The Smile and Scrath Test
SMILE The 5 qualities of a super sticky name
- Suggestive — evokes something about your brand
- Meaningful — resonates with your audience
- Has to be meaningful to the audience, too, not just youA long meaningful name is better than a short meaningless one
- Imagery — is visually evocative to aid in memory
- If people can visualize your brand with an image, it’s much stickier
- Legs — lends itself to a theme for extended mileage
- Emotional —moves people
- If your brand makes people smile, you can stick it on anythingGrandma’s Chicken Soup > Chicken Soup
SCRATCH The 7 deadly sins of naming
- Spelling challenged —looks like a typo
- If it’s not spelled the way it sounds, scratch it offDon’t sacrifice spelling for a domain name
- Copycat —is similar to competitors’ names
- Restrictive —limits future growth
- Choose a name that allows for future growth
- Annoying —is forced or frustrates customers
- Tame —is flat, descriptive, uninspired
- Curse of Knowledge —makes sense only to insiders
- Hard to pronounce —is not obvious or is unapproachable
Creative Brief
- Goal of project
- In a nutshell (sum it up in 140 characters or less)
- Brand positioning (how do you want your brand to be positioned in the market)
- Consumer insights (people’s behavior, not just preferences, people enjoy tea to relax and read with, not just for the flavor or smell)
- Target audience (who are the customers you want to reach)
- Competition (who and what you’re up against)
- Desired brand experience (a good name will evoke a positive experience)
- Bran personality (the 5-12 adjectives that best describe the personality of the brand)
- Words to explore (some words you may like to have in the name)
- Themes / ideas to avoid
- Words to avoid
- Domain name modifiers
- Name style likes (list 5 brand names you like the style of and why)
- Name style dislikes (5 you dislike and why)
- Acid test, how the new name would be used in a sentence
- Have you read ?
- Oh you should read _
- I loved _, it’s a useful book
- Also good to know (anything else that would be helpful for name development)
Brainstorming Process
- Target Audience
- Brand Personality
- Consumer insights, what do we know about potential customers
- Brand experiences, how people will feel with it
- Words to avoid
- The warm up – 12 words related to your brand that you life
- For each word:
- Go to the thesauraus and plug it in, write down any other great words you find
- Go to Google Images and search for images related to the words you like
- Comb through glossaries of terms related to the images and words
- Read the dictionary definitions for more ideas and to find related phrases
- Find cliches that use the word
- Look through songs, books, movies with the words in them
- Collect all your name ideas from 7, see what passes the SMILE and SCRATCH test, and see what you like!
The Name Review
- Write out how the name might be used in a sentence at the top
- Don’t ask “do I like it?” but ask “is it right?”
- Refrain from negative comments
- Don’t ask for outside opinions, or post surveys. If you ask everyone to chime in, you will end up with a mediocre name that met with the least resistance rather than the very best name.
- Don’t be afraid to be different (Google, Virgin, Lush, Tesla, Apple)
- Don’t look up domain names early, you can always modify it (teslamotors, steampowered, slideshare.net)