. You will hit the boundary sooner or later because you are human and this means to struggle with boundaries. So when you ask for feedback pay attention to what the title does not allow and ask yourself if you are willing to struggle with it. The struggle must be worth it.
Isolated nouns have the boundaries of the meaning they are associated with. Verbs add action. Adjectives add specificity. You want to be as bold as you can be in your universe.
Serve first
The more attuned you are to the people you want to serve, the easier for you to be bold and specific with the working title. As the brand expert Marty Neumeier states:
A Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.
Although its original intent is to clarify that a brand is not defined by the company but by its clients, I will use it to make it also count for the initial stages of brand development.
If you think your task as brand manager is to find a name for your client, stop right there. You wont find anything actually useful because in the beginning the project is not a name but the intent of a person or a group of persons. Useful will only be what helps to commit to that intent. It must be something not anchored in some made up fancy rationale you come up. It must come from within the person with the intent so it works for them as a reminder to commit to this inner calling.
What you can do is help them getting awareness about each proposal/name coming up in the process:
- Reflect to them what each name means to you
- Put into words the universe it creates in your mind
- Help realize the boundaries it sets
- Speak the name out loud and feel the melody and rhythm
- Write it into a search engine (for them) and discuss the results
- Write it into a domain search (for them) and discuss the results
- If you have visual sensibility: write it down on paper and get a feel for the visual physiognomy of the word
- If you have visual sensibility: explore the visual potential through typing it into font libraries
- If you have multilingual skills and cultural experience: explore it in those terms.
You can do so many things but please,
Do not make up names
Nothing useful can come from you. But through you everything is possible because only you can perceive the world like you do and you can learn to channel your sensing to expand everyone’s awareness.