We rehomed, and then renamed, two female kittens this week. It was a fraught negotiation. I promised democracy, then in my excitement, having come up with (or rather, a friend having proposed) the perfect names for our purring pair of fluffballs, it was swiftly rescinded. This did not go down well. After clearly voiced disgust and much upset from the juniors in the household, democracy was ultimately upheld and it went to a fair vote with the simplest of briefs; a single proviso that they be named as a pair. All manner of backroom politics ensued, with those holding a strong opinion vying for any support they could secure, via whatever means necessary (except me, of course. I would never stoop to such lows.) We reached a conclusion in the end, naming them Kemistry and Storm, after the unsung Drum and Bass pioneers and founding members of the ‘Metalheadz’ label. Hopefully dance music lovers of the right era and country will nod with approval. Others among you would perhaps have found Cinnamon and Spice, or Pinky and Perky, far more apt. Still, what’s done is done, but not without a little pain.
Naming is an emotional business, and in so many ways that’s a glorious thing. With any luck, you and your team are consumed with a fiery passion right now; exactly what’s required to bring innovation into the world and make a difference. However, as we draw closer to our grand unveilings, the naming process can become an intense culmination of hard-fought battles along that journey. With so much skin in the game, things can get pretty fraught.
Rather than offer a step by step naming process here, I want to focus on removing some of the pain, and to turn this often disruptive, conflict-laden process, into a far more formative and uniting experience. Anyway, I really don’t think I could do the whole naming process justice in a single article. The art of naming relies on substantive and considered pre-work in order for things to run smoothly. It’s a complex process, definitely worthy of a series of articles at some point in the future, because done right it can be immensely rewarding. For now though, let’s get back to removing the sting.
The lack of any effort to define parameters leaves the naming process to a painful battle of wills; a volatile popularity contest at a time when emotions are running high. It’s a recipe for disaster, where the loudest chimp wins, but usually not for long. Just because you all leave the room with someone having won the popularity contest, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s onboard. Far from it. Just watch and wait for the disgruntled to rise, slowly over time, and see the proposed name toppled before you’ve so much as approved a logo, or worse, only after you’ve gone to market. The grumbles of ‘I never really liked that name anyway’ are painful to hear and about as much use as a chocolate teapot.
Just because you all leave the room with someone having won the popularity contest, that doesn’t mean that everyone’s onboard.
I often harp on about the value of a good brief and how you can avoid a whole heap of pain if you agree on one first, focusing the energy of all those involved to develop their best creative solutions. However, a simple brief falls short when it comes to naming. It’s simply too linear. We don’t get to the best solution by simply ticking all the boxes on a list of requirements. In reality, ‘strategy’ is a far better term. The naming process is dynamic, attempting to resolve a host of interdependent forces (to the extent that they can be resolved), in pursuit of the best fit, and where there’s no one perfect answer. Nevertheless, being able to say very clearly what you are looking for enables you to narrow the field of investigation and offer a loud and clear ‘No’ to a whole host of options. Paradoxically, the more you can intelligently narrow the field when naming, the more freedom you fashion for everyone to be that much more creative.
I think it’s helpful at this stage to identify the fundamental objective of a name. A name is ultimately your lead brand asset, and as such, a key mental anchor point for your proposition. The objective of a name is to achieve the strongest possible anchor point to cement your value proposition in the minds of your target audience. The primary challenge is managing to cut through all the noise and stand out in a way that is both authentic to you, as well as resonating powerfully with your target audience. Authenticity, distinction, and resonance bring up tensions when pursued together, some of which are hard to resolve, hence the need for a carefully designed, coherent strategy.
But what should this strategy contain? This is where any article on naming could run away with itself, so I’m afraid I’ve no choice but to skimp on the details here. There are a host of articles I’ve written in the past that delve into the different elements I’m about to list. In short though, it’s all about context. You’re looking to create a clear and united understanding of context, including target audience, competition, brand essence, personality and identity (to the extent that you have these clearly expressed), the positioning of the solution and its consequential value proposition, and a brand architecture if you have one. If not, the best long term strategy available will help you to define an architecture alongside the hard-sought name, and I highly recommend you do so.
So, where’s the pain? Well, ultimately in the workload, or delayed pain from a lack of work, depending on where you stand. As you can perhaps tell from the above, creating a powerful context to hone peoples’ minds is a lot of work. If you haven’t already done it, then the pain resides in having to get it done before you get to the naming process. More often than not, you’re running out of time too, with the launch date looming and cash reserves fast depleting. Unfortunately, if you don’t do the work, you’ll have a far greater issue when you fail to give your new solution the foundation it, and future innovations, deserve to succeed. So, do the best you can with the time you have. Better a slim strategy than no strategy at all. All the items I list are pretty fundamental to product/service development, so one hopes that you’ve got them in the bag, but if not, treat this as an opportunity. Define a ‘good enough’ structure for each element accepting your time limits, and then work together to define them. Instead of pain, you’ll have the pleasure of a united and informed team before the naming starts.
More often than not, you’re running out of time too, with the launch date looming and cash reserves fast depleting.
Let’s assume you’ve developed the perfect strategy, comprising succinct expressions of what you stand for, the proposition you’re making, how you plan to be distinct from the competition yet resonate with your target audience and remain true to your values. You come together to brainstorm a solution, and it is as if no one has read the strategy document at all. It’s soul destroying, and can leave you wondering why you even bother, yet it happens all the time. At this point, I refer you back to the four P’s; Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. There’s a right way of brainstorming, and it involves good preparation. In an earlier article on brainstorming I talk about preparing in pairs, and this process suits naming beautifully, so please use it. If you don’t, the outcome is all the more heart-breaking because you’ve invested your heart and soul into the prep work, only for it to be ignored and for people to revert to weak groupthink and a ‘make-do’ attitude, almost always resulting in a really dull name that, whilst everyone agrees on it, lacks any kind of ingenuity, failing miserably to work the tensions between authenticity, distinction and resonance to exhaustion.
Finally comes the pain of reality getting in your way. You develop the perfect strategy, prepare in pairs and execute the ultimate brainstorm, culminating in a work of genius that plays the tensions beautifully, wondrous in its simplicity. There are cheers and hugs all round, and the news is joyfully delivered to the creative agency. They work up a logo and other key launch materials, and the decks come through, thick and fast. Only then do the checks for trademarks and domains arrive and low and behold, the name you’re all united around simply isn’t an option.
Actually, this situation is totally avoidable. The solution is to start the checks in parallel and involve the person dotting the i’s and crossing the trademark t’s in the naming process much earlier on. With a naming architecture forming part of the naming strategy document, as well as a host of other contextual boundaries, the likelihood is that some preliminary checks can be done before you have a name, helping to refine the strategy yet further. During the preparational pair work, any proposals and ideas should be checked for domain and trademark freedom, so that ideas brought to the group brainstorm are good to go. Then, even during the brainstorm, preliminary checks can be done on the fly, laptop to hand. Rather than neutering creative thought, you’ll actually create more room for ideas that have a chance to fly. I wouldn’t sweat the domain name concerns. A little creative thinking can nullify or at least diminish any domain chinks in the customer journey. It’s the trademarks you need to focus on, and those provisional checks are usually swift to the well versed.
A little creative thinking can nullify or at least diminish any domain chinks in the customer journey
Finally, even when you’ve truly done your best to run a productive brainstorm, and involved all the right people fully in a well-informed, thoroughly prepared session, some people still just aren’t truly bought in. The same irritating grumbles creep in all too late, especially if launch doesn’t go to plan, or initial demand indicators are poor. On one side, I’m tempted to question whether those people grumbling are right for the team in the long run, but with a little more humility, one has to recognise that there may be something more systemic at play. Why didn’t they feel able to express their doubts earlier? Were they fearful of being judged? Or to be labeled the outsider, simply for speaking their mind? Once again this comes down to a culture lacking in openness and vulnerability, and it’s primarily the leadership team that shapes this. However, I can offer a short-circuit to get around the problem, rather than leave you hanging off the seemingly insurmountable ‘we’ve got a culture problem’ cliff. Simply schedule a negative brainstorm section near the close of the agenda; a fun process where it becomes the responsibility of every individual to talk about why the proposed solutions won’t work. How they don’t play the tensions effectively, or simply fail to be distinct, or resonate, or fall short of the company’s values. By forcing this conversation, there’s little risk driving the naysayers to hold back. Then you can work through the concerns logically and hopefully still arrive at a qualified consensus that cuts the mustard.
Business, as with life, can and should be emotional, especially in work like this. How dull this would all be if the path were purely rational. So, it’s not about curtailing that emotion, but rather creating boundaries where it can be managed, or perhaps ‘held’, in order to drive creativity. The boundaries created by a good naming strategy are hopefully fairly easy to appreciate. Boundaries that are cultivated as part of the wider company culture - that’s another thing entirely.
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