Editor's Note: This is a guest post by Blake Howard, creative director and co-founder of Matchstic, an Atlanta-based brand identity firm.
A great brand name goes places, tells stories and conjures emotion.
As you prepare to launch a startup, creating your company name can be one of the most painstaking points in the process.
It can be challenging to find a name that says enough (without saying too much), has an available URL and social media handles and isn’t already in use within your industry. Sifting through the United States Patent and Trademark Office can drain time and resources. Discovering a name that resounds both locally and globally can feel next to impossible.
You have big dreams for your product. Do you have the right name to achieve them?
When it comes to finding the right name, “I’ll know it when I see it,” is a common misconception. When done correctly, naming is a mixture of art and science, not a haphazard creative exercise. It’s a difficult and intricate task, deliberating a thousand little considerations.
Names are crucial to the connection you form with your target audience. A name brings out your product or service's essence and character, and without the right brand name, how will your customers know who you are and what you stand for?
In the end, great names tell a story, adding a layer of depth to a brand that goes way beyond a single product, service or campaign. Matchstic, an Atlanta-based branding agency, has mastered the naming process. It takes a strong strategy to ground us and a high level of objectivity that sets personal associations aside for the sake of finding the best name for the brand.
Our naming expertise in the tech sector can be seen in a few of our recent brand identity projects.
Two savvy entrepreneurs came to us with an idea for a new app that provides a peek behind the healthcare curtain. Our challenge was finding a name describing both the app’s function and the disruptive nature of its technology.
The result? A name signifying the app’s ability to help people take control and navigate a tough healthcare bind: Clutch Health.
A group of restaurant industry pros approached us with the beta version of their app, then called Repair Dog, which quickly connects restaurant managers with service technicians when things go wrong.
We landed on a simple, fabricated word that signals how their technology helps restaurants get back up and running in no time: Humrun.
Humrun keeps operations running smoothly and humming along at full swing. See what we did there?
How did we arrive at these names? We followed our four tried and true principles for any startup to follow when naming their brand.
1. A Good Name Should Always Have Meaning
More than just stating a feature or function, it should explain a feeling or benefit. The meaning doesn't have to be evident, but it should be easily told. Define your startup’s purpose, convictions and reasons for existence and allow those ideas to guide your ideas for names.
2. A Good Name Will Stand Out
Create distance from the other names in your category. To help narrow down options, consider what elements of your product are service the name should most reflect. The USPTO classifies most apps in the same category, so trademarking a tech company can be difficult and requires a unique name that is different from all other apps or technology products.
While brainstorming names, it’s simultaneously important to research possible URLs. There are more than 1.6 billion websites (and counting) and only so many word combinations available for URLs.
If getting a short URL is important, then a fabricated name is the only real option, and the tradeoff is usability. The name will likely be hard to say and spell, and you may have to explain it to your stakeholders. If getting a name that is self-explanatory is a must, then you will have to settle for the brand name plus a descriptive word in the URL, such as deltafaucet.com or onepeloton.com.
3. A Good Name Is Simply Useful
Balancing out the need to be different is the need to be intuitive. If a name is hard to say or spell, it’s probably hard to search for and share. There’s no reason to set up an additional hurdle for your brand or users by choosing an awkward moniker. Another dimension for brand name usability is the flexibility to grow beyond a certain set of activities or products. If the name is too narrowly focused or one-dimensional, this can limit its potential.
4. A Good Name Is Likable
In the end, if a name isn’t likable, it’s probably not the best answer. This isn’t the starting point, as if to say, “We like it, so let’s go with it.” It’s the seal of approval on one outstanding winner among a set of winners.
Ultimately, there is no perfect name, only pretty good names. Tradeoffs are inevitably part of the naming process. It’s all about choosing the right tradeoffs to tell the most compelling story possible.
Carefully consider your purpose and values and let your founding principles guide you in search for a name. And if you’re still stuck or need some strategic guidance and creative unsticking, Matchstic is ready to help.
