Volume 0: Does it really need a name?

I am a namer. I love other brand stuff too—brand strategy, voice, messaging, tagline, copywriting; stuff like that—but I approach all of those things with the mindset of a namer. Naming starts and ends with a question about what's most important to get across. If you can answer that, you can solve a lot of other brand and business problems too. 

For all the incredible joy that I get from naming, the first question I always ask is, "Does it really need a name?" I'm not trying to be provocative, and I'm not trying to talk myself out of a job. Mainly, I'm doing my part for the planet—I'm cutting down on waste! Because when it comes to naming, holy mother of sneakers, there is a lot of wasted effort out there. 

So when Paula Pou and I decided to launch a booklet series on branding topics for Doublebit Narrative, we wanted to start with the basics; the stuff we could speak to most honestly from our own experience. For me, that starts with naming, and questioning all the unnecessary naming that's out there. You can download the full book at doublebitnarrative.com/truth, and sign up for our newsletter to find out when the next booklet in the series is ready. 

This is the first of five booklets in the naming series, and then we'll take on other branding topics that we hope you'll like too!

Your name sucks

I am a fan of irreverent naming, and irreverent branding in general. It takes guts to spin insults and swears into strong intellectual property, so when I do see an example of it, I am instantly in love. 

Lagunitas has always had fun with its naming. I've hated lots of their names (I feel left out of the joke!), but always respected their "We do it our way!" choices that show up on the shelf. But I recently came across one that made my heart skip (or hop? That's a beer reference, right? I don't drink beer.)

Also a great SEO strategy, hedging against the possibility that Lagunitas haters will go online looking for commiserators, only to have to sort through pages of product reviews.  

Keep sucking. 

My true love: training

I love all kinds of training. Strength training, endurance training; training others, being trained. Anything designed with the sole purpose of improvement is a good, good thing.

This extends to conducting brand training. Strategy and creative work is lovely, and we have a grand time behind conference room doors: mapping things out, getting whiteboard marker all over our hands. And it's a thrill when direct clients—often savvy brand and marketing folks—"get" what we've come up with.

But the point of all that pondering and processing is to produce something useful. Something that connects with everyone at the business. Everyone. When a client believes enough in the work we do to ask us to turn into a training session (or series), I value that above all else. Because training on anything brand-related, whether it's a new brand strategy, voice, messaging, naming style, means it's time to take the content out of whatever academic framework it might reside within, and make it useful. For anyone. And if a client believes we can convert even their most skeptical audiences (usually, it's their lawyers), we can help brands tell a united story.

I had the honor and pleasure of joining my colleagues in training Girl Scouts of USA on the voice and messaging that we developed. Representatives from around the country came to learn to speak Girl Scouts and tell their own stories through the lens of the message—over 130 in total. I got to run an afternoon session on giving creative feedback, and can honestly say, Girl Scouts Brand Camp was almost as fun as actually going to summer camp. Girl Scouts put together a video about the day (which is sweeter than sweet), and it's a treat to take in the reactions of some of the folks who gave us two full days of their time. 

If there's a cartoon butt involved...

A quick post from last weekend on why Virgin America's new UX totally pushes the brand's overall experience in the right direction—and sets the bar up, up in the sky for everyone else (I'm looking at you, United). 

 

It's never too late to look back

At the end of every year, the full verbal identity team at Interbrand gathers round and debates the best and worst names the previous 12 months provided. Fun? Without a doubt. Whittled down from a much, much longer list, last month's Etymology detailed our top picks. 

Names aren't snowflakes

More than one brand can own the same name. This is a big ol' pill to swallow for a lot of brands, especially when it's a really visible name, like the name of their company or their most heroic product.

And, listen, I don't even like meeting other Caitlins, so I know how they feel. But given that the ratio of registered trademarks to words in the English language is at the already not-so-favorable 600:1 (don't check my math), businesses should thank their lucky stars ("star," for example, appears in 23,104 trademarked names, according to the USPTO) that this is allowed. 

In this month's Etymology, I explored the topic of "samesies" from a trademark perspective. 

There is no empty vessel

Today's article on naming in the New Yorker, titled "The Surprising Psychology of How Names Shape Our Thoughts," isn't that surprising at all. Words, whether they're wildly unfamiliar or literally "household names," trigger images and associations that help us make sense of what they're attached to. 

I have a feeling this article will yield a lot of questions about sound symbolism in the weeks to come. Namers are often asked about sound symbolism: What are the characteristics of a name will help me sound fast? Premium? Optimistic? Psychologist Wolfgang Köhler's 1929 study found that respondents felt the name maluma sounded round and takete sounded sharp—simple ideas that are foundational to the study of sound symbolism. 70+ years later, rock-star neuroscientist Vilayanur S. Ramachandran  characterized this non-arbitrary linkage as the bouba/kiki effect. 

Sound symbolism can be tricky. Not all associations are as binary as what's was shown in the bouba/kiki study, especially when you factor in cultural associations. It's a fascinating topic—but a solid naming brief shouldn't rely on symbolism alone to create relevant meaning. 

The best piece of advice from the article applies not just to naming, but to all forms of verbal communication: "People generally prefer not to think more than necessary, and they tend to prefer objects, people, products, and words that are simple to pronounce and understand." (Links to a great, though highly academic, paper on how we best process information.) It can be so tempting to show your work, whether in a name or in a message, but there's so much more power in having confidence in a single, powerful idea, expressed simply and elegantly. That's how you create something memorable. That's how you connect. 

If I had to love just one name for the rest of my life...

That name would be Barkevious Mingo. 
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Reshaping an icon

​Last year, an incredible American brand let me in on the process of writing the next chapter of its story. Louisville Slugger asked Interbrand for help making its 129-year-old brand relevant to a new generation--one that didn't know Babe Ruth from a candy bar. I took the lead on the voice, shifting it into the present and future tense, and giving it a style that was more charismatic captain than museum curator. Our Cincinnati office took on something much bigger—the company's visual system, including its iconic logo. Everything was revealed today, and it couldn't have come together more beautifully. 

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Making names, making choices

I guest authored this week's Etymology, Interbrand's monthly naming publication, and used it as a chance to nerd out about choice. Naming has a huge influence on the way audiences understand the amount of choice you offer, and helps them compare choices to find the right one. 

​To apply theories of choice to portfolio naming, I borrow heavily from the work of Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar. Iyengar's published research always seems to have what I'm looking for:

• When I'm dealing with a portfolio that offers excessive choice, I reference her study on when too much choice is demotivating (the famous jam study, in its original form).
• If a business is struggling with low customer satisfaction when they're set up to offer customers exactly what they want , I wonder if spending too much time getting what's "just right" is contributing to a sense of dissatisfaction—Iyengar showed that job seekers who spent too much time looking for "best" weren't as happy with their decision as those who went with a job offer early in the process.  
• The area of overlap between name and brand architecture comes down to how we articulate the types of choice a brand offers. A study called The Mere Categorization Effect details how categories shape audience perceptions of choice—and how satisfied they are with what their choice. We take this further with naming systems, creating language to sit above categories that tells a story about what the brand stands for, in addition to what it offers. 
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The best renaming project I've ever been a part of

Paul Newman. Not a guy whose legacy you want to fool around with. In 2011, I worked with his non-profit, formerly named Association of Hole in the Wall Camps, to come up with a new name that fit the spirit and mission of this amazing organization. I met camp CEOs from all around the world, and got to visit the original camp in Connecticut. In short, it ruled. And the final name is one I'm thrilled with: Serious Fun. It speaks to Paul Newman's vision for creating a place where kids with serious illnesses could leave all that at the door and raise a little hell.​

The work we did at Interbrand, in the renaming, redesigning, and developing content for the brand, has been recognized with a distinction by the 2013 Rebrand 100. You can also see a great brand video, written by my colleagues at Interbrand, that tells the whole story. 

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Every namer dreams of naming nail polish

It's true, we do. I've had the extreme pleasure of being able to name home paint colors, towel colors, and stationery colors, but have yet to name cosmetics. As a result, I vicariously enjoy nail polish naming by tracking trends in the space. Here, from Halloween, was my breakdown of all the ways the category names a color as deceptively simple as black (posted on the Interbrand blog)

Paint It Black for Halloween