Modern Inventor

One of my favorite parts of any product development process is naming the product. I love trying to come up with a word that captures everything I want to about it: its function, its purpose, its personality, its demographic. I believe every product has a perfect name (or 2 or 3) and it’s just a matter of spending time on the matter, combined with approaching it from a variety of angles, to figure it out.

The fundamental purpose of the name of a product is this: you want the consumer, upon hearing the name, to receive a mental image which stays in their brain and makes an impression, which the consumer makes associations with in their mind. For example, if they hear the name and see the item at the same time, the appearance of the product and what it implies will attach to the name. Thus, the next time that person hears the name, it will strengthen their impressions and associations. This will increase the liklihood of them ultimately buying your product. If your name is boring or doesn’t stick, the consumer ’s impression will fade before the next time they see it, and so the strength of the impression won’t grow. People buy what they find familiar, so you want that impression to strengthen.

In order to make the strongest impression, you want to do three things: 1) capture the imagination, triggering a visual impression. This is doen by using words that conjure visual imagery, like a word for an animal or object. 2) stir an emotional reaction and 3) surprise the mind with the perfectness  of the name, eliciting a “how clever” moment in the mind of the hearer. Humor is helpful here, too, as are double entendres, metaphors, and word twists. You want ”clever appropriateness”. The right name can totally transform the perception of a product. The PowerSquid, if it had been called the Power Extender, would probably not have had the same impact and received as much attention.

So what do I look for in a name? I like names that aren’t too cheesy (anything with “easy” or a variation in it) and aren’t too abstract (3 or 4 syllable made-up words like Altria). If the name can tell you what the product does without being literal, that is great. As I like to say, I like names that taste like bread, that is, names that get to the point and don’t make the customer think too much. A quickly satisfying word with some texture. We are looking for an emotional connection, not an intellectual one. Names that are meaningless strings of letters (VGL, CRX, etc.) aren’t my favorite either, unless you have tons of marketing dollars to brand your combo. And even then, it will never stick in a customer’s mind like a word that creates a visualization when read. Names like PowerSquid, or the Wedgie, or Straptor.

Someone recently told me that they read a study which claimed that consumers had a strong preference for (and remembered longer) product names that were animals, like the Rabbit Corkscrew, the VW Bug, the PowerSquid. I buy it. Whenever possible, you should consider an animal-inspired name for your product. Of course, the animal should somehow relate to product, either in function or in appearance. Though I am not recommending creating products that intentionally look like animals. Their appearance should arise out of function and the animal-resemblance be a happy coincindence, for the name to truly be great.

Here is my list of Naming don’ts:

1. Use the word “easy” or any derivation
2. Replace letters with phonetically similar letters (’k’ for ‘c’, or ‘z’ for ’s’)
3. Names that are difficult to pronounce
4. Names with unintended meanings
5. Names that have a very strong brand is another field (Tide is forever a laundry detergent, even though it would have been a good aquarium brand)
6. Names with meaningless strings of letters (though acronyms can be fine if they are clever)
7. Most surnames
8. Too many syllables (unless that’s the point!)
9. generic names (unless that’s the point)
10. Hard to spell

When thinking of a name there are some technical issues that need to be adressed as well. 1) Trademark issues and 2) URL issues. We can discuss those in a later article.