Corpania Ideas

CAVEAT! I'm an amateur philosopher and idea-generator. I am NOT an investment professional. Don't take any of my advice before consulting with an attorney and also a duly licensed authority on finance. Seriously, this my personal blog of random ideas only for entertainment purposes. Don't be an idiot.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

How to Name Virtually Any Business (or Movie Title):

FWIW - Here are my semi-secret "rules" of naming virtually any business (or movie title):

1) Unless you're "ambush marketing", your name/title must be uniquely Google-able (or IMDb-able for film titles) for customers' searches and trademark issues. This normally means you've got to register the ".com" domain cleanly otherwise you should probably pick something else.

2) The name should have as few syllables as possible - otherwise it'll be shortened, initial-ized, or acronym-ed which will then function as the true name (see FedEx). Also note: domains with more letters tend to lose/miss more customers.

3) It should be easily spelled so as not to confuse customers (otherwise you should register domains for ALL the alternate/incorrect spellings and have them redirect to the main/correct one).

4) It shouldn't have any negative connotations (even in other languages).

5) It should have positive and, ideally, descriptive connotations (but not too generically descriptive for fear of losing trademark protection).


And here's my previously secret step-by-step recipe/strategy for naming:

a) Brainstorm a big list of "ingredients" words that have anything to do with your product/film. Focus on nouns but accept anything that pops in your head. If you don't have at least 50 then keep going.

b) Then expand that big list by seeking those words' synonyms and related words (and for films especially seek out idioms, common phrases, and memes to riff off of).

c) Then look at that mega-list of ingredients and start cramming words & syllables together until certain matches jump out at you as especially good. Pay particular attention to opportunities for humor/irony and even puns.

d) Assemble your newly formed "candidate name/title" list and filter it using the "rules" above.

e) Then reduce it down further to your favorite 7 (really try to limit it to no more than 7) and get feedback from friends, family, colleagues, experts (including laymen/regular folks).

f) Consider the potential visuals. Find logo & poster synergies. Create great images that come from within the candidate names/titles or ones that can effectively compliment the name/title (even if that image has little to nothing to do with the name/title). Images should evoke the emotion your product/film seeks to provide to the customer.

g) Once you have your top 3 candidates just make a gut decision of which you think works best and run with it. Good luck!

NOTE: I have some other truly top-secret methods about this but I keep them to myself to maintain a competitive advantage. ;-)

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