The Essential Naming Guide

The Art of Naming

By Zinzin

Version 5.1
January 31, 2020

Updated regularly with new content. Get the latest version here:
http://www.zinzin.com/downloads/

©2020 Zinzin Group Inc

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 Let There
Be Names.
T.S. Eliot wrote that the world will end with a
whimper, not a bang. Perhaps. But it began most
evocatively with a Big Bang. Did the Big Bang know
itself by that name as it was happening? Doubtful –
the name came much later. In our world today,
however, everything begins with a name. As you
embark on the adventure of naming your company
or product, you have the opportunity to create a
Big Bang or a little whimper.

Do the right thing – make a Big Bang.

This document will show you how.

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Contents
Introduction: Who is Zinzin?.................................................................. 6
About our name .......................................................................................................... 6

The Naming Process ............................................................................... 7

The Road To An Amazing Name ................................................................................. 7
Competitive Analysis ..................................................................................................8
Competitive Namescape: Search Engines.............................................................. 9
Blank Namescape Chart ....................................................................................... 11
Brand Positioning ..................................................................................................... 12
Name Development .................................................................................................. 12
Descriptive Names .............................................................................................. 12
Invented Names .................................................................................................. 13
Experiential Names ............................................................................................. 13
Evocative Names ................................................................................................. 13
Trademark Prescreening .......................................................................................... 14
Linguistic Connotation Screening............................................................................. 14
Name Evaluation ...................................................................................................... 15
Decision Making ................................................................................................. 17

Going Deeper ........................................................................................ 18

Naming Advice For New Businesses ......................................................................... 18
Embracing Creative Friction & Uncertainty............................................................. 20
Escape The Groupthink Brainstorm & Go Deep ....................................................... 23
Five Steps to Avoid Defining an Empty Set in Your Brand Positioning ..................... 26
Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments ....................................................................30
Brands Learn It’s Time To Get Real .......................................................................... 32
Krafting a Failed Name: Mondelez, or How Not To Do Corporate Rebranding ........ 34
Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose and Life (& Naming) .... 36
Academic Research Study Shows the Market Appeal of Evocative Names............... 40

The Zinzin Naming & Branding Manifesto ............................................ 44

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Selected Naming Case Studies .............................................................. 56

7 Criteria For Selecting A Naming Agency .......................................... 102

Colophon ............................................................................................ 103

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Introduction: Who is Zinzin?
Zinzin is a naming and branding agency that creates powerful product and company
names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. We are committed
to helping companies rise above the generic branding chatter that clogs cultural
discourse. We want to set your brand free.
It is our belief that naming is a science, and for that we have a rigorous, battle-tested
process in place. But we also firmly believe that naming is an art, and it is the art and
poetry of great names that separate companies from the pack of competitors who fail to
understand the value of a great name. A great name is an art, a great naming process is a
science. Science + art = the most powerful project outcome.

About Our Name

Our own name, like many we have created for other companies, is full of surprises,
layers of meaning, and rich associations, though at first glance it may seem no more
than a “made-up” name with no story. No matter, a little brand called “Google” is in the
same boat. And like “Google,” our name is also uniquely “unknown” enough to enable us
to brand it as THE place for the naming of companies and products. Eventually, we want
“Zinzin” to become synonymous with naming the way “Google” is for search.
So where did the name “Zinzin” come from? Zinzin is colloquial French for bonkers,
cracked, touched , loopy, potty, crazy, nuts. Just what you want in a naming firm, right?
But wait, the plot thickens…
In addition to being a “crazy” word, Zinzin is also a French slang placeholder name, a
name that you call something when you don’t know or specify the actual name (like
“gadget” or “thingamabob” or “whatchamacallit”).
Zinzin = entity, thing.
In this sense, Zinzin is our very own permanent placeholder name, a universal
urname. James Joyce recognized the value of this word, and coined his own meanings
for it in Finnegans Wake, where it represented noise, sin, punk, and the great disruptor,
which, incidentally, is Zinzin’s role in the global naming industry.

Read more about the Story of Zinzin, including team bios and more about the Zinzin
name, on our website: http://www.zinzin.com/our-story/.

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The Naming Process
The Road To An Amazing Name
Most companies that settle for a mediocre name do so because they fail to
understand that a name is the single most important element of your brand strategy.
But why exactly is a name so important?
The answer is simple: a company or product name is the first and most elemental
point of definition and audience contact with your brand. In most respects, the name IS
the brand, and sets the tone for everything your brand is about. In short, everything you
do or ever will do begins with your name. That’s why it’s vital to get the name right.
When you have great name, people will remember it, talk about it, and have an
emotional connection to your brand. The name becomes a natural and authentic
extension of your brand, and demonstrates to the world the values of your brand
positioning.
At Zinzin we strongly believe that having a powerful brand name will be one of the
most important business decisions you will ever make. However, we also believe that we
are NOT naming your company or product. We are, instead, naming the positioning of
your company and product, the unique tone, personality, ideas and story you want your
brand to express to the world. All great names support the positioning of the business or
product they speak for and find a unique way to reinvigorate or change the conversation
that an industry has been having with its customers.
Our naming process begins with understanding everything about your brand, where
it’s been and where it’s headed, your competition, and your entire industry. Throughout
the naming process, we will work together with you to refine the brand positioning
based on our discussions of actual names, because the more specific and nuanced the
positioning, the more effective the name will be.

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Competitive Analysis
A key component of any naming or branding exercise is to thoroughly understand
the competitive namescape, or landscape mapping of names, in your industry:
‣ What are the company or product names in your market space?
‣ Do they cluster into obvious types of names?
‣ Where in this spectrum of competitor names does your name appear?
‣ Where in this spectrum of competitor names do you want your new name appear in order
to A) stand out from the competition, or B) blend in?
‣ Is there an opportunity in your market space to become a dominant brand by standing out
clearly from the pack?
Our goal at Zinzin is to create names that set brands free from their competition. In
most cases, blending-in should not even be an option. During the competitive analysis
phase of a naming project, we plot the company, product or service names of a given
market sector on a namescape grid (see the Search Engines Namescape, below), which
becomes a useful reference document of the competitive name reality facing your brand.
This helps everyone on your naming team understand what types of names are overused
in your market sector and what territory is ripe for exploration if you want to
differentiate your brand from the competition.
We encourage you to print out this namescape grid and play around with how the
names are classified. It’s an exercise that will get you thinking about the names in your
own market space, which you can map out using the blank namescape chart, below.

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Competitive Namescape: Search Engines
Here is a selection of search engine names plotted in a competitive Namescape grid,
ranked by relative value from 0 (worst) to 5 (best). See below for a detailed explanation.

DESCRIPTIVE INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

5 Google Yahoo! 5

4 4

Hummingbird
AltaVista Kayak
3 Bing HotBot Northern Light 3
SideStep Sphinx
Wink
AnyWho
About.com
Alexa
Ask
Clusty
ChaCha Dogpile
Lycos
Excite Grub
2 Wolfram Alpha Mahalo 2
Galaxy Mamma
Rollyo
Go Spock
Tapu
Jumper
Trexy
OpenText
Zoominfo
AskMeNow
Brainboost
ChunkIt!
Blekko DeeperWeb
Coveo Dieselpoint
Funnelback eHow
Grokker ex.plode.us
ISYS Harvester42
Kartoo GigaBlast
AllTheWeb
Lucene MegaSpider DuckDuckGo
Answers.com
1 Mobissimo MetaGopher InfoTiger 1
Info.com
Namazu Monster Crawler LeapFish
Sciencenet
Nutch Myriad Search
Tanganode OmniFind
TeraText Seeks
TREX SharePoint
Vivisimo Supercrawler
Zabasearch Surfwax
SWISH-E
Turbo10
WireDoo

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 Concept Searching Cuil
Limited Endeca
DataparkSearch Eurekster
dtSearch Exalead
Finding-People.com Faroo Expert System
iSearch Gonzui Fast Search &
Live QnA Inbenta Transfer
0 LiveSearch Ixquick ht://Dig 0
Metscrawler Krozilo OpenFTS
MetaLib Lexxe Powerset
SearchPort mnoGoSearch What-U-Seek
Secure Enterprise Xapian
Search YaCy
WebCrawler Yebol
X1 Enterprise Search Zettair
DESCRIPTIVE INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

Name Value: The five levels of the vertical axis represent the relative value of a
given name, ranked from a low of 0 value to a max of 5. The Value ranking is of course
subjective, but it is derived from factors such as how engaging a name is with its target
audience; how many layers of meaning, story, myth, metaphor, imagery the name has;
associations, imagery, multiple layers; how memorable the name is; and how
differentiated from the competition the name is.
Descriptive Names: Descriptive names are purely descriptive of what a company
or product does or its function. They might also take the form of an acronym or the
names of the company founders.
Invented Names: This category of names includes the purely invented, the
morphemic mash-up, and foreign words that are not widely known to English speakers.
At their best, Invented names can be poetic, rhythmic and ripe for investing with the
soul of a brand (think Google).
Experiential Names: These are names that map to the experience of using a
product or service, or to what a company does, or to an aspect of human experience.
This category also includes all the generic adjective-based names, such as Advanced,
Superior, Vantage, Smart, Super, Ultra, Mega, etc. Experiential names are usually
literal, and are the types of names often created by cross-referencing a vision statement
with a thesaurus.
Evocative Names: These are names that map metaphorically, rather than literally,
to the brand positioning. Evocative names rise above the goods and services being
offered, and paint a bigger picture. The best of them tap into a deep reservoir of shared
cultural knowledge, myth, story, imagery, association, legend and art, and usually work
on multiple levels. Nearly all the greatest brands that you are familiar with have
evocative names.

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Blank Namescape Chart
Here is a blank Namescape chart you can print and use for you own naming project.

DESCRIPTIVE INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

5 5

4 4

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0

DESCRIPTIVE INVENTED EXPERIENTIAL EVOCATIVE

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Brand Positioning
We talk a lot about brand positioning and how important it is, so let’s define our
terms. Simply put, the positioning of a brand is the set of core messages the brand
demonstrates to the world, through tone, personality, emotion and narrative. So a better
way to think about your task is in these terms: you are not naming a company or
product – you are instead naming the positioning of a company or product. Once you
determine the brand positioning, only consider names that map strongly to that
positioning. In fact, any names you consider must support the brand positioning in
order to be successful.
Case in point: Virgin Airways. Now, if Virgin didn’t exist, and you were to present
this name to an airline naming committee, they would likely offer many valid-sounding
reasons why this name can’t fly: too edgy; says “we’re new at this,” which is the wrong
message for an industry so dependent on security, trust and experience; people in
Catholic countries we fly to will protest; etc. But the truth is that, when a name is in
context and supports and is in turn supported by a cogent brand positioning, then
people will never deconstruct the name into constituent negative parts. And the brand
positioning for Virgin Airways is more along the lines of, “this is a fresh new way to
travel / we’re re-inventing the air travel experience.” And for that message, Virgin is the
perfect name.

Name Development
When we develop names for our clients, we make sure that the name always
supports the brand positioning. The discussion of the names we present during the
course of a project leads to a continual refinement of the brand positioning, as we hone
in on the perfect fit between name and positioning.
There are of course many different types of names, but for the sake of discussion and
clarification, we consider four broad classes of names: Descriptive, Invented,
Experiential and Evocative.

Descriptive Names
Descriptive names are purely descriptive of what a company or product does or its
function. They might also take the form of an acronym or the names of the company
founders. In the past, most names were Descriptive, and that is still the path chosen by
the majority of brands. These names have never been the most powerful, and

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unfortunately, since the rise of the Internet and online searching, it has become nearly
impossible to build an effective brand around a Descriptive name. For example: if you
named your new automobile company “Fast Cars,” nobody would be able to find you
online, because your name would disappear among all the search results for “fast cars.”
The notion that a name should be Descriptive in order to “describe what we do,” is
completely wrong. A name rarely has to describe what the brand is all about -- that will
become evident by the context surrounding the brand. The job of the name is to get your
brand noticed, remembered and talked about, and that is rarely achieved by Descriptive
names.

Invented Names
This category of names includes the purely invented, the morphemic mash-up, and
foreign words that are not widely known to English speakers. At their best, Invented
names can be poetic, rhythmic and ripe for investing with the soul of a brand (think
Google). Invented names are chosen more and more lately, because they give you the
easiest path to domain name and trademark acquisition. Bad invented names, often
suffering from “morphemic addiction,” litter the cultural landscape, and should serve as
a cautionary tale when going this route.

Experiential Names
These are names that map to the experience of using a product or service, or to what
a company does, or to an aspect of human experience. This category also includes all the
generic adjective-based names, such as Advanced, Superior, Vantage, Smart, Super,
Ultra, Mega, etc. Experiential names are usually literal, and are the types of names often
created by cross-referencing a vision statement with a thesaurus.
It is possible to create a successful Experiential name, but to do so requires a
thorough understanding of the competitive namescape, because in most market sectors
there are many, many similar Experiential names, each staking a small claim of
semantic turf. Always make sure you are not just falling into the same types of names as
everyone else.

Evocative Names
These are names that map metaphorically, rather than literally, to the brand
positioning. Evocative names rise above the goods and services being offered, and paint
a bigger picture. The best of them tap into a deep reservoir of shared cultural
knowledge, myth, story, imagery, association, legend and art, and usually work on
multiple levels. Nearly all the greatest brands that you are familiar with have evocative
names.

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 Nearly all the greatest brands that you are familiar with have evocative names. And
in fact, the best Evocative names often have Descriptive, Invented and/or Experiential
associations as well. In short, they work on so many levels they constantly surprise with
new meaning and relevance.

Trademark Prescreening
During a Zinzin naming project, all company or product names we present to clients
are at minimum prescreened by us against the USPTO trademark database and a Google
due diligence screen. Depending upon the requirements of your project, names are also
prescreened against the CTM, the WIPO Madrid Protocol, or other global trademark or
specialty databases.
We do this in order to feel confident that the names your attorney submits for final
trademark screening and application are at least likely to pass muster for registration. If
not, valuable time is lost. If you are conducting your own naming process, we’ve posted
links to the major online trademark screening pages here:
http://www.zinzin.com/process/trademark-prescreening/

Linguistic Connotation Screening

Some naming projects we work on require that names be screened for semantic
meaning, usage, connotation, spelling and pronunciation in a variety of foreign
languages.
Our partner for linguistic and foreign language connotation screening, Translations
Direct, is one of the UK’s most respected agencies for translation and language-related
services. In 1997 its founder Nelly Thelwall, a Swiss national based in Salisbury,
England, saw a need for a more thorough approach and introduced a unique four-stage
process including editing and proofing by native speakers of the target language.
Today, with experience in more than 50 languages/dialects, the company offers
single- and multi-language services and is increasingly asked to help with overseas
product testing and market research. So what is Nelly’s secret? “Clients appreciate our
personal service,” she says, “but most importantly we deliver work that’s fluent, totally
accurate and on time.”

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 During the course of a European naming project for a Dutch client, Translations
Direct performed linguistic and connotation screens of names in Arabic, Danish,
Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and
Turkish on a rush basis over a weekend to meet a Monday deadline. And for a recent
Canadian project, Translations Direct screened nine names in ten European and fifteen
non-European languages with a four-day turnaround!
With Nelly and her crew working for us, we can assure our clients that the name we
create for them will not contain any nasty surprises in other languages.

Name Evaluation
At some point near the end of a naming project comes the time to actually choose
your new name. How do you evaluate the names on your shortlist to make sure you
choose the best name? Sometimes it is obvious which name is the best, and once you
become aware of that all other names tend to fall away. Still, it’s important to
understand the many attributes and qualities that make up a name, so you can make
informed, objective decisions when comparing one name to another.

With all of these qualities, there is no inherent “right” answer. The single most
important criteria is that the name support the brand positioning. For example, if the
positioning demands a name that is warm and human, but a given name under
consideration is cold and technical, then that name is failing to support the brand
positioning in the “Temperature” quality. These qualities are also relevant to all aspects
of a brand, not just the name.

Voice: How does a name sound? Does it roll off the tongue? Is it easy or fun to say?
Can it be easily spoken by speakers of many different languages? What does it sound
like to others? A name will be spoken many times — in conversation, when answering
the phone, in television commercials, YouTube videos, and most importantly, by word-
of-mouth. A name that trips people up when spoken, or sounds off-putting when heard,
is not going to foster emotional engagement with your audience. This is easy to test on a
basic level: have a colleague call you, and answer the phone by speaking the name. How
does it feel to do that? How does it feel for your colleague to hear it spoken over the
phone?

Visual: Names are not only heard, they are seen, in logos, on websites, and in
marketing collateral. Names can appear tiny in fine print, and gigantic on a billboard,
blimp, or even written across the sky. Looks are important, so make sure the name looks
good and avoids obvious syntactical no-nos. It helps to mock-up different visual

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treatments of the names you are considering, and be sure to show them to designers and
other visual people.

Breadth: How many aspects of the brand positioning does that name map to? If
there are five primary positioning points, does a given name map to all five, to just some
of them, or to none?

Depth: When a name has many layers of meaning, myth, story, and history, it has
great depth. Different people will react to and understand deep names in different ways,
and deep names tend to reveal the many facets of their character over time, rather than
all at once. Deep names are still just as good the thousandth time you encounter them as
they are the first time, they have great legs and never grow old. They accomplish this
feat partly because, by their very nature of being deep, avoid the shallow pits of
evanescent fads and naming trends (think generic descriptive, “.com,” vowel-dropping,
color+noun, etc.).

Temperature: Is a name warm and human, or cold, clinical, technical? Does it

bring a smile to your face, a blank look, or a scowl? This is a quality of names that is
based both on linguistics and on emotional reaction.

Personality: The unique tone, personality and attitude of a name. Some names are
loud and energetic, some are quiet and retiring. Some shout, and others whisper. For
some the most important quality is confidence, for others its adventure, revolution, or
steadfastness. It could be almost anything, but the key is that the personality of a name
reflect the personality of your company. It is the soul of your brand, the thing that most
makes your brand yours, not another company’s.

Differentiation: It only makes sense that, if you intend to differentiate your brand
from your competition, that you begin with a name that stands apart from the crowd.
This is a key to creating a memorable name, since you can’t hope for anyone to
remember your name if it blends in with all the others in your market sector. When a
name stands apart, it gets noticed, talked about, covered in the press, and develops into
a distinctive brand with a life of its own.

X-factor: This is the wildcard, and is all about mystery, the unknown, the
unexpected and far from obvious. Not every brand has it, but for those that do, it can be
very powerful. Vitality, energy, liveliness, buzz, electricity, attitude, presence,
engagement, provocation, originality, distinctiveness, memorability — these are all
concepts related to the X-factor of a name. It’s that certain something, that very original
merging of the unexpected with a clear evocation of the brand positioning. It’s what’s
often behind the “Why didn’t I think of that?” feeling. It’s what makes a name an
epiphany.

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Decision Making
Now you should have a better idea about why certain names work better than others.
But name evaluation is also about feeling confident that you chose the best name for
your company or product by understanding why certain names work best when all
factors of name, positioning, and the competitive Namescape are taken into
consideration. Clearly, you are not just choosing a name, you are also making a number
of important decisions in order to find the pitch-perfect tone for your brand, for your
voice in the world.
Most corporations have no problem delegating marketing and advertising issues to
the marketing department, but when naming is involved, especially naming the
company itself or key products, suddenly everyone wants to have a say in the process,
and it can quickly become politically and emotionally charged. Therefore, it is essential
that you keep the number of people involved in a naming project to a minimum, that
they have real authority, and that they all understand the ideas outlined above about
what factors determine the relative strength of a name. When outside actors have final
decision-making authority, it is vital that they be briefed in such a way as to understand
a name’s intrinsic qualities and how they support the brand positioning. This is what
will help you keep the process objective, and avoid the uninformed, subjective
“like”/”don’t like” response.

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Going Deeper
Naming Advice For New Businesses

What makes a great business name?

A great company or product brand name is one that makes people stop in their
tracks, even for just a few seconds, and think, “What’s that?” Because at that point you
have interrupted a person’s natural attention filter that filters out anything deemed non-
important or already known. Mediocre names are easily ignored because they “sound
like everything else” in a given industry, but a great name short circuits this process of
routine filtering and sets up the person encountering the brand to be engaged and ready
to hear whatever message the brand is presenting. Many of the most powerful brand
names are what we call evocative names, names that map to and support the positioning
of a brand metaphorically, rather than literally and linearly.

What do new businesses commonly miss when crafting a business name?

The biggest mistake businesses typically make is to think that the name somehow
has to either describe what the company or product does, or describe some key
experiential attribute of the brand, such as “speed” or “flexibility.” After the company
realizes that all such direct names are already in use in their (and every!) industry, their
next step is usually a trip to the thesaurus to generate synonyms for “speed,”
“flexibility,” or whatever their key brand attributes may be. When they realize those
names are also all taken, they start creating mashups of word parts of these synonyms,
until they have a name that they are able to trademark. Or they borrow from ancient or
foreign languages and often mash up those as well. What they are left with is a name
that may be technically “unique” and trademarkable, but that may be ugly to look at,
difficult to pronounce, impossible to remember, and thus has zero brand value.

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What is Zinzin’s top advice for new businesses when it comes to naming?
First, do a thorough analysis of the brand names of your competitors, like the
competitive Namescape we develop during our projects, to map out the territory of
what’s already out there in your space and reveal how most of your competitors are
blending in with each other instead of standing out. Next, only consider names that
stand out from the competition, that look and sound good, are easy to pronounce, and,
as a bonus provided by evocative names, have deep layers of meaning and history
behind them, allowing you to tell a compelling story that will empower your brand
marketing efforts for years to come. The name you choose should also be extensible,
able to work with sub-branded products, for instance, or as a company name for
whatever you may be doing in five or ten years, not just today.

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Embracing Creative Friction & Uncertainty
Jeremy Dean, in a recent article on his site PsyBlog, “Why People Secretly Fear
Creative Ideas,”1 notes that creative ideas are often rejected in favor of conformity and
uniformity, and why this is so, citing several psychology studies (Mueller et al. 2012;
Westby & Dawson, 19953) to back up his case. Dean asks rhetorically,
Does society really value creativity? People say they want more creative
people, more creative ideas and solutions, but do they really?
The answer, sadly, is no, but why is that so? The reason, Dean writes, is that fear of
uncertainty overrules the desire for creativity:
Across two experiments Mueller and colleagues found that when people
felt uncertain they were:
- more likely to have negative thoughts about creative ideas,
- and found it more difficult to recognise creative ideas.
This supports the idea that people don’t like creative ideas because they
tend to increase uncertainty. The thinking goes like this: we know how to
do things we’ve done before, but new things are mysterious. How will we
achieve it? Is it practical? What could go wrong? And so on…
People don’t like to feel uncertain; it’s an aversive state that generally we
try to escape from. Unfortunately creativity requires uncertainty by
definition, because we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done
before.
People deal with the disconnect by saying one thing, “Creativity is good,
we want more of it!” but actually rejecting creative ideas for being
impractical.
And, the more uncertain people feel, the harder they find it to recognise a
truly creative idea. So as a society we end up sticking our heads in the sand
and carrying on doing the same old things we’ve been doing all along, just
to avoid feeling uncertain.
Instead we should be embracing uncertainty because it’s only when we’re
unsure that we can be sure we’re in new territory.
Creativity requires uncertainty by definition, because we’re trying to do something
that hasn’t been done before. Dean is spot-on in his assessment, and a primary factor

1 http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/12/why-people-secretly-fear-creative-ideas.php
2 http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/29/0956797611421018
3 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326934crj0801_1

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keeping people from embracing uncertainty is fear of failure. Adrian Savage wrote a
great article earlier this year for Lifehack.org, “How fear of failure destroys success,”4
where he notes just how vitally important failure’s handmaidens, trial and error, are to
achieving ultimate success:
Trial and error are usually the prime means of solving life’s problems. Yet
many people are afraid to undertake the trial because they’re too afraid of
experiencing the error. They make the mistake of believing that all error is
wrong and harmful, when most of it is both helpful and necessary. Error
provides the feedback that points the way to success. Only error pushes
people to put together a new and better trial, leading through yet more
errors and trials until they can ultimately find a viable and creative
solution. To meet with an error is not to fail, but to take one more step on
the path to final success. No errors means no successes either.
Savage goes on to illustrate various different ways that individuals and corporations
allow fear of failure to block creative solutions to problems: a culture of perfection,
clinging to past success, being a high achiever, or being unbalanced in any one direction
(too over-achieving, too moral, too anything), and that finding a proper balance is the
way out of this trap:
Everyone likes to succeed. The problem comes when fear of failure is dominant.
When you can no longer accept the inevitability of making mistakes, nor recognize the
importance of trial and error in finding the best and most creative solution. The more
creative you are, the more errors you are going to make. Get used to it. Deciding to avoid
the errors will destroy your creativity too.
Balance counts more than you think. Some tartness must season the sweetest dish. A
little selfishness is valuable even in the most caring person. And a little failure is
essential to preserve everyone’s perspective on success.
We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to recognize that the negative
parts of our lives and experience have just as important a role to play in finding success,
in work and in life.
Savor these two of Savage’s ideas, they are golden: 1) The more creative you are, the
more errors you are going to make. Get used to it. Deciding to avoid the errors will
destroy your creativity too. 2) We hear a lot about being positive. Maybe we also need to
recognize that the negative parts of our lives and experience have just as important a
role to play in finding success, in work and in life. The key is to remain open to new
ideas, methods, and experiences.

4 http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/how-fear-of-failure-destroys-success.html

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 This applies to all aspects of business, but resonates especially strongly for me in
how it relates to the naming process. In our own work here at Zinzin, we live in
permanent trial and error mode, because we accept the fact that on every naming
project, we will ultimately create hundreds of “failure” names that will lead us to the one
great name that defines a successful outcome. Savage’s description of trial-error-
reiteration adroitly captures what our line of work entails. You can only find the perfect
name by multiple rounds of experiment, play, questioning, red herrings, dead ends,
trips down rabbit holes, self-criticism, debate, and chance. Be open to creative ideas in
yourself and others, and embrace the trial/error/failure/try again process.
When you get knocked over by failure and fall down on your face, get up and repeat,
over and over again. The good news is that once you make this process a habit, it
becomes second nature and much easier to tolerate. Eventually you realize that the
failures are not speed bumps on the road to success — they are actually catalysts,
without which there wouldn’t be any success.

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Escape The Groupthink Brainstorm & Go Deep
In an article in the New York Times, “The Rise of the New Groupthink,”5 Susan Cain
makes a strong argument against the rising tide of groupthink in our culture. This kind
of “collaborative creativity” can readily be seen in the proliferation of group assignments
in school, companies with open plan offices with no personal space, and, in the naming
business, naming committees with too many members trying to collaboratively create a
new brand name.
The problem is, for any kind of creative endeavor, groupthink doesn’t work.
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy
privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly
creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies
by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re
extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as
independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.
One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable
working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. As the influential
psychologist Hans Eysenck observed, introversion fosters creativity by
“concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand, and preventing the
dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.”
In other words, the social aspects of work might be beneficial and necessary to an
individual’s overall health, but they are not conducive to creative work and the
development of new ideas. And “creative work” is something that should be required of
everyone in an organization, not just so-called “creatives.” Here is Apple co-founder and
famous introvert Steve Wozniak describing engineers:
“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their
heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists.
And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that
might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee.
Not on a team.”
The key for any company or organization is to find the right balance, to recognize
that people need uninterrupted “alone time” to do their best work, thought they and
others in the organization can benefit from the collective energy of occasional group
interaction. Interaction and exchange of ideas, not continuous collaboration, because,
…it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works
autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into

5 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html

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 endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no
respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-
plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also
more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and
exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more
mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.
Privacy also makes us productive, notes Cain. She references a study of 600
computer programmers at 92 companies called the Coding War Games that showed
quantitatively that “what distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies
wasn’t greater experience or better pay, it was how much privacy, personal workspace
and freedom from interruption they enjoyed.” And creative solitude helps learning too,
because an individual can work more on the things that challenge them, which is not an
option in a group learning situation.
The flip side of deep, focused, solitary work is the corporate brainstorming session.
We’ve seen this time and again in the naming industry, where brainstorming sessions
are usually conducted by companies in-house, or by their advertising agency. The
company or agency will ask a group of its “creatives” to work late one night, fueled by
pizza, beer and Red Bull, and work together to brainstorm a new name. As you may
have guessed, such a process rarely if ever generates the strongest, most powerful
names.
Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to
stimulate creativity….decades of research show that individuals almost
always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group
performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from
science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming
groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you
have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work
alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”
The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group
work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work;
they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and,
often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist
Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the
group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated
with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of
independence.”
Simon Sinek has also weighed-in6 on why the best ideas don’t happen though
groupthink, pointing out that brainstorming sessions only activate the conscious mind,

6 http://www.zinzin.com/branding/get-outside-of-yourself/

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not the subconscious mind. He notes that your rational brain can only access about two
feet of information around you, while your unconscious brain can access the equivalent
of eleven acres of information around you. This treasure trove of unconscious
information is where gut decisions and epiphanies come from, and they just can’t come
out in the collective groupthink environment of a brainstorming session.
The only way to make brainstorming productive is to have individuals work alone on
the problem at hand before and after the group work, and use the brainstorming session
for communication, interaction and amplification of the individual ideas, rather than a
mechanism for creating those ideas. There simply is no substitute for the deep thought
of individual alone time away from all distractions.
One exception to the general shortcomings of groupthink is electronic collaboration
at a distance, or so-called “crowdsourcing,” where individuals working “alone together”
have the potential to tap into the best of both worlds. In the rosiest of such scenarios,
individuals still have plenty of solitary creative time, which is then combined with
focused bursts of remote group collaboration free from the negative dynamics that come
with in-person group interaction. Cain notes that, “most humans have two contradictory
impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy,” and
finding the right balance is crucial for success:
To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move
beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to
creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style
interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private
spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to
work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of
time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra
quiet and privacy to do their best work.
Companies should take heed of these findings and incorporate them into how they
structure their workflow and work environments. In our own naming work we have
always worked this way, as individuals pursuing ideas on our own, punctuated by
regular, brief and focused sessions for discussion, argument, and collaboration, both
internally and with our clients; then back to our private spaces for more deep thought.
If your company is staffed only with extroverts, it’s time to hire some introverts,
pronto, and give them the space they need to go deep. The extroverts will benefit too.

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Five Steps to Avoid Defining an Empty Set in Your Brand
Positioning

Image: Dave Walker, The Cartoon Blog.

When naming, it is often tempting to create a very well-defined, buttoned-down and

thorough brand positioning, rigidly specific down to the smallest detail. Such a
positioning stance is often the outgrowth of a process in which competing client factions
allow too many cooks into the kitchen and draft an overwhelming number of positioning
“requirements” meant to satisfy each of those factions. This is a dangerous practice, as it
often leads to the outcome of an empty set being created, as conflicting “rules” cancel
each other out and leave a hollow space in which no possible name can exist, as in this
example, exaggerated to make a point:

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 A sure way to spot when this demon rears its ugly head is if you find yourself or
members of your team muttering, in reference to the search for the perfect name, “I’ll
know it when I see it.” This is the kiss of death for a naming project, because it is highly
likely that the impossible outcome of an empty set has been described, or the wrong
filters are in place, or both. In such a situation, you could consider every word in the
English language (Officially 1,013,913 as of January 1, 2012) as a potential name for your
new company or product, plus another million invented or compound names, and still
never “know it when you see it,” for the simple reason that no name can satisfy a brand
positioning framework that defines an empty set. Such a situation is the cause of most
aborted naming attempts.
To transcend the “empty set” conundrum the first thing you need to do is make sure
you have no contradictions in the brand positioning. As the example above shows, no
name can satisfy the requirements that it be an “invented abstraction with no prior
meanings” and simultaneously “evoke our brand positioning, be memorable and help
tell our unique story.” Another example of an empty set might be, “available for global
trademark and exact match .com domain, be only one syllable, five letters max, easily
understood and pronounceable in eastern as well as western languages, and yet be a
common word that closely describes our brand position in our industry.” Time to order
up a new dictionary, a new language, or a new parallel universe. So the first step toward
recovery is to recognize that you have a problem, and make some changes in your
approach.
Here are five steps to freeing yourself from the prison of an empty set brand
positioning:

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 1. Resist the urge to box your brand into a corner. Create a cloud of positioning
attributes and know your fundamental story, but don’t try to describe every little
detail of the positioning and then expect to find a name that will align with all of
them. You won’t.
2. Understand that while it’s true that a great name will map to and reinforce your
brand positioning, such a name will also have the power to inform your brand
positioning. It’s a two-way street: brand positioning leads to a name, but the
perfect name also influences the brand positioning moving forward. For example,
a very similar brand positioning could have led to the names Yahoo! and Excite,
but the brand positioning that came after the names were chosen was necessarily
very, very different; in the former, very powerful with great marketing legs for
years to come; in the latter, well, a me-too derivative long since out of business.
3. Open your minds. Rather than merely describe your brand positioning with a
descriptive or experiential name, like your competitors do, consider creating a
highly-memorable evocative name that strongly differentiates your brand from
your competition by demonstrating your brand positioning rather than
explaining it. The key is to move beyond the literal and into the metaphorical.
Think Amazon, Virgin, Twitter, Coach, Caterpillar, Yahoo!, Oracle, Apple. That’s
not to say that great invented or experiential names aren’t out there, they’re just
few and far between, so you have to work extra hard to identify them.
4. Evaluating names should be more like a Socratic dialog, not an exercise in
democracy. Resist the urge to let everyone on your naming team, or your
company, vote on the final name. Nobody’s first choice will survive. The
“winning” name will be the one that is most people’s third choice, the one nobody
loves but everyone can “live with.” Great brands are not created from such a
shrug of the shoulders. A vigorous debate is not only beneficial, it is often a
requirement for creating a powerful name. And if half the team loves a name and
half the team hates it, you’re in a much better place than if you have immediate
consensus one way or the other. When you adopt an amazing name, no matter
how contentious the process may have been that got you there, the naysayers will
eventually come around and embrace it–they always do. It just takes some people
longer to understand the power of a truly different and memorable name that
might at first be uncomfortable for them.
5. Informed outside counsel can be beneficial, while uninformed outside opinion
can be damaging. In other words, if you are truly stuck in your naming process,
you will likely benefit by hiring a naming agency (shameless plug here) to come in
with a fresh perspective and get everyone on the team to see name development
and brand positioning in a new light. The flip side is taking a short list of names
to a focus group or other uninformed outside agent to solicit their opinions about
the names. Doing so will almost certainly guarantee that the most unique and
powerful names will be killed off, and the weakest, most typical or conformist

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 names will be celebrated. This is especially damning, of course, when you are
attempting to position your brand as bold, adventurous, and fiercely
independent, as it will lead you to a name that betrays all those fine aspirations.
During your naming project, as you generate –> iterate –> regenerate –> and
reiterate the name development process, keep the above points in mind and continue to
make sure at every step of the way that you have not defined an empty set. Because if
you have, you’ll never find the perfect name, since you wouldn’t know it if you saw it.

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Henry Miller’s Eleven Commandments
In the 1930s, Henry Miller7 drew up a list of 11 commandments that he wrote for himself to
follow in his career as a writer. We have annotated Miller’s original commandments (in bold,
below) with our observations about how each of them can be applied to various aspects of the
naming process.

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished. Keep your attention focused on
the task at hand. Set aside time and space free from the distractions of the
Internet, social media and telephones to concentrate on your naming project. In
the words of Buckminster Fuller, “Thinking is a momentary dismissal of
irrelevancies.”
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black
Spring.” Recognize when a project is finished, and be prepared to move on.
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in
hand. As we say in Manifesto numbers 13 and 14 (see below), naming should be
fun and you have to set a positive tone.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the
appointed time! Another way to say this is to keep the project as objective as
possible by staying focused on the brand positioning, not on subjective reactions
to names.
5. When you can’t create you can work. Don’t wait for “inspiration.” If you
don’t feel as if any good, creative names are resulting from your process at any
given time, don’t force it or stress out. Do some other related work to feed your
fires: reading, research, making lists. Henry is right: you can’t always create, but
you can always work. And don’t underestimate the value of hard work. To quote
the late, great Cy Twombly: “When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work
can take any length of time.”
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers. Diligence and
perseverance. Try to make some kind of progress every day, or at least increase
your understanding of the process.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it. Allow life
and real world experience to inspire and inform your naming process. Don’t get
stuck in abstractions and ruts. Burn your thesaurus (don’t worry, it’ll still be there
for you online when you really need it.) (See Manifesto #13, below).
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only. See number three,
above.

7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller

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 9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day.
Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude. Give yourself flexibility to grow and
adapt, but keep bringing the focus back to the project and the brand positioning
(see number four, above). As the project progresses, it should become ever more
focused.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are
writing. Don’t force all the great names in your head into the current project.
Think only of the specific positioning of the current project, and make sure all
names under consideration map strongly to that positioning.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these
come afterwards. Naming comes first. After that, the rest is gravy, icing, spice,
and all other food metaphors.

(Source of the 11 Commandments: Henry Miller on Writing8 via Lists of Note9)

8 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811201120/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=letofnot-
20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0811201120
9 http://www.listsofnote.com/

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Brands Learn It’s Time To Get Real
We’ve been saying this for what seems like forever. In this savage economic climate,
more and more businesses are realizing how important it is to get their branding right,
and are looking for any way they can to add a few percentage points to their bottom
lines. An article in the Washington Post, “Businesses find they can’t grow without
branding”10, highlights the trend in the Washington DC area:
In the Washington area, Honest Tea is far from alone in seeking a brand
make-over. The business of image enhancement is heating up in the region
— and not just among companies selling consumer products. Government
contracting firms are adopting new nomenclatures that create buzz.
Charities are changing their names to reflect new missions. Trade
associations are updating their logos and tag lines to remain relevant to
members.
We are seeing this shift happen all over, not just in Washington DC, and the key
reason for it is the massive change that many markets are undergoing:
“Everything’s changed,” said Christie J. Susko, immediate past president
of AMA DC, which recently changed its logo and tag line. “Resources have
changed. Products have changed. Prices have changed. Business models
have changed. People are spending money differently. [Some companies
have] gone out of business and others have changed their value
proposition to stay competitive.
“As a result,” Susko added, “everybody is trying to figure out their place in
the new market.”
Be Real Get HonestOne of the primary drivers of this trend is a big push toward
“authenticity” — think of it as the “Get Real” movement. Ironically, the article leads off
with the story of Honest Tea ditching its old tagline of “Get Real. Be Honest.” For the the
beverage maker to really “Get Real,” they had to ditch their old approach of telling
people to get real, because true authenticity means never having to say you’re authentic!
(They were also honing their message after expanding into new markets thanks to new
owner Coca-Cola.) The article speculates that the reason for this is the pervasiveness of
media, social and otherwise, that will expose any corporate hypocrisy in an Internet
heartbeat:
These days consumers are driving the public perception of companies,
offering their sometimes not-so-flattering reviews of products and services

10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/businesses-find-they-cant-grow-without-
branding/2011/07/27/gIQARXLhlI_story.html

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 through blogs, Web sites and social media. Companies are responding to
the public’s demand for transparency; in this era of the 24/7 news cycle,
consumers no longer are tolerating firms that represent one thing in their
branding but demonstrate something entirely different in news coverage,
experts say.
“There is so much information available to us and we can make up our
own minds” about companies, said Susan Waldman, partner for strategic
services at the Washington-based branding firm ZilYen. (Her business is
thriving. The firm’s revenue from March to May, she said, surpassed what
it made during the entirety of 2010.)
“Now the whole company is really being charged with standing behind the
values claimed in the marketplace,” Waldman said. “Everything you do
and say becomes part of what audiences see as your brand.”
And of course, the top-level of any company’s marketing will be their name:
A key element in a company’s branding is what it calls itself. Business
nomenclatures of the past were more straightforward; firms typically were
named for their founders or the services they provided. Now names are
much more creative — consisting of made-up words, atypical spellings and
odd combinations of capital and lower-case letters: strEATS, QinetiQ,
Opower, PopVox, 20/20 GeneSystems, JESS3. Today’s names are
designed to stand out, create buzz and reflect innovation.
Unfortunately, most such attempts, as the examples above show, fall short in their
ability to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace where most companies are
doing the same thing at the same time.
Authenticity, like a great name, is a quality your brand can only demonstrate, not
explain. What you fail to demonstrate directly you have to explain, and that’s called
advertising. More and more, consumers are onto brands that try to use advertising to
pull a fast one, and crave authentic brands.
When it comes to your name and primary messaging, keeping it real is a must, and
something you just can’t fake.

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Krafting a Failed Name: Mondelez, or How Not To Do Corporate
Rebranding
Kraft Foods is separating its higher-growth global snacking business unit from its
North American grocery division, so it needs a name for the new company. The process
Kraft used to get that new name, and the rationalization of the name, make a great
example of what not to do in a naming process.
The new corporate brand name, Mondelez International, is fraught with problems.
As the New York Times DealBook blog mildly puts it11, “The move highlights the
potential complications that come with corporate rebranding, especially when a
company decides to make up a name out of whole cloth.”
Potential complications is an understatement for the activity of launching a major
company with a terrible name that nobody will remember. So how did a global giant like
Kraft get into the position of adopting a weak, unmemorable and unpronounceable
name for its new spinoff? They did it the old fashioned way — by (very large) committee:
“Kraft said that the moniker came from submissions by more than 1,000 employees
around the world, who suggested over 1,700 names.” For a company that makes food
products from recipes, you’d think they might have noticed that democratizing the
naming process like this is a recipe for disaster. For example, let’s say that we’re going to
have a free ice cream day for our 1000-employee company. Everybody can have as much
ice cream as they want, but we can only get one flavor, so we need to reach a consensus
on which flavor to serve. Will it be Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey? No, it will be
either vanilla or chocolate (oh wait, some people have chocolate allergies ) — ok, vanilla
it is.
Once Kraft had a process in place to guarantee that the name squeezed out the end of
their soft-serve branding machine would be vanilla, all that remained was the
justification, and here it comes:
The winner: Mondelez, cobbled together from submissions from a North
American employee and a European one. It’s a combination of “monde,”
the Latin word for “world,” and “delez,” a made-up word meant to suggest
“delicious.” Hence, “delicious world.”
“Cobbled together” is right. The problem is, real people inhabiting the real world
would never encounter a name like Mondelez and feel the warm glow of entering a
“delicious world.” And who says that the made-up “word” delez suggests “delicious”?

11 Kraft, ‘Mondelez’ and the Art of Corporate Rebranding: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/kraft-

mondelez-and-the-art-of-corporate-rebranding/

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You could make a better argument that it suggests “delays” or “deletes,” as in, “Food you
can’t eats, so you should deletes. Don’t delay.” Pardon the pigeon Esperanto. Better yet,
Mondelez sounds like a slang term for oral sex in Russian. Delicious world, indeed! But
since they manufacture “snacks,” this connotation can only help improve brand
recognition, at least among horny/hungry Russians. Score one for Kraft.
The next part of this process train-wreck is to trot out the CEO to perform, as if on
cue, the Name Announcement Song & Dance, which Kraft dutifully obliges. Here is the
marketing robospeak attributed to Irene B. Rosenfeld, the chairman and CEO of the
new company:
“For the new global snacks company, we wanted to find a new name that
could serve as an umbrella for our iconic brands, reinforce the truly global
nature of this business and build on our higher purpose – to ‘make today
delicious.’ Mondelez perfectly captures the idea of a ‘delicious world’ and
will serve as a solid foundation for the strong relationships we want to
create with our consumers, customers, employees and shareholders.”
Our question for Ms. Rosenfeld is, when was the last time you entered a “strong
relationship” with a brand that had a name like Mondelez? Would you even remember
its name a week later?
Kraft need look no further than their own Nabisco brand cookie product, Oreo, for
an example of an outstanding invented name that is warm, poetic, fun to say,
memorable and meshes beautifully with the product it identifies. With the right process
in place, Kraft could have created a winning brand, one that is less vanilla, and more
Karamel Sutra. Then it really would have been a Delicious World after all.
Oh well. Kraft’s loss creates an opening and opportunity for other companies that are
less fearful of standing out from the crowd with a bold, memorable, powerful name.

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Jack Kerouac’s List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose
and Life (& Naming)
Jack Kerouac drew up a “List of 30 Beliefs and Techniques for Prose and Life12,”
which was “allegedly tacked on the wall of Allen Ginsberg’s hotel room in North Beach a
year before his iconic poem ‘Howl’ was written — which is of little surprise, given
Ginsberg readily admitted Kerouac’s influence and even noted in the dedication of Howl
and Other Poems that he took the title from Kerouac,” notes Brainpicker Maria Popova.
Kerouac’s list is inspiring not just for writers, but for any kind of artist, and even for
the process of name development. Each item in Kerouac’s original list, below, is in
italics, and each is followed by my comments relating it to the art of naming.
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy. Keep
lots of notebooks, scraps, post-its and shreds with names, ideas, concepts. You
never know when and how they may lead to the development of a name.
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening. Always. Very important. The world is
speaking the name you are looking for, but if you aren’t listening, you’ll likely
miss it.
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house. Avoid getting drunk in general, but if
you do, make sure you have a notebook with you (see #1).
4. Be in love with yr life. Yes. It’s the only one you’ve got. Great advice beyond
naming, and something Kerouac himself ultimately failed to uphold, but in the
realm of naming, you must embrace the fact that you are a namer. Own it. Love
it.
5. Something that you feel will find its own form. Trust your gut. Follow the
glimmer of ideas, no matter how evanescent. They will lead to the “form” of
names.
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind. Because it’s a fine line between inspiration and
madness. You have to push the limits to know where the limits are. Let wisdom
wash over you–don’t presume to already have it (you don’t).
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow. Go deep into a name or idea and don’t let
anything hold you back.
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind. Combine this with
#1, above. Names will come from writing often, whether lists, stories, poems, blog

12 Source: University of Pennsylvania – http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-technique.html – via

Brain Pickings – http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/22/jack-kerouac-belief-and-technique-
for-modern-prose/.

Zinzin | The Naming Guide | v.5.1 36

 posts, or screeds of any sort. Keep writing, keep banging your fingers into keys
and moving your pen over paper. Words will appear in great, blooming clusters,
words that names are made from.
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual. Visions and other unnamables that
nevertheless might lead to names. Just because something can’t be described
(named) doesn’t mean you can’t describe (name) it. You can. Try it.
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is. Poetry isn’t a magic place you have to
travel to or make time for. It is all around us all the time. It is exactly what is.
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest. Exactly where great names often begin. You
can almost feel them coming before they arrive, tickling your primordial
amygdala limbic mind before your advanced cerebral cortex catches up and
understands their value.
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you. Focus on the task at hand,
meditate on the brand positioning that a name must map to. “Tranced fixation
dreaming” the best way to describe this state combining search and receptivity
(see #2) to new ideas.
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition. All that can come
later, when you’re in editing mode. When developing names, start with no rules,
then gradually introduce the most important one: that the name supports the
brand positioning.
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time. Step out of the linear flow of time. A name
can come from any place, or any time, and the collision of disparate eras can be
powerful in developing a name.
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog. Turn the naming
problem into a story and run through it in your mind over and over. Add other
stories, and let the stories collide, like particles in an atom smasher. The birth of
new names just might result.
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye. The best names have many
layers of meaning, and you can drill deep into them and keep discovering new
things.
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself. Draw on your memory and
follow what makes you most passionate, obsessed and excited. Never fake your
response to art–if you don’t feel it, move on. But if something strikes you
powerfully, follow it as far as it will take you.
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea. Immerse yourself
in words to the point of drowning–the words that coalesce into a life preserver to
save you just might form your new name.
19. Accept loss forever. Not every idea works. Most, in fact, are “failures.” Failures
diligently explored can lead to success, so the only true failures are the failures

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 that are abandoned. So accept failure and loss, and perhaps loss of sleep, into
your naming process.
20. Believe in the holy contour of life. All of life is waiting for you when you are in
need of a name, not just the dictionary and thesaurus. Believe in life and immerse
yourself in it, following its winking clues.
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind. Great names are
already flowing in your mind; the trick is to get them out into the light of
consciousness without your editor brain and logic filters keeping them locked up
out of sight. “Sketch the flow” is another way of saying, in the context of naming,
“map-out the brand positioning with metaphors.”
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better. Visualize the brand
you are naming, and visualize how a name might be used. Try not to define the
name at first with other, often limiting, words, but instead keep it pure in your
vision.
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning. You want to create
space for free range roaming in the playground of your mind, but it’s equally
important to keep the process structured, to temper unbridled freedom with the
constraint of process. Michelangelo said, “Art lives by constraint and dies of
freedom.” Stay focused on the big picture.
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge. Don’t
think for a moment that you are not creative enough, or not up to the task, of
creating a great name–you probably just have the wrong filters in place.
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it. You are not naming
for the sake of naming, and brands don’t exist in a vacuum. A name has to work
in the real world, which means it should be more engaging and memorable than
the names of your competition, and it should be inspiring to people.
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form. A picture may be
worth a thousand words, but a great name can paint a thousand pictures in the
minds of your audience.
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness. Think of every great
name added to the world as making the world a better place for all of us to live,
and another flash of human connection illuminating the darkness.
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better.
Start by following your gut, uninhibited, free, flowing (see #5 and #13, above).
29. You’re a Genius all the time. Ginsberg may have been, but we’re not. It never
hurts, however, to think positive. Just don’t get carried away with it. Ultimately a
name has to support the brand positioning and work in the real world, and no
amount of fist-banging declarations that you are a “genius” will change that, or

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 convince a skeptical client. Failure to understand this leads to delusion, and bad
names. True genius is humble. Be resolute, but be humble.
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven. What you
can put on your business card or website, if you want, once your angelic visions
have been realized in live names that take the world by storm. In the meantime,
keep it to yourself, get inspired, and work hard.

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Academic Research Study Shows the Market Appeal of
Evocative Names
In 2005 a very interesting research paper by Barbara E. Kahn, a marketing professor
at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, and Elizabeth G. Miller, a
marketing professor at Boston College, was published in the Journal of Consumer
Research. Titled, “Shades of Meaning: The Effect of Color and Flavor Names on
Consumer Choice,” the study presents persuasive evidence that “consumers” (see
Manifesto item number 35, below, for why we don’t like that word) react positively to
evocative names that are not descriptive, news to the researchers, perhaps, but not news
to us. There is a good article about the study published on the Wharton website, Florida
Red or Moody Blue: Study Looks at Appeal of Off-beat Product Names13, which we
summarize here.
Barbara Kahn says, “The research may have strong implications for Internet
marketers whose customers cannot see a product first-hand and tend to rely more on
written descriptions when making purchases.” What she means by this is that there is no
physical context to products in the virtual world, and thus the emotional associations
created by language have even more importance.
In studies of jellybeans and colored sweaters, the researchers found an
overall positive reaction to names that gave little information about what a
flavor or product color was really like, such as Millennium orange or
Snuggly white. “People jumped to the conclusion that the marketer must
be telling this information for some reason,” says Kahn. “They said, ‘Even
though I don’t understand the reason, it has to be something good because
marketers wouldn’t tell me something that isn’t good.’ When they stopped
and spent time on the name the assumption was that it was positive.”
Kahn and Miller focus on the idea that people may attach “positive associations” to
evocative words like “millennium” and “snuggly,” but we think what’s really going on
here is that, in the context of jelly beans, those words are new, unusual, and unexpected,
and thus spark an emotional connection. For a tech company, “Millennium Group”
would be an expected name, and thus easily forgotten, and the same with the name
“Snuggly Wash” for a detergent. But for jelly beans, they resonate, not because people
feel that marketers “must be telling this information for some reason,” but simply
because they are different, and the human mind craves difference.

13 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/florida-red-or-moody-blue-study-looks-at-appeal-of-off-
beat-product-names/

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 Kahn was drawn to a study of unusual product names when she began to
notice nail polish being sold under color names — such as Gunpowder —
that gave no information about what the polish would actually look like.
Another example: the line of Gatorade Frost flavors that are sold with
hard-to-imagine flavor names such as Glacier Freeze, Riptide Rush and
Cascade Crash. Perhaps the ultimate in ambiguity, says Kahn, has been
achieved by Crayola which uses names such as Razzmatazz and Tropical
Rain Forest to describe crayons, which are nothing else if not a color.
“With the nail polish there was something edgy or revolutionary,” she says.
“When Crayola comes out with names that don’t describe the color of
crayons, that is just astonishing.”
It shouldn’t be that surprising. Colors are the ultimate “virtual” product, where
individual units of the physical product being sold — crayons, markers, paint — are all
exactly alike, with the only variation being the color. In such cases the name of the color
becomes vital in distinguishing that product from a competitor’s product with the same
or similar color. (See our blog post, Colorful naming done right14, about a 2011 New
York Times article all about the explosion of very creative, evocative color names in the
house paint market.)
Here’s how the researchers conducted their experiment:
Gauging the effects of such names on consumer behavior is hard because
so many other variables come in to play. So Kahn and Miller constructed
controlled experiments of product names that were divided into four
categories: Common, which are typical or unspecific, such as dark green or
light yellow; Common Descriptive, which are typical and specific, such as
pine green or lemon yellow; Unexpected Descriptive, which are atypical,
but specific such as Kermit green or Rainslicker yellow; and Ambiguous,
which are atypical and unspecific, such as Friendly green or Party yellow.
In an initial experiment testing flavor names, 100 undergraduates were
asked to complete an unrelated questionnaire on a computer. After
finishing the questionnaire at the computer, the students were told they
could take some jellybeans. The jellybeans were in six cups each with a
sign attached listing the flavor. Half the subjects saw jellybean names that
were common descriptives: blueberry blue, cherry red, chocolate brown,
marshmallow white, tangerine orange and watermelon green. The other
half saw flavors with ambiguous names: Moody blue, Florida red,
Mississippi brown, white Ireland, Passion orange and Monster green.
Researchers observed that the less common names were more popular.
As part of the experiment, some subjects were distracted by questions
about the computer survey as they selected their jellybeans. In those cases,

14 http://www.zinzin.com/observations/2011/colorful-naming-done-right/

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 there was no preference for the unusually named flavors. That suggested
that the decision to go with the less common name is a cognitive response
indicating a person puts at least some thought into the decision.
Aha! There is the key: the decision to go with the less common name is a cognitive
response indicating a person puts at least some thought into the decision — unexpected
evocative and metaphorical names require a person to put some thought into “decoding”
them, and the result is that a strong new memory is formed. This is why evocative
names are so much more memorable than descriptive names; why “Amazon” is
memorable and “Book World” is not. This is called “incongruency theory,” and was also
tested specifically by the researchers as part of this study. Incongruency theory posits
that, “people make judgments by evaluating new encounters against existing
expectations. When encounters are incongruent with prior expectations, individuals put
in more effort to resolve the incongruency.” Again, we says a resounding “YES!” — a
primary reason for the power of unexpected names is that the effort required to “resolve
the incongruency” cements a name in memory.
…if the name is uninformative because it is atypical, consumers will search
for the reason the particular adjective was selected as described by
incongruency theory. The result of this additional elaboration is increased
satisfaction with the product.” Kahn says some consumers seem to enjoy
figuring out the names and feel smart when an obscure, but clever name
clicks in their mind.
As the researchers note in their paper, “When consumers encounter an
unfamiliar name which is counter to their expectation that the marketer
would be providing a familiar name, they try to determine how the
adjective describes the color/flavor. If they discover the connection, the
consumer may congratulate himself for solving the problem, resulting in
positive affect. The most positive affect should result when the name is
mildly incongruent.”
Although she did not test for it, Kahn says there is probably a point where
strong incongruency would backfire, leaving consumers frustrated with
meaningless names and leading to negative product response.
Yes, there is such a point, and that point is when a name, no matter how potentially
interesting and powerful in and of itself, is too far removed from the brand positioning
of the product, company or service. To be effective, names have to map to and reinforce
the brand positioning — if they “go rogue” and fail to do that, they are then just
perceived as random. People, ultimately, enjoy and identify with stories, and mapping to
a well-defined brand positioning is how to Tell A Good Story with a name.

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 This is a fascinating research study that we believe validates what we have observed
anecdotally and have put into practice for years. The researchers, however, come up a
little short in their conclusion:
Kahn says the use of odd names seems to work best in products that rely
on the senses, such as food or fashion, and would probably not work in a
high-stakes product category such as healthcare or financial services. And
at some point, she says, the advantage of an odd or unexpected name will
wear off. “Over time, people get used to it. I don’t think people have this
reaction to Gatorade Frost anymore,” she says. “It isn’t an effect that’s
going to last forever unless the company keeps coming up with new
names.”
We beg to differ. Just look at the success we’ve had creating memorable, lasting
brand names in the two sectors Kahn mentions, Healthcare/Medical/Pharma Names15
and B2B/Enterprise/Industrial Names 16 which includes the financial sector. The
strongest, most powerful names work over time not by conforming to a temporary trick
of perception, but by tapping into the collective memory and imagination, and creating
an emotional bond with individual people that remains long after the Millennium
orange or Snuggly white has been used up.

15 http://www.zinzin.com/work/naming/healthcare-medical-pharma-names/
16 http://www.zinzin.com/work/naming/b2b-enterprise-industrial-names/

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The Zinzin Naming & Branding Manifesto
This Manifesto represents a distillation of our core philosophy about naming and
branding. Welcome to the conversation.

1. Let there be names.

T.S. Eliot wrote that the world will end with a whimper, not a bang. Perhaps. But it
began most evocatively with a Big Bang. Did the Big Bang know itself by that name as it
was happening? Doubtful – the name came much later. In our world today, however,
everything begins with a name. As you embark on the adventure of naming your
company or product, you have the opportunity to create a Big Bang or a little whimper.
Do the right thing – make a Big Bang.

2. Grunts, squeals & crude vocalizations.

Communication began with grunts and squeals, crude vocalizations, painted images
and a lot of hand waving. From this names evolved to identify the bison to be hunted or
the ideal cave for shelter and ceremony. Names are the beginning of language, and from
language sprang culture and civilization. But it all began with a name, and it’s a good bet
that the first name was probably “I”. I am hungry. I want you. I need a new name for my
cave painting business. The first “iBrand.”

3. Name, rank and serial number.

For too many people and companies, a name is merely an identifier, a functional
string of letters or numbers with little brand value. This is the baseline, primordial
meaning and function of a name. As Wittgenstein puts it, “A name cannot be dissected
any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign.” The question is, what more
can a name do for you? Quite a few things, actually, once you move beyond the primitive
notion that names are merely descriptive, functional signs.

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4. Language is alive and on the move.
The way we write and speak today would have made people living in the 17th
century, never mind Neanderthals, think us aliens from a far off galaxy. Things change,
culture changes, languages are born and die, names come and go – today’s “Google” is
not your grandfather’s “International Business Machines.”
If you’re looking for stability, go somewhere else. Language is on the move. It is a
living, breathing organism, always changing, morphing, evolving. Don’t fear this change
– revel in it.

5. Language is dirty.
Language is messy. It is governed by rules that are often broken and riddled with
exceptions that give it life. In order to create the best possible name for a company,
product, baby, horse, character, or other, you have to be willing to do anything and go
anywhere with language. Nothing is sacred. Language is alive, and life is messy.
When mucking about with language, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.

6. Language is dead, long live language.

Language is the fruit fly’s view of evolution – rapid change, mutation,
morphogenesis. It is capable of being influenced, molded, formed, deformed and
reformed before our eyes and ears. It is a mutant made to be torn asunder and
reconfigured.
As William S. Burroughs wrote, “Language is a virus from outer space.” We all have
the capacity to be language biologists, creating new life from the wreckage of old text.

7. Born of science, transformed into art.

Great names are born from a specific process approaching science in its rigor, but
the result is pure art. From competitive analysis to brand strategy, positioning, name
development, trademark prescreening, linguistic connotation screening, name
evaluation and adoption, there’s much more to successful naming than pizza, beer, a

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thesaurus and frenetic whiteboard scribbling. The goal of all this hard work is an
evocative name with the power to set minds reeling, ignite conversations, spur
involvement, create brand loyalty, and become embedded in memory.

8. Does the carpet match the drapes?

We talk a lot about brand positioning and how important it is, so let’s define our
terms. Simply put, the positioning of a brand is the set of core messages the brand
demonstrates to the world, through tone, personality, emotion and narrative. So a better
way to think about your task is in these terms: you are not naming a company or
product – you are instead naming the positioning of a company or product. Once you
determine the brand positioning, only consider names that map strongly to that
positioning. In fact, any names you consider must support the brand positioning in
order to be successful.

9. Slay dragon, heal earth, reach nirvana.

What feelings do you want your target audience to associate with your company or
product? Do you want them feel that they are creative, “outside the box” individualists
(Apple)? Part of a large, connected tribe (Facebook)? Empowered to push themselves
beyond what they think they are physically capable of (Nike)? Which archetypes – The
Hero, The Great Mother, The Mentor, The Guardian, The Herald, The Shadow, The
Trickster – does your brand most closely align with? Discover the epic ideas behind your
brand and they will lead to your unique story and positioning.

10. Show me, don’t tell me.

Great names demonstrate your brand positioning. Weak names force you to explain
your brand positioning, and that’s called advertising. It is very expensive, and not nearly
as effective as demonstrating. Bear this in mind when considering the cost of a naming
project; money saved now may cost you much more in future advertising expenses.

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11. Don’t be hogtied by arbitrary filters.
If the perfect name for your product is “Blue,” but you have a naming convention
that only considers geometric shapes and sounds, not colors, then you have an arbitrary
filter in place that is limiting the names you can even consider. The only filter that
matters is the Supports The Positioning filter – all other filters, like “the name needs to
be serious” or “it should start with a letter A” are arbitrary, exclusionary, and will lead
you into a morass of bad name choices.

12. You can get it if you really want.

Clients often say to us that they got stuck when trying to name a company or product
themselves because they are “not creative enough.” We tell them, no, you are just as
creative as us or anyone else, but your problem is that you have the wrong filters in
place. The key is to focus on the positioning of your brand, and then look for names that
best support that positioning, being careful not to filter out potential naming directions
or, conversely, to allow anything and everything through.

13. When was the last time you enjoyed naming?

While there are definitely parts of a naming project that can be hard, challenging
work – trademark screening, due-diligence research, linguistic connotation screening,
domain checking, etc. – the actual name generation, discussion and deliberation should
be engaging, thought-provoking, cathartic, stimulating, argumentative, enlightening,
and just plain fun. You are creating a name that ideally will function as a very concise
poem and catch fire out in the wider world. It’s a rush.
And yes, naming should be fun.

14. Misery is no mother.

Just because naming should be fun, doesn’t mean it always is. But it’s important that
you have an open mind and allow yourself to be alive to the possibilities of what a name
can do. You have to set a positive tone for this exercise right from the start – if you’re
stuck in a miserable naming rut and the experience seems like torture, realize that you

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are doing something wrong, and change your approach. Companies and products are
not born from misery or ennui, and neither are the best names.

15. In celebration of all the milquetoast mousey wimps.

When naming, it never works to act out of fear. If you want to blend in with the
competition and go unnoticed by the public at large, that’s easy enough to achieve. But if
you are positioning your company as a bold, adventurous risk-taking revolutionary, and
you are afraid to adopt a name that supports such bold positioning, then your brand is
in trouble — the public will see through your attempts to be “bold” if you lead with a
weak name. So don’t wimp out; let your name be as powerful as your vision.

16. The risky business of risking business.

When naming, companies often make a fundamental mistake about the nature of
risk. The faulty assumption is that they need a descriptive name in order to “describe
what they do,” or what their product does, because they “don’t have a huge marketing
budget” to do this describing. In other words, an evocative name that doesn’t “describe
what they do” is considered too “risky.”
This kind of thinking is prevalent across all industries, and it’s also completely
wrong. That’s because a powerful name will create brand awareness, get the press to
write about it, generate word-of-mouth buzz, engage with your audience and convert
them to fanatic devotees of your brand. The generic descriptive name, on the other
hand, will drown in a sea of sound-alike clones, and you’ll end up having to pay a lot
more money for advertising in a vain attempt to get the brand noticed by your glazed-
over audience.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s true: in terms of the bottom line, “safe” names
are risky and it’s the “edgy” names that are actually a much safer choice, because of what
they can do for your brand and the value they’ll create.

17. Own the conversation.

The greatest brands are emotionally engaging, thought-provoking, absolutely
original and tend to upend industries. They are not me-too wannabes, struggling to get a

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word in edgewise. Rather, they own the conversation in their market. This kind of
dominance is what product developers aspire to, but sadly the naming of a revolutionary
product or company often gets short shrift. Don’t let that happen to you. A name can
and should dominate an industry as much as a company or product. Aim high.

18. Let your freak flag fly.

It’s a very simple calculus: if your competitors are all doing the same thing, then you
will stand out if you do something different. And the first and most visible point of
differentiation is with your name. That’s why every naming project should begin with a
thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. Look for all the obvious and
subtle ways in which your competitors do and say the same thing, and then find a new,
uncharted place to plant your flag.

19. Burn your thesaurus.

Consulting a thesaurus is the first stop on the naming train for most people, who
think that finding the right synonym will lead to the perfect name. It won’t, because it’s
already been done to death. Go deep instead – immerse yourself in art, read poetry and
literature, study science. If you want an uncommon name, surround yourself with
uncommon sources. Each competitor of yours that chooses a boringly “appropriate”
name from a thesaurus is doing you a great favor.

20. Turbulent seas.

We live in a culture with so many signals coming at us so quickly, that most
messages, including brand names, just get buried in the avalanche of tweets, calls to
action, toll-free numbers, friend requests, dinner conversations, infomercials, podcasts,
IMs, talking heads, talking points, advertorials and webinars. Everyone is in a hurry all
the time, with advertisers and content providers often accelerating their signals to stay
“up to speed” and lodge their nuggets of information into our minds before competing
messages can take root. In this cultural feeding frenzy, individual messages can easily be
lost. Notice an opportunity here?

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21. Shelter from the storm.
The key to getting noticed in the turbulent sea of cultural messages is not to speed
up, but to slow down. If your name can disrupt someone’s ordinary routine, they will
stop and pay attention. Perhaps only for a few seconds, but sometimes that’s all it takes
to create an initial engagement with a brand. In a world where everything is fast, it’s
only natural that slowing down perception can be a major point of differentiation.

22. A word that paints a thousand pictures.

Old cliches never die, but they can often be turned inside-out. So while it’s true that a
picture might be worth a thousand words, a great name is a word or two that can paint a
thousand pictures in the minds of your audience. If you want proof of this, hand a few
leading names over to your graphics team to play around with. If they come back to you
with, “We had so many ideas for what we could do with this one,” it’s likely a strong
name.

23. I yam what I yam.

Keep your names, messaging and language real. Don’t talk down to people. Don’t
insult the intelligence of your customers by condescending to them. Be real, genuine,
honest, transparent, helpful, understanding, and authentic — you can’t fake it, and you
can’t advertise it. You must demonstrate these qualities, and since a name is the most
prominent part of a company’s brand image, you have to begin by not accepting empty,
phony language into your company or product names.

24. Difruhnt, but not that different.

If your name is different for the sake of being different or extreme in any way just for
the sake of being extreme, then it is doomed. The most powerful names are those that
best support the brand positioning, no matter what, and depending on the
circumstances, a name might be “extreme” or it might not. If your name is trying too

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hard to be different just in order to stand out, it won’t — it will blend in with all the
other names that are also trying too hard, and failing, to stand out. Vive la différence.

25. 1.39 million very unique solutions.

When creating a brand name or any collateral messaging, avoid vacant, overused
words like “solutions.” A quick web search will confirm that you can find a solution for
nearly every problem, except perhaps for the problem of having too many “solutions.”
Other empty vessels include “network,” “business,” “business solutions,” “leading
provider” (“leading” anything, for that matter), or the ultimate, “a leading provider of
business solutions.” Search that last phrase in Google, in quotes, and weep (1.39 million
tears).

26. Beware of geeks bearing gifts.

Beware “experts” who cloak their methodology in the jargony garb of fancy
proprietary “black box” naming “solutions.” Naming is hard work, and to do it right
requires focus, passion and persistence, but rocket surgery it is not. If a consultant has a
rigorous process for creating names, they shouldn’t be afraid to share that with the
whole world. You’re better off hiring a couple bright high school students than an MBA
wielding a Magic 8-Ball.

27. Visualize your arch rival’s smirk.

When evaluating the names on your shortlist, perform this little thought experiment:
imagine that your fiercest competitor has just re-branded, and their new name is one of
the names you are considering (try it with each name).
Which of the names would drive you most crazy with envy when, as you visualize it
to the fullest, the smug CEO of Arch Rival, Inc., unveils their amazing new name to the
world, the press writes stories about it, the blogosphere lights up, and the social media
channels buzz like caffeinated honeybees? Conjure up as much painful detail as you can
– really wallow in it.
This exercise will very quickly point the way to the best name on your list. And if
none of the names would bother you if launched by a competitor, then go back to the

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drawing board until you have a name that does. It is often easier to imagine a
competitor choosing a particular name than your own company choosing it, because the
Arch Rival name adoption fantasy is divorced from your own internal debates and
politics.

28. Focus groups can’t save you now.

Many a troubled naming project began with a brainstorming session, but it’s possible
to do brainstorming right and add value to your naming process. Use this opportunity to
get outside of yourself and hear divergent opinions; avoid being restricted by internal
naming filters, preconceptions, or office politics; consider suggestions as concepts as
much as potential names; and don’t get emotionally invested in any given name before it
has been properly trademark screened. A well-run brainstorming session can give
everyone on your team the discourse and information needed to propagate, nurture and
support strong names.

29. Like snowflakes in a blizzard.

Invented names made from morphemic mashups are often praised for being
“completely unique, unlike anything else that is out there.” While this might be
technically true, such names are only unique in the same way that every snowflake is
unique; in a blizzard, however, the uniqueness of an individual snowflake disappears.
The same thing happens when “unique” mashup names join the real world brand
blizzard – they vanish from sight, indistinguishable from one another.

30. Sibilants, plosives & fricatives oh my.

The lesson of snowflakes is to never confuse structural uniqueness – the “genetic
code” of an individual name, its unique sequence of letters – with semantic uniqueness,
its “uniqueness of meaning.” Any name has meaning on some level – witness the
linguist’s parade of sibilants, plosives and fricatives that often accompanies a new name
unveiling. The trick is to create names that are meaningful, not just names that have
meaning.

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31. Measure your ingredients carefully.
One issue to resolve when looking at a product naming strategy is when and to what
extent does it make sense to engage in ingredient branding – naming individual
technology components, such as GM’s “OnStar” navigation system, or PCs with “Intel
Inside.” This is a tricky and nuanced area of branding to get right, and to avoid brand
dilution it is important to strike a balance and only name ingredients when it makes
sense to turn them into powerful sub-brands. Don’t go on a naming spree just for the
hell of it.

32. Frozen in the amber of brand equity.

When a successful brand has years of positive history and stories behind it, that is
known as brand equity, which is something to be treasured and nurtured. But if a brand
has been struggling, has grown tired, or has been damaged, its brand equity might better
be described as baggage. If you have a successful brand in spite of a poor name, a new,
powerful name can only help, and your customers will gladly follow your lead. But if
your brand has fallen on hard times, then you have no real brand equity to worry about
– you’ve got nothing to lose, and you’re free to reinvent the brand.

33. Got them domain domination blues.

Don’t be discouraged by the difficulty of securing a domain name, and don’t let
domains dictate your choice of names. It’s far better to have a great brand name with a
compound word modified domain than a weak name with an exact-match domain.
Thanks to Google and social media, your brand can be easily discovered regardless of its
Web address. The brand should always have priority over the domain name; the only
exception being Internet pure-play companies, where the brand and the domain are
one.

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34. We don’t need no stinking demographics.
It’s not enough to just “produce” products for “consumers” to consume. You need to
foster engagement with your audience. Live in the big world and be a part of it, treat
individuals with consideration, and be open, transparent and helpful. That includes
creating brand names that respect your audience’s intelligence, are entertaining,
memorable, and add value to the culture. Never forget that it’s individual people, not
demographics, who buy your products. People like you.

35. Rise up, zombie mall rats, rise!

The word “consumer,” meant to describe your audience or the people who buy your
products, is demeaning and should be banished. In the old days it made sense: you put
out a product, advertised it, and then the “consumers” would come along, shell out their
money, and consume your product. Today, the pool of people who mindlessly
“consume” brands is ever shrinking. With so much competition, people expect a deeper
emotional connection and dialog with brands. Ignore this at your peril.

36. Tell a good story.

Stories are how we connect with each other, and how people become emotionally
engaged with brands. Successful brands tell the most and the most compelling stories.
Since your name is the face of your brand, names that tell stories are much more
powerful than names that don’t. Part of that story value comes from what is inherent in
a name before you adopt it, and part of that value comes after, with the stories you
create and invest in your brand.
Storytelling never ends — it’s how you turn a name that might belong to any
company or product into a brand that can only belong to you.

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Epilogue. Coda. Last words. And a call to action.
Great names are not a given. They don’t just happen. They have to be created,
advocated for, argued about, pushed through corporate resistance. They tend to polarize
naming committees, who are adept at coming up with powerful and persuasive
arguments why they should be rejected. All valid reasons why there are so few really
outstanding brand names. But also an opportunity.
We created this Manifesto to empower everybody who is interested in creating
powerful names. It is a living, breathing document that we will revise and update
whenever we have more to say. We invite you to join the conversation and help bring
great names into the world.

To be continued...

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Selected Naming Case Studies
On the following pages is a selection of Zinzin naming case studies. You can read all
case studies in the Portfolio section of our website: http://www.zinzin.com/work/.

Zinzin website links to view case studies by category:

All Company Names

All Product Names
All Service Names
App Names
B2B/Enterprise / Industrial Names
Consumer Product Names
Education / Training Names
Electronics Hardware Names
Entertainment Names
Financial Names
Food / Beverage Names
Healthcare / Medical / Pharma Names
Hotel / Hospitality Names
Software Names
Technology Names
Television Network Names
Website / E-Commerce Name

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Clutch
PROJECT: Rebrand a business vendor research firm
and website that has published research and reviews
of B2B companies in over 50 markets and is poised for
rapid growth.
CLUTCH: Essential in a critical situation: He is a
good man in the clutch. A collection of things or
persons to be handled together. Slang: great, awesome, cool.
BRAND POSITIONING: SourcingLine, a research firm that offers independent,
quantitative analysis on leading services firms in support of procurement decisions,
came to us with two requirements for their re-branding initiative: 1) Develop a killer
brand name to replace their current vaguely descriptive wait till we get funding camel-
case mashup placeholder solution; and 2) make sure that all names presented have
exact-match .com or .co domain names that are parked and available for purchase.
For the company that delivers the go-to source of actionable business intelligence on
B2B service companies, we came through in the clutch, with Clutch, a name that maps
perfectly to the company’s hybrid approach to vendor sourcing: a blend of what top
research firms provide at a high price point with the cost (free) and ease of use of
consumer review sites and apps. The name Clutch maps perfectly to the brand
proposition that this is the driving mechanism that connects people with the best in
class services that they seek, a deep resource for business intelligence that comes
through for companies in the Clutch to deliver the best B2B service providers. Also, the
“.co” top-level domain further reinforces that this is all about connecting companies to
do business together. Clutch. Firms that deliver.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“The Zinzin team got our strategy and competitive environment
immediately. They then elevated our thinking about our brand and
provided a range of great naming options. What more could you ask?”
—Founder, Clutch
Several of our fantastic clients have been interviewed by Clutch researchers for reviews
about their experience working with us, which you can read in full on our Clutch profile
page – https://clutch.co/profile/zinzin – or download a nicely-formatted PDF of all our
client Clutch reviews on our Resources page: http://www.zinzin.com/naming-guides-
company-product-names/.

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Mojo
PROJECT: Name a company and
technology platform that enables
information technology to blend seamlessly
into our lives.
MOJO: A magic charm, talisman, or spell. A
magical power.
BRAND POSITIONING: A stealth mode Augmented Reality (AR) startup with big-name
founders and investors, and more than $50 million in funding, hired us to name their
new company and revolutionary “invisible computing” platform.
The name we created, Mojo, is the perfect embodiment of the almost “magical” and
highly-personal wearable technology products this company is developing. With this
new invisible computing platform, to “get your Mojo working” means you are
empowered, energized, and supremely confident in every task, action, or
communication interaction; not separated from others and the world by technology, but
truly connected to it at all times, unobtrusively. Mojo maps to the superpowers this new
technology will enable, allowing users to reach their full potential and do amazing
things! Mojo – when you have it, anything is possible.
Mojo. Envisioning a world where technology becomes invisible, a world that’s eyes up
and hands-free. Follow #invisiblecomputing for the latest buzz.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“Instead of providing us with hundreds of names to choose from, they kept
it focused and thoughtful. The names they suggested fit with the initial
survey we filled out and became more refined through each round of the
naming process. They worked hard to understand our business and
preferences for what we thought was important in a name. Their process
was fast and produced a high-quality list of potential names.”
—Steve Sinclair, SVP of Product & Vision, Mojo Vision

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Éclair
PROJECT: Name a natural body care brand to
reflect a fresh, sophisticated, and tasty “luxury for
everyone” brand positioning.
ECLAIR: An oblong cream puff. Origin: from
French éclair “flash of lightning,” so named
because it is eaten quickly (in a flash).
BRAND POSITION: We were hired to name a new
natural body care brand with a straightforward,
powerful mission: “We believe that everybody deserves to have access to luxurious body
care products that are also natural, efficacious and affordable.” All of the company’s
products are non-GMO verified, gluten free, soy free, cruelty free and vegan, and are
made in their own facility in the USA.
The name we created, Éclair, is perfect for this skincare and personal body care brand.
Éclair is a fun yet very elegant name that works on multiple levels. As a delicious cream
puff, the name maps perfectly to the concept that these natural personal body care
products are so safe for your body that you could eat them. Phonetically, Éclair evokes
clarity, and thus purity, illumination, and enlightenment. And the accented French
spelling reinforces the luxuriousness of the brand.
The name Éclair accomplishes this brand positioning magic while remaining grounded
in a word that is common enough for everyone to know in its humble pastry form. The
oscillation between quotidian and sophisticated, creamy and illuminated generates
creative friction that gives this brand great power and resonance.
Éclair Naturals. You. Naturally.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“Overall, Zinzin was very easy to work with and collaborative, which I’ve
found is not common in this space. … We were very pleased with the
process and the result. We’re very happy with the name. I feel like I
developed a friendship with Jay and the rest of his team. We definitely stay
in touch, and we’re inviting them to our launch party.”
—CEO, Éclair Naturals

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Yonder
PROJECT: Name a eco-friendly home cleaning
products brand for the North American market.
YONDER: A distant place, usually within sight. At
some distance in the direction indicated; over
there. In or at that indicated place: the house over
yonder.
BRAND POSITIONING: Ecozone, a top eco-
friendly home cleaning products brand in the UK,
was expanding to North America and needed a new brand, both for trademark reasons
and, importantly, because the name Ecozone risked disappearing in a sea of soundalike
“eco” brand names in the U.S. market. We explored a number of names relating directly,
indirectly, and metaphorically to the concepts of “environmental,” “planet earth,” and
the “healthy home,” and fairly early in the process it became clear that Yonder was the
best name to capture the unique spirit of this brand.
Yonder implies going “beyond” the traditional home cleaning and maintenance
solutions of yesterday. It asks us to expand our horizons, to rethink how we clean and
what it means to have both a clean home and a clean “home planet” to share. Yonder is
also an aspiration, as the idiom, “wild blue yonder,” maps to the earth as the “blue
planet” as well as the “blue skies” of a healthy atmosphere.
Yonder — new horizons in cleaning.

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Zeo
PROJECT: Name a suite of consumer banking
services.
ZEO: An invented name, playing off “neo” and
“Zeno,” the Greek philosopher famed for his
paradoxes.
BRAND POSITIONING: TCF, a national bank holding company with 342 branches in
seven states, hired us to name a new suite of consumer banking services. The suite is
designed to make managing your money faster and easier, and includes a prepaid debit
card, check cashing, a savings account, money transfers, bill payments, and money
orders. This suite of products is designed to fit into the customer’s rhythm of life, as they
will be able to satisfy their financial needs with just one convenient resource, when and
where they need it. Definitely not the same old tired and restrictive financial services
offering.
The positioning for this disruptive brand was all
about freedom, convenience, control, simplicity,
and ease of use, and the name itself had to be cool,
hip, and techy, yet casual and approachable. That’s
were Zinzin came it. Our name for this financial
product, ZEO, evokes a new (“neo”), empowering,
and aspirational approach to personal finance. ZEO
is very short and sweet, with a smooth, fun,
energetic, and friendly vibe. It is also verbable: ZEO it. ZEO me some cash. I just ZEO’d
my bills. Above all, ZEO is warm, approachable, and supportive, like the ideal financial
advisor: Me and my ZEO. ZEO is always with me. ZEO’s got my back.
Looking for all basic banking services in one place at a time that’s convenient for your
busy life? Get ZEO.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“The name makes the brand stand out among competitors, and the
business is growing. Creative and experienced, Zinzin exceeded all
expectations, while their clear and structured process helped them work
quickly and effectively.”
—Product Marketing Manager, TCF Bank

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Ember
PROJECT: Name an advanced temperature
adjustable mug and the company behind it and
future temperature control products.
EMBER: A small, glowing piece of coal or wood, as
in a fire.
BRAND POSITION: Clay Alexander came to us with
an amazing product, a sleek and beautiful new kind of travel mug being designed by the
famed product design agency Ammunition. The product features advanced technology
and a Bluetooth-connected smartphone app to set your ideal beverage temperature and
to keep it there. But equally important, the technology is hidden and the experience of
using the product seamless, no different than using a “normal” travel mug. Only better.
Much better.
We helped create the name Ember for this breakthrough new mug and the company that
will produce it and other temperature-controlled products in the future. Ember has
great connotations of warmth, heat, and of keeping the flame alive. Also portability —
the ember that you keep safe to be able to start a new fire at a different time or place.
Sometimes just a few degrees can make the biggest difference in how something tastes.
Ember is here to make sure your drink tastes exactly the way you like it.

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Alloy
PROJECT: Rename an existing personal training systems
company to create a powerful brand that aspires to be the
leader for fitness facilities worldwide.
ALLOY: A metallic substance made by mixing and fusing
two or more metals, or a metal and a nonmetal, to obtain
desirable qualities such as hardness, lightness, and
strength. Brass, bronze, and steel are all alloys. More
generally, a mixture, blend, or combination of two or
more things to obtain desirable new qualities.
BRAND POSITIONING: North Point Personal Training Systems came to us with an
interesting project. The company licenses personal training systems to individual gyms,
studios and trainers all over the world. We were tasked with renaming this business in
order to create a strong, resonant brand for a product that manages all aspects of fitness
facilities and could, potentially, become the name of franchise facilities as well.
Alloy is the ideal name for this unique business. The name represents a combination of
elements coming together to create something bigger, stronger, and longer-lasting, just
like the Alloy system does when combined with an individual trainer’s skill, passion and
know-how. It’s where strength and motion meet.
The name Alloy also reflects the relationship between the trainer and their clients,
working together to make the clients fitter, stronger, and healthier. Alloy is
transformational, a fusion of the best practices of physical fitness business and training,
trainer and client, body and mind.
Alloy. Stronger together.exp.lore.com.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“They were really good. They are really subject matter experts in naming. It
was a great customer experience. I was as satisfied as I could be.”
—President, Alloy Personal Training Solutions

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Obo
PROJECT: Name a company and software suite that
guides product teams to create successful, market-
first products.
OBO: Obos are stone piles used in Central Asia —
Mongolia and Tibet in particular — as sacred
landmarks and geographic/trail markers that guide travelers across treacherous terrain.
An obo will often have messages left on it. In some areas the custom is to for each
passerby to add a stone to the pile, representing themselves. Obos often form the base
for the iconic colorful flags atop a long wooden pole that are synonymous with Tibet.
BRAND POSITIONING: A product management software startup on a mission to help
companies transform how they define and build products came to Zinzin to help turn
their vision into a brand. The company was developing powerful new tools to facilitate
agile, data-driven product management, as opposed to the ad-hoc, opinion-based
product management that was previously the norm.
The name we created, Obo, works on multiple levels, and evokes the company’s
trailblazing commitment to helping users to develop transformative products. Obo is
emblematic of a process of illumination, enlightenment, and transformation. Each
product development cycle can be visualized as an Obo formation, with each of the
“stones” in the Obo representing individual members of the internal team, external
customers, data clusters, or project “milestones.” Obo helps users chart a path to better
product outcomes. The name also functions very well as a short, rhythmic, catchy
abstract name for anyone unfamiliar with the meaning.
The Obo Product Suite guides, shows the way, and marks a clear path to market-first
product success.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“It’s great to have two very seasoned, strong principals working on a
project. A more junior staff likely would have been assigned to our account
at a bigger firm. With Zinzin, we worked with the highest quality people.
What you see is what you get with them, and there are no surprises
afterwards.”
—Former CEO, Obo

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Protagonist
PROJECT: Name a feature-based web and app
crowdfunding tool that enables independent game
studios to engage, interact, and monetize their
communities in a new way.
PROTAGONIST: An advocate, leader, proponent,
or champion of a particular cause, idea, or
movement. The leading character in a drama, film,
novel, game, or other fictional work.
BRAND POSITIONING: A Protagonist is the
leading character at the center of a story, typically making the key decisions that drive
the plot forward, the perfect name for this service that is the heroic champion of video
game developers. Antagonists will throw down obstacles, create complications, and
inflame conflicts that test the Protagonists who use this tool, thus revealing the
strengths of each developer’s character. In ancient Greek drama a Protagonist was the
first actor to engage in dialogue with the chorus, so the name also maps metaphorically
to this crowdfunding tool that enables game studios to engage with their chorus of
players, fans, and patrons in an exciting new way.
Protagonist — Make games legendary.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“They are experts in their field. Their knowledge and approach are apparent
on their website, but powerful when experienced first-hand. Anyone can
find a name in the dictionary, but finding a brand name requires art and
craft expertise, both of which Zinzin delivers…. They may only specialize in
naming, but they do it well. We couldn’t ask for anything more.”
—CEO, Protagonist

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Noovie
PROJECT: Rename an existing and well-known “pre-
show” of packaged entertainment content that is
screened in many movie theaters to create an
entertainment brand that extends the movie
experience “beyond the theater.”
NOOVIE: An invented play on “new” and “movie.”
BRAND POSITIONING: NCM, America’s largest cinema advertising network, hired
Zinzin to rename its flagship product, the First Look “preshow” that was screened in
AMC, Cinemark, and many other theaters nationwide. NCM provides national, regional
and local brands access to over 750 million moviegoers through this platform, and the
company wanted to rebrand it to not only give it a new look and feel, but to make the
product more cohesive and develop an ownable brand. As NCM noted in the launch
announcement:
We’re trying to organically create a thematic arch from start to finish, so it feels more
like a show. Not only will the look and feel be more contemporary and more geared
toward our core audience of Gen Z and Millennial movie fans, but we’re also creating
our own original content and partnering with a variety of producers.
This original content is now being packaged in an “integrated digital and mobile
ecosystem delivering content, commerce and gaming, engaging consumers throughout
their movie-going journey,” and beyond. The name we came up with, Noovie, is perfect
for this new entertainment brand that revolves around the experience of seeing a movie
in a theater, while extending that experience beyond the theater into movie discovery,
mobile apps, gaming, and other content.
Noovie takes film fans behind the scenes and beyond the theater.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We appreciated the custom approach [Zinzin] took; it wasn’t templated at
all. Some of the organizations we were interviewing seemed to provide us
with a templated approach. Zinzin treated us like an individual and was
flexible in their approach.”
—Creative Director, National CineMedia (NCM)

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Anthology
PROJECT: Create a new name for Poachable, an
anonymous career matchmaking company and
service.
ANTHOLOGY: A published collection of poems or
other pieces of writing. A published collection of
songs or musical compositions issued in one album.
BRAND POSITIONING: Poachable came to us with a unique naming project when they
ran into trademark issues with their name. But the company was also broadening the
scope of its offerings, and their visionary CEO, Tom Leung, understood that the
trademark issue was a perfect catalyst to establish a new brand that better reflected the
company’s vision going forward. It was no longer just about the narrow function of
enabling companies to “poach” top talent from other firms. While anonymous job
exploration is still a big part of what their service does, the company will be adding lots
of exciting new career optimizing features and services in the future that will take their
platform to a whole new level – well beyond simply being poachable.
The new name we developed, Anthology, is a great metaphor for this epic, iconic, and
page-turning career and recruitment platform. Anthology is a collection of the unique,
individual stories that each candidate and recruiter contributes to this collaborative
ecosystem. The typical job listings website is like a short story; Anthology is much bigger
than that, and will be there with you through every plot twist, storyline, and chapter,
providing you with the big picture narrative you need to make more informed career
decisions. Anthology conveys the company’s long-term vision of helping everyone in the
world achieve the most amazing career story possible. We also created the tagline,
Careers Reimagined, which further reinforces both the world in which Anthology
operates and the company’s vision of changing the conversation in that world.
Anthology. Careers Reimagined.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“…a very prominent venture capitalist said, ‘I didn’t think your original
name sounded like a company that I could see going public, but the new
one seems like a real company that matches the big vision you have.’ The
transition to Anthology has been very smooth, and Zinzin’s role was much
more than just coming up with a name. They’ve played a huge role in
constructing the strategy and the brand identity for Anthology.”
—CEO, Anthology

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Visual Objects
PROJECT: Name a new portfolio website for
creative firms for a returning client, Clutch, which
we previously named.
VISUAL OBJECTS: An experiential name created
by combining “Visual,” able to be seen, relating to or using sight, with “Objects,” things
that you can see and touch, or that you plan to achieve.
BRAND POSITIONING: Visual Objects is an iconic name for a portfolio website that
showcases work from top creative firms around the world. Companies use Visual
Objects as a valuable resource to find the right design partner for their creative business
needs. The name also speaks to the act of visualizing future creative projects, becoming
an essential step in any hiring decision.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We had a good history with Zinzin as we have worked with them very
effectively before—our familiarity with each other meant we went through
an expedited, shortened process…. They did so well that we cut the process
short; it was a unique situation as we had a couple of leading options
immediately. We were able to secure the dot-com URLs and then paused
the project to think about it for a week or so. It was then we decided we
were done and happy with the results…. They’re now the go-to naming firm
for us.”
—Founder, Clutch, The Manifest, and Visual Objects

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Juniper
PROJECT: Name a hip, gin-focused and garden-
inspired bar in the center of the casino action at
the newly rebranded Park MGM resort, Las Vegas.
JUNIPER: Any evergreen, coniferous shrub or
tree of the genus Juniperus, especially J.
communis, having cones that resemble dark-blue
or blackish berries used in flavoring gin.
BRAND POSITIONING: MGM Resorts completely remodeled and redesigned their
Monte Carlo hotel casino in Las Vegas, rebranding it Park MGM, and hired us to name
two new bars on the property. The first of these to open is a bar with a garden
inspiration — mapping back to being part of “Park” MGM — that is located in the center
of the casino action. We explored a number of names related to gardens, botany, and the
concept of centrality, and the name that resonated the most was Juniper. Also, over the
course of the project it was decided that gin would be the spirit of focus at this new bar,
more so than at any other venue in Las Vegas. With that strategic decision in place,
Juniper, named after the plant whose berries are used in flavoring gin, became the
perfect name for this bar.
Here’s how Park MGM tells the story:
Juniper Cocktail Lounge invites you to enjoy hand-crafted cocktails in a space
that’s as serious about kicking back as it is about cocktails. Home to the largest
collection of gin in Las Vegas, Juniper takes its name from the juniper berries
that bring us gin. The menu features a curated cocktail program using house-
made juices and syrups alongside an expertly selected spirits menu.
Located in the center of the casino, the vibe is warm and welcoming—and at
night, a DJ and bottle service add energy and an irresistible alchemy to the mix.
Everything on the menu at Juniper Cocktail Lounge has a story, making it the
ideal setting to explore yours.
There’s a new gin joint in town — Juniper Cocktail Lounge.

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Gravy
PROJECT: Name a mobile, location-based
marketing data analytics company and its
“hyperlocal” events listing app.
GRAVY: Gravy is the good stuff, the “secret sauce,” a
source for discovering all the juicy things going on
around you, and for B2B customers the most “delicious” mobile marketing analytics.
BRAND POSITIONING: C’mon admit it, you want another ladle of Gravy. The brand
positioning for this company and app, which we helped our client develop, began with
“Get Engaged” – have an active lifestyle, be out and about, take part in life by
discovering great events and experiences right in your own backyard. It is all about
serendipitous discovery, finding your fun, getting the scoop with “insider information”
about cool happenings near you. Think of it as your very own hipster tipster!
Finding and having fun, memorable experiences shouldn’t be hard, shouldn’t be a time-
consuming chore, shouldn’t be work; it should be natural and easy. Like Gravy. The
brand embodies — and the new name demonstrates — a rich and flavorful experience; it
brings out the best and makes everything taste better. Gravy shows you the way, but
doesn’t get in the way. And it is perfectly extensible to the mobile, location-based
marketing analytics company that grew from the initial product.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“In terms of market impact, [the new name] changed everything for our
company. It’s the most tangible aspect of our brand, we’ve trademarked it,
and it has become everything that we represent to the marketplace. Among
other things, people ask us all the time what the name means, so it gets the
response we want, which is, increased engagement with our customers.”
—Founder of Gravy

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Fluent
PROJECT: Rebrand one of North America’s largest
home security firms to consolidate two companies
into one, with a new name and a broader mission:
comprehensive home automation.
FLUENT: The ability to express oneself readily,
clearly and effectively. Flowing or moving smoothly
and gracefully. To be fluent in something — like a language or an instrument — is to be
able to use it smoothly and effortlessly. If you’re performing a skill, task or deed in a way
that makes it look easy, you’re fluent.
BRAND POSITIONING: The client came to us with a unique problem: because of
trademark issues, the same home security company known as Titan Alarm in Canada
was called Stryke Alarm in the United States, creating a split personality, not to mention
duplicate accounting and business processes. As the company was also moving beyond
just home security into a full spectrum of comprehensive, state-of-the-art home
automation and security, this was the perfect time to rebrand and finally align all their
businesses in North America, collectively serving over 500,000 customers, under one
powerful new brand name.
The name Fluent perfectly repositions the company as the definitive experts who “speak
all languages” in user-friendly home automation and security. The Fluent home
automation and security system is always on: it’s ready, steady, and good to go. A Fluent
home is whip smart, energy efficient, safe, secure and very easy to manage. The Fluent
home automation system is fluid, responsive, versatile, and elegantly designed. It is the
embodiment of grace under pressure, performing seamlessly, effortlessly, day in and
day out. Fluent is the premiere technology and service resource for all your security,
home and automation needs.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“Overall, we’re very pleased with the name Zinzin helped us come up with.
The feedback from both customers and internal teams has been great….
They genuinely value the story behind the name of a brand.”
—Marketing Director, Fluent Home

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The Manifest
PROJECT: Name a new small business news, data,
and how-to guides website for a returning client,
Clutch, which we previously named.
MANIFEST: To prove; put beyond doubt or
question. Clearly revealed to the mind or the senses
or judgment. Display or show (a quality or feeling)
by one’s acts or appearance; demonstrate. A
customs document listing the contents put on a
ship or plane.
BRAND POSITIONING: Our friends at Clutch tasked us with naming a new website to
provide news, data, and how-to guides for small businesses, extending the range of
services they offer businesses on the Clutch website. We created the name The Manifest,
which has a great double meaning: as a verb it connotes the revealing of knowledge by
making it manifest — and as a noun it represents the definitive “list” of all that you need
to know to achieve greater success in business. As it says on The Manifest website:
Our mission is to gather and verify the hard data, expert insights, and actionable advice
that you need to build your brand and grow your business – to provide the practical
business wisdom that manifests in your success.
Join the community over at The Manifest and discover the answers to your most
pressing business questions and advance your business savvy.
The Manifest — Compiling Practical Business Wisdom to Make Your Goals a Reality

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We had a good history with Zinzin as we have worked with them very
effectively before—our familiarity with each other meant we went through
an expedited, shortened process…. They did so well that we cut the process
short; it was a unique situation as we had a couple of leading options
immediately. We were able to secure the dot-com URLs and then paused
the project to think about it for a week or so. It was then we decided we
were done and happy with the results…. They’re now the go-to naming firm
for us.”
—Founder, Clutch, The Manifest, and Visual Objects

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Rubicon
PROJECT: Create a name for a new float studio
brand based in Kirkland, Washington.
RUBICON: A bounding or limiting line; especially,
one that when crossed commits a person
irrevocably. A river in Italy that, in the era of the
Roman republic, was crossed by Julius Caesar and
his army in violation of Roman law. Notes Wikipedia: “The phrase ‘crossing the
Rubicon’ has survived to refer to any individual or group committing itself irrevocably to
a risky or revolutionary course of action, similar to the modern phrase ‘passing the point
of no return.'”
BRAND POSITIONING: What is floating? It has been known variously as floating,
flotation, or sensory deprivation, and is best described by the company we named
Rubicon:
Floating is the practice of lying on a bed of warm salt water, in a space that blocks
out light and sound, helping you achieve the ultimate state of relaxation so your
body and mind can rest, repair, and refresh. … By simulating a zero-gravity
environment, floating gives your entire body the chance to repair. By removing
external light and noise, floating gives your mind a chance to refresh and focus.
This is a float studio like no other, going to great lengths in acoustical engineering to
thoroughly isolate and soundproof the flotation tanks and rooms; to perfectly control
the tank temperature and humidity; to the installation of eco-friendly showers; and to
the overall aesthetic experience. The name Rubicon evokes commitment, resolve,
determination, and change. Crossing this Rubicon is all about relaxation, meditation,
and rejuvenation. Once people discover the transformational power of Rubicon, there’s
no going back to the old way of being. And the name has an edge, swagger, and attitude
far beyond the “zenny” platitudes of most float, meditation, and yoga studios, setting
this company apart from the pack. Rubicon is transforming the flotation experience.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“In terms of the reception of my new name from the previous name, my
brand is much stronger. It’s a stronger brand than any others in the float
world. We’ve raised the bar in terms of our brand experience and it’s helped
a lot with our brand positioning. When I’m dealing with other industries,
the name recognition has been very good for me.”
—Founder, Rubicon Float Studio

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vybe
PROJECT: Re-name a local chain of urgent care
centers to better reflect the brand positioning and
allow the chain to expand to other regions.
BRAND POSITIONING: Our client came to us
with a local Philadelphia chain of urgent care
centers that represented a new concept for
providing healthcare that is accessible, convenient, reliable, frictionless, easy, warm,
inviting, hassle-free, responsive, innovative, progressive, and enlightened.
Unfortunately, their original name, “Philadelphia Urgent Care,” was a generic
descriptive name with zero brand value that also restricted the company’s aspiration to
eventually expand to other cities.
We developed a number of interesting names for this concept, but it became clear over
the course of this project that vybe is the clear winner, perfectly capturing the brand
ethos with a warm, inviting, hip, jaunty, and contemporary name that strongly positions
this brand to expand to other markets.
vybe is defining the new way to be seen when you need immediate, convenient medical
treatment.

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Cassava
PROJECT: Name the premier substance abuse
recovery app that helps users maintain their
sobriety.
CASSAVA: A staple food in the tropics. Any of
several plants of the genus Manihot having fleshy
roots yielding a nutritious starch and the source of
tapioca.
BRAND POSITIONING: Elements Behavioral Health, a national network of substance
abuse and mental health treatment centers and programs, hired us to name the next
generation of their iPromises recovery app. The new iPhone / iPad app is offered free of
charge on the new Addiction.com portal for addiction, recovery and mental health that
Elements created. The app is designed to provide users with a variety of simple tools
they can use every day, such as easily locate nearby meetings, monitor moods and
activities, and track daily progress, to help them build a strong foundation in — and stay
on track with — their recovery.
During our brand development workshop with the client, we identified three key brand
positions that formed the conceptual framework for the name development phase.
Throughout the review process a cluster of names emerged that evoked recovery,
sustainability and nurturing, but Cassava quickly rose to the top as the perfect metaphor
for this innovative recovery app. Cassava is a nutritious staple food of the tropics, and
the name evokes fresh ocean breezes, rejuvenation, health and wellbeing. Cassava is a
sweet and very sticky (memorable) name that is as fun to say as it is easy to use.
This app keeps users connected to the nurturing roots of recovery one day at a time.
Cassava is a spirited, lively and action-oriented name that has the potential of becoming
part of the parlance of recovery: Let’s Cassava a meeting together.
The Cassava App: Get grounded in recovery.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We’re on our eighth [ten now completed] project with them. It’s a very
good process. It’s very effective. It’s fun and very collaborative. What stands
out to me is the consistency in their work, their professionalism and how
they deliver their work.”
—Chief Internet and Media Officer, Elements Behavioral Health

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Pivot
PROJECT: Name a new entertainment and social
action television network that will air feature
documentaries, reality TV, drama series, variety
shows and an open source talk show.
PIVOT: Beyond just turning and rotating, pivot is
the one central thing that something — maybe
everything — depends upon. It can be a structured course correction or a re-alignment
of priorities. Pivot is all about thinking on your feet, adaptation and informed change.
Also connotes pivotal, as in being of critical, essential importance.
BRAND POSITIONING: The Pivot brand is empathetic, and connotes the dance of
collaborators — auteurs and audience — learning to work together, to understand and
inspire each other. The Pivot network doesn’t strong-arm or browbeat you, it uses
compelling, entertaining stories to get the audience to gently pivot in their thinking, and
to inspire them to action.
Explaining the thinking behind the new network’s name and brand position, Pivot
president Evan Shapiro says that “the world is on a path right now, but there are many
different paths that we can choose. We’re not necessarily saying which one’s the right
one, but we know where we’re headed right now is not working. So it’s time to shift, and
it’s time to pivot.”
The world is changing, and Pivot will be right there in the middle of that change. And
with its innovative digital distribution strategy, Pivot may just turn the television
industry upside down as well. The name Pivot is perfect for this ambitious network that
is both television and post-television. The old ways of thinking, acting and relating to
each other and the world are not working anymore. It’s time to Pivot.
Pivot. It’s your turn.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“Their [Zinzin’s] team was excellent. Everything was on time. They also did
a good job of explaining upfront how long each phase was going to take.
The process went really smoothly. I’d never done a naming exercise before,
so they gave me a lot of good advice throughout.”
—Former EVP Marketing, Participant Media / Pivot

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Lore
PROJECT: Re-name the online education service
company Coursekit to create a broader, higher-level,
evocative brand that will become synonymous with
learning.
LORE: Lore is knowledge acquired through
education or experience, shared between people and
passed down across generations. Literally the body
of knowledge, especially of a traditional, anecdotal, or popular nature, on a particular
subject; folklore. Learning, knowledge, or erudition that transcends book learning.
BRAND POSITIONING: Coursekit began life in the fall of 2011 as an online course
management service for college students and professors. Offering an experience far
superior to all existing course management products, Coursekit was a big hit, and its
growth and word-of-mouth buzz has been tremendous. But the company’s mission is
greater than just the nuts and bolts of course management; it is about the bigger idea of
sharing and transmitting knowledge itself between people. The name Coursekit was too
narrow, linear, and failed to rise above the goods and services being offered, which is a
hallmark of powerful brands that command strong audience engagement
Joseph Cohen, the co-founder and CEO of Coursekit, hired Zinzin to create the perfect
name for his Big Idea, and we delivered with Lore, a transformational name for a
transformational company. Here’s how Lore announced their new name to the world:
“Coursekit started as a toolkit for courses. Courses became communities of learners.
We’ve seen that people learn by sharing. Our mission is to connect the world’s learners
and educators. We need a name that reflects our ambitions. Lore means knowledge
shared between people. That’s what we are about.”
Simple, direct, and to the point. The company also created an advanced blog to function
as “a discovery engine for meaningful knowledge, fueled by cross-disciplinary curiosity,”
which is all about exploring knowledge. The added bonus of the name Lore, after having
secured the exact-match .com domain name, is that this discovery engine, edited by
Maria Popova of Brain Pickings fame, is called Explore, and can be found at the
subdomain exp.lore.com.

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Gogo
PROJECT: A revolutionary new wi-fi service for
commercial aircraft.
GOGO: From “go-go” — full of energy, vitality, or
daring; stylish, modern, or up-to-date.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name had to be
memorable, fun, short, universally known, be
available for trademark and easy to pronounce globally, and map to both the travel
experience and the Internet connectivity experience. Gogo delivered on all counts, and
has become the leading brand in Wi-Fi connectivity in the sky, a literal “cloud
computing” brand.

Aquaria
PROJECT: Name a new financial company that provides
small business loans and capital financing to
entrepreneurs.
AQUARIA: A beautiful word that is the plural of
aquarium, which can either describe a small tank or an
entire building housing fish and other aquatic life.
BRAND POSITIONING: Aquaria maps to a primary
brand positioning concept we developed for this project,
which we called “The Source”: metaphorically the source of life, and literally as a
positive source of energy to help nourish your small business and, by extension, a source
for new jobs in the community. Aquaria is fresh, natural, and refreshing, evoking a
colorful, active, life-sustaining and nurturing organic ecosystem, just the kind of lending
environment that the company has created for small businesses as an alternative to the
cold, impersonal world of the big banks. Aquaria will help put your company on the map
and on display for all the world to see and marvel at, so your business and your dream
can flourish. An elegant and beautiful name that perfectly reflects the aspirations and
brand narrative of this vibrant company.

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Redshift
PROJECT: Name a new MBA-level online training
product for business from eCornell drawing from
a library of on-demand content from Cornell
University.
REDSHIFT: In astronomy, a shift in the spectra of
very distant galaxies toward longer wavelengths
(to the red end of the spectrum); generally
interpreted as evidence that the universe is expanding.
BRAND POSITIONING: Evidence that the universe is expanding, Redshift is the
perfect metaphor for a system that enables and empowers the next-generation of
business leaders to create expansive, sustained growth for their companies. The color
red is an essential element of the Cornell University and eCornell brand identity; in fact,
“Big Red” is the informal name of the sports teams, and other competitive teams, at
Cornell University. So the client very much liked the dynamic reference to Cornell
University, in the sense of “shifting” away from the ivory tower of academia (“Big Red”)
to the “real world” of corporate learning, while still retaining its roots and academic
bona fides. Expanding the universe of education beyond the university. “Shift” also
suggests a new paradigm in online learning, as well as shifting the balance sheet “out of
the red and into the black,” implying that this is good for a company’s bottom line.
Authoritative, proven, credible and dynamic, a forward-thinking name for a progressive
leader in online education.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“They met all the deadlines. They were great at discussion. They were
creative and had a lot of great ideas.”
—Former CEO, eCornell

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3D XPoint
PROJECT: Name a breakthrough non-volatile
storage memory technology.
3D XPOINT: Pronounced “3D cross point,” referring
to the structure of the memory cells.
BRAND POSITIONING: We helped our client Intel
create the name 3D XPoint for this breakthrough new
storage memory technology. Intel 3D XPoint storage
memory technology delivers faster performance and
greater power efficiency at lower cost across a range
of products from SSDs, to servers, 2 in 1 PCs and
tablets. This ingredient brand technology makes other storage chips better by unlocking
enormous memory capabilities and speed at low cost. Data is persistent (non-volatile),
meaning that when you shut off the power, the data isn’t lost, as with RAM/Flash
memory.
The name for this technology had to send the signal that the products incorporating it
are a generational, revolutionary advancement of Intel innovation, while driving brand-
building equity more to the “Intel” masterbrand than to the technology itself. 3D XPoint
perfectly serves this purpose.

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Lucida
PROJECT: Create a name for a new, upscale, state-
of-the-art residential mental health and substance
abuse treatment center in South Florida that appeals
equally to both English and Spanish-speakers.
LUCIDA: A play off lucid: having a clear mind,
characterized by clear perception or understanding; rational or sane. Lucid comes from
the Latin lūcidus: clear, bright, shining, full of light, and thus, figuratively: clear,
perspicuous, and lucid. But Lucida is also an English word in its own right, meaning
“the brightest star in a constellation,” closely related to another meaning of lucid:
shining and bright, able to be seen with clarity. Lucida is easily understood in Spanish,
for which lúcido is the direct translation of lucid.
BRAND POSITIONING: The goal of any mental health or substance treatment program
is lucidity: having a clear mind, characterized by keen perception or understanding of
one’s self, and being rational or sane, often quite the opposite from how people are when
they first enter into month-long residential treatment programs. The multiple meanings
and associations of the name Lucida, evoking the clarity and rationality of lucid thought,
as well as the transformational aspiration of burnishing your mind and spirit to become
“the brightest star in a constellation,” make is a perfect fit for this treatment facility,
whose brand position and tagline is “Discover Your Light.” Lucida will illuminate your
path to lasting recovery, and, the light, spirit and elegance of Lucida clearly transcends
culture and language.
Lucida: Discover Your Light.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We’re on our eighth [ten now completed] project with them. It’s a very
good process. It’s very effective. It’s fun and very collaborative. What stands
out to me is the consistency in their work, their professionalism and how
they deliver their work.”
—Chief Internet and Media Officer, Elements Behavioral Health

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AeroBurner
PROJECT: Naming a top of the line golf club
product family brand for TaylorMade Golf.
AEROBURNER: The faster, more aerodynamic
replacement for TaylorMade’s category-leading
Burner series of drivers, extended to a full family
brand that includes irons and golf balls in addition
to drivers.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name AeroBurner came out of exploring a variety of
concepts to replace the Burner series of drivers, which included names such as
AfterBurner. AeroBurner more uniquely expresses the concept of aerodynamics and
speed that this club exemplifies. Very sleek, high-tech and future-forward.

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Nuage Rouge
PROJECT: Rebrand a Montreal-based artisanal gourmet
food service for cafes, bars, and microbreweries. French is
the dominant language in Quebec, and by law all
commercial signage in Montreal must appear in French. So
the new name had to work first in French, but also
translate well into English.
NUAGE ROUGE: The English translation is “Red Cloud.” A
nuage rouge / red cloud sunset occurs when unique
atmospheric conditions turn the sun and the surrounding
sky an intense red. Red Cloud is also the name of a
powerful Native American warrior and chief of the Oglala
Lakota from 1868 to 1909.
BRAND POSITIONING: We worked closely with the client to create a powerful and
memorable brand and insure that the name worked equally well in both English and
French. There are myriad poetic images evoked by Nuage Rouge. For instance,
“Nuage/Cloud” connotes limitless possibilities, light, air, freshness, bliss, euphoria,
energy, the spirit world, mobility, freedom, liberty, abandon, independence and
boundless imagination. “Rouge/Red” evokes feelings of hot, spicy, peppery, sexy,
passionate, bold, daring, audacious, dangerous, extreme, and revolutionary.
Nuage Rouge is the perfect metaphor for an eclectic fusion of French, Cajun, Belgian,
Spanish and South American cuisine. The vision for the kitchen was inspired by the
ethos and food preparation techniques of a community of Trappist monks which settled
in Quebec in the early 20th century. The Trappists deeply believe in the power of work
and the creation of goods. The 48th chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict states, “for then
are they monks in truth, if they live by the work of their hands.” Nuage Rouge shares
this deep commitment to the land, food, and the spiritual powers of honest craft.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“The team was perfect. I am amazed by their expertise and the quality that
they delivered. They’re like the wizards of naming, truly capturing our
company’s look and feel within a few words.”
—President, Nuage Rouge

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Swirled
PROJECT: Name a new web and email-based
“lifestyle curation” division and media platform.
SWIRL: To move around or along with a whirling
motion; whirl; eddy. To be dizzy or giddy, as the
head. To cause to whirl; twist.
BRAND POSITIONING: ArcaMax, a top publisher
of news and entertainment via email newsletters, hired us to name their new “lifestyle
curation” division, which launched with stories about the best restaurants, bars, and
happenings in New York City, but will eventually expand to other global cities. The
primary brand positioning concepts we focused on were Curation, emphasizing the
user’s process of receiving the best lifestyle and culture recommendations; and
Discovery, enabling all people, but especially Millennials, to quickly enrich their lives by
discovering food, dining, and events, which enhance their life experiences.
Our name for this new division, Swirled, perfectly combines the Curation and Discovery
brand positions, “swirling together” the best and most exciting things to eat, drink, in
any city, into a rich “swirl” of lifestyle options and life hacks. Here’s how the company
describes it on their website:
Swirled: A newsletter, a website, a lifestyle
Every day we put you at the top of your “to-do” list by swirling together original
stories with the best lifestyle content on the web. Hang with us, and you’ll find
awesome budgeting hacks, food-spiration, travel deals and fitness must-knows in
one place. Our fresh perspective will inspire you to eat your heart out, live
healthier, explore the world and thrive. Own your life and love it.

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Jupiter Wells
PROJECT: A new upscale online window
treatments brand.
JUPITER WELLS: Derived from a very small and
remote Australian Aboriginal settlement called
Jupiter Well.
BRAND POSITIONING: Evocative, memorable and differentiated from the crowd of
boring, mostly descriptive names in the window treatment space. This name elevates the
brand above the goods being sold; is charming and disarming; emphasizes style; has
some familiarity/meaning; and sounds vaguely like it could be both a designer’s name
and/or evoke a non-specific sense of place. Jupiter Wells demonstrates, rather than
explains, a unique, entirely new perspective, creating emotional engagement with its
audience.

Wavelength
PROJECT: Name a unified communication
software platform for the financial market
trading industry.
WAVELENGTH: The distance between two
points in the same phase in consecutive cycles
of a wave. A shared orientation leading to
mutual understanding (“They are on the same
wavelength”).
BRAND POSITIONING: Cloud9 is a pioneering trader communication technology
company that has reinvented the way traders interact with each other and office staff,
transforming communication both on and off of the trading floor with modern, cloud-
based communication technology. They came to us to name a new unified
communication software platform that seamlessly connects front, middle, and back
office operations with intercom capabilities and facilitates real-time exchanges of
information across the entire trading lifecycle.
The name we developed, Wavelength, maps both to the physical carrier of voice
communications to the ear — sound waves — but also to the act of the communicating
parties being in-sync with one another by getting on the same Wavelength.

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Tizzy
PROJECT: Create a brand name for a new
“yogurt café” restaurant chain.
TIZZY: A state of nervous excitement.
BRAND POSITIONING: Several soon-to-be-ex-
Golden Spoon Frozen Yogurt franchise owners
who were passionate about expanding the “single
category” frozen yogurt menu to multiple complementary products that meet the needs
of active and healthy-lifestyle customers hired Zinzin to put a name to their vision. Tizzy
captures the feeling of great excitement and elation when you enter one of the shops and
discover that this is not your typical frozen yogurt experience. This brand is all about
energy, vitality and joy. Tizzy offers a healthy and nutritional menu and has something
for everyone: parents, kids, seniors, college students — even elite athletes. The stores
have a warm and comfortable environment, with free wi-fi, where customers can meet
friends and family, hang out, conduct business meetings, and get a pre- or post-workout
energy boost.
There are also many ways that the brand and its customers can play with the language
around this name: Get into a Tizzy. I’m in a Tizzy. Meet me at Tizzy’s. I’m in a Tizzy for
great frozen yogurt. A short, sweet, powerful and memorable name.

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Braven
PROJECT: Name a new addiction treatment
program for young adults who are at high risk of
relapse. The program provides a personalized 12-
step approach, individual therapy sessions, gender-
specific group therapy, recreational therapy, life-
skills training and access to state-of-the-art
psychiatric medical services.
BRAVEN: A rare English word meaning to make brave, embolden. Or, to paraphrase the
Urban Dictionary definition: A strong, courageous, warrior; a leader of many in fairness
and truth; a man or woman with a purpose.
BRAND POSITIONING: Elements Behavioral Health, a repeat client of ours, came to us
to rebrand what had been called “The Impact Program” for high-risk young adults at
The Recovery Place, an Elements treatment center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Traditional alcohol and drug rehab programs tend to treat everyone the same way. This
approach isn’t very effective, especially with relapse-prone young adults who have
unique issues and triggers.
Elements was interested in a name that demonstrated rather than described their
unique approach to recovery. We responded by developing the distinctive and
empowering name Braven, saluting the boldness and bravery required of these young
adults to overcome powerful negative forces in their lives, with a nod to contemporary
usage that elevates their struggle to the heroic and emphasizes positive traits of
integrity, strength and honesty. Recovery is a program of action, and Braven is a very
actionable and “verbable” name. The Recovery Place Bravens its young clients,
empowering them with the courage, strength and hope to thrive in the adult world.
Braven: Fearless in the face of addiction.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We’re on our eighth [ten now completed] project with them. It’s a very
good process. It’s very effective. It’s fun and very collaborative. What stands
out to me is the consistency in their work, their professionalism and how
they deliver their work.”
—Chief Internet and Media Officer, Elements Behavioral Health

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Criterion
PROJECT: Rename an established HCM (Human
Capital Management) software company to create a
brand that better represents the values and
aspirations of this reenergized HR, benefits and
payroll software firm.
CRITERION: The ideal in terms of which
something can be judged; a basis for comparison; a reference point against which other
things can be evaluated.
BRAND POSITIONING: PerfectSoftware came to us as a thirty year old software firm
with a new management team, game-changing product enhancements, and fresh capital
investment that positioned the company for explosive growth. The management team
saw this as the perfect opportunity to rebrand and asked us to create a name that better
exemplified the company’s bold new vision and ethos.
We created the name Criterion, which is the perfect brand name for both the company
that is setting the new standard in HR software performance and the software platform
that delivers on every important criteria of Human Capital Management (HCM).
Criterion provides HR professionals with a comprehensive, integrated and flexible
human resource and payroll solution for managing their company’s most valuable asset
— human capital. Which is another way of saying People Power.
The name also maps to the unique approach the company takes in product
development, which is to design and implement each system based on their client’s
individual criteria of system features and functionality. In essence, each system is a not
only setting a new standard of excellence in software engineering, but also the criterion
by which they are developed. In addition, Criterion’s HCM suite allows businesses and
organizations to manage a broad range of critical human resource functions more
effectively and efficiently, within a single system.

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Sliver
PROJECT: Name a “super premium” vodka from
Australia.
SLIVER: A small, slender, often sharp piece, as of
wood or glass, split, broken, or cut off, usually
lengthwise or with the grain; splinter. Any small,
narrow piece o r portion.
BRAND POSITIONING: Sliver is the perfect name for this “Ferrari of Vodkas” — sexy,
daring, and exciting. It exudes an edgy aura that maps to the unique, sophisticated
bottles, flavors and colors of this “super premium” vodka made from 100% Australian
grain and volcanic spring water.

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Fresh Gravity
PROJECT: Name a new digital customer experience
company that offers a full suite of services for on-
premise and cloud-based sales, marketing, and
service programs.
FRESH GRAVITY: Fresh: Original and of a kind not
seen before, imparting vitality and energy, recently made, produced, or harvested; new
or energetic; modern and different. Gravity: The noun gravity means very serious
(gravitas) — someone who conducts themselves with an air of gravity is someone who
takes what they are doing seriously; in physics, gravity is the natural force that makes
any two objects that have mass move toward each other.
BRAND POSITIONING: We created the name Fresh Gravity for this IT consulting
startup with an exciting new approach to the digital customer experience, committed to
championing, promoting, and advancing their clients’ endeavors. The name is
challenging, playful, and disruptive: we make gravitas, and gravity itself, fresh. Fresh
Gravity is an organic, sustainable, and refreshing alternative to the customer experience
status quo.

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Exeter
PROJECT: Name a new enterprise healthcare payer
software platform from DST Health Solutions.
EXETER: Derived from the historic city Exeter in Devon,
England. Originally the ancient Roman city of Isca
Dumnoniorum (“Isca of the Dumnones or Devonians”), it was important because of its
strategic location. A few hundred years after the Romans left, the river’s name morphed
from the Celtic word Isca (water) into Exe, and the strategic city on its banks became
known as Exeter. The city’s motto is Semper fidelis (Always Faithful). Indicative of its
associations with power and speed, five different ships of the British Royal Navy and
one Star Trek starship have been named Exeter.
BRAND POSITIONING: The strategic business demands of today’s healthcare industry
call for internal payer software that is adaptable, secure and fast. The name Exeter is
short, poetic and energetic. It has an epic, historical feel, but also a nice high-tech
connotation, without sounding trendy or appearing faddish. With its “-eter” suffix, it
implies exactitude as well as measurement — think units of measure (meter, kilometer,
centimeter) or measuring devices (barometer, altimeter, speedometer). The name
Exeter evokes this software platform’s precision, speed, and reliability. Exeter is the new
standard in healthcare payer management software.

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Relativity
PROJECT: Rebrand the Substance Abuse and
Intimacy Disorders (SAID) program for Elements
Behavioral Health. This program for alcohol and
drug treatment has a dual emphasis on healing
relationship and intimacy issues.
RELATIVITY: The quality or state of being relative.
A state of dependence in which the existence or significance of one entity is solely
dependent on that of another. A theory, formulated essentially by Albert Einstein, that
all motion must be defined relative to a frame of reference and that space and time are
relative, rather than absolute concepts.
BRAND POSITIONING: Elements Behavioral Health came to us to develop a new name
for their Substance Abuse and Intimacy Disorders program. The treatment program was
developed by a team of distinguished clinicians and follows the best practices of
evidence-based substance abuse treatment. Clients dealing with substance abuse issues
can find it particularly difficult to maintain healthy relationships with their family,
friends and life partners. Research has shown that 90% of people with chemical
dependency have underlying relationship and intimacy problems.
After a thorough and very collaborative brand development process, we arrived at
Relativity, the perfect name for this collective experience designed to provide clients
with new ways to see, cope, and participate in their relationships. Relativity emphasizes
that for all of us, our own wellbeing is “relative” to the health and wellbeing of those we
have relationships with, and that the stability of those relationships can greatly affect
our stability. It also maps strongly to that other all-important meaning of “relative,” the
families of substance abusers who often have a large role to play in both the onset and
the recovery from addictive behavior.

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We’re on our eighth [ten now completed] project with them. It’s a very
good process. It’s very effective. It’s fun and very collaborative. What stands
out to me is the consistency in their work, their professionalism and how
they deliver their work.”
—Chief Internet and Media Officer, Elements Behavioral Health

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Firefly
PROJECT: Renaming a legal services company
specializing in process serving. The old name,
Amicus, is too generic and cloaked in legalese.
FIREFLY: Let there be light. Illumination. Warmth.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name Firefly evokes
the company’s vanguard corporate culture filled
with bright people and bright ideas, and differentiates the company from all other legal
firms that almost universally have either cold, legalistic names or sound-alike strings of
multiple partner surnames. The name supports the brand positioning of openness –
illuminating and demystifying an area of the legal profession that many people do not
understand. It is warm, friendly, and illuminating, and broad enough to work with any
direction the company might take it in the future.

Antidote
PROJECT: Create a new company name for Medical
World Conferences, providers of continuing
medical education (CME) for primary care
professionals.
ANTIDOTE: A cure for the common name.
BRAND POSITIONING: The new name had to be
warm, human, distinctive, eye-catching, memorable, and yet map back to medicine and
the core service of continuing medical education. It also needed to work outside of the
medical sector. Antidote is positive, proactive, unique and remarkable in the world of
CME providers, and works on several levels for both the CME audience and future
audiences. Antidote is also the remedy for medical professionals who dread the thought
of compulsory CME. Further, because Antidote literally conveys “cure” and “remedy,” it
is an aspiration shared by all medical professionals – indeed a big benefit of CME is to
learn about new cures and treatments.

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Javelin
PROJECT: Name a new evidence-based, one-year
addiction recovery continuing care program for
Elements Behavioral Health that will span their
entire nationwide network of treatment centers.
JAVELIN: A light spear thrown in a competitive
sport, culminating in the Olympic Games, in which
success is measured in distance thrown.
BRAND POSITIONING: During our brand positioning workshop with the client, we
learned that most recovery programs treat addiction as an episodic, acute illness, and
that this new program addresses substance abuse as chronic disease. The program
provides clients and their families the framework to work closely with their coach to
minimize triggers, set and monitor goals through regular drug screens and a system of
rewards and accountability, and establish a healthy social support network, all of which
have proven effective in promoting long-term recovery.
After developing a number of names that mapped to the brand positioning, Javelin
quickly rose to the top as the perfect metaphor for this dynamic, powerful, and
sustainable recovery program. It has been said that recovery is a program of action, and
the Javelin throw is certainly a vivid demonstration of stamina, grace and power. The
Javelin was a component of the original Olympic pentathlon; pentathletes were
considered to be among the most skilled athletes, and were held in high esteem as
physical specimens, “capable of enduring all efforts,” according to Aristotle, which maps
conceptually to the skills necessary to maintain an enduring recovery.
“We believe the name ‘Javelin’ reflects the strengths of the program,” says Janet Tewhill,
Senior Vice President of Continuing Care at Elements Behavioral Health. “The javelin is
known as a graceful, long-distance weapon and tool. At Elements’ family of treatment
centers, the Javelin program will be a powerful weapon against relapse as well as an
elegant tool in promoting long-term recovery.”

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL:
“We’re on our eighth [ten now completed] project with them. It’s a very
good process. It’s very effective. It’s fun and very collaborative. What stands
out to me is the consistency in their work, their professionalism and how
they deliver their work.”
—Chief Internet and Media Officer, Elements Behavioral Health

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Aria
PROJECT: The luxury hotel centerpiece of the new
Las Vegas CityCenter development.
ARIA: From opera, an elaborate song for solo voice.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name Aria perfectly
captures the experience of art and elegance that this
hotel represents, and maps to the concept of a
performance by a star that is nonetheless part of an ensemble. Aria is deftly positioned
as the antithesis of the stereotype Las Vegas experience. Think cool and classy, not
cheap and trashy, with none of the “theme park” pretense so prevalent in most Las
Vegas hotels.

truTV
PROJECT: New name for Court TV.
truTV: Television vérité.
BRAND POSITIONING: The new name reflects the
network’s popular line-up of series that offer first-
person access to exciting, real-life stories, and is no
longer restricted to court-themed shows.

Arte
PROJECT: New name for Nokia’s top-of-the-line
8800 mobile phone.
ARTE: State of the art, a work of art.
BRAND POSITIONING: The new Arte and Sapphire
Arte, mobile phones that are truly works of art,
among the most beautiful consumer objects
available.

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Primordial
PROJECT: A defense contractor that developed
vision systems for soldiers, police officers and
firefighters, needed a new company name to reflect
broader product offerings.
PRIMORDIAL: The earliest, original and most
elemental state.
BRAND POSITIONING: The company provides simple interfaces to complex technology
with a minimalist design. This results in ultra high-tech systems that work with the
operator in an intuitive, organic and primal way. Primordial was the best word to
capture all of those ideas in an interesting, never-been-done way, provide the company
with clear separation from their competitors in the defense industry, and be a strong
competitor in the consumer market. Primordial is also a great counterweight to “hi-
tech,” the distance between the two being as big as it gets, making the pairing of
concepts compelling and engaging.

July
PROJECT: Texas Pension Consultants, a financial
services company, was ready to re-brand and re-
name.
JULY: Financial freedom and independence (4th
of July); joy of summer.
BRAND POSITIONING: The company provides business services such as payroll,
pension and human resource management to businesses of all sizes. One of the key
positioning points the name had to capture is “the freedom to focus on your core
business.” The name also needed to be fresh and different, yet fall within the parameters
of the types of names associated with the financial services sector. Financial companies
are most often identified by names that conjure nature, stability, or longevity. July is a
name that covers all the established financial services cues, is fresh and different, and
infers — rather than shouts — “Freedom,” making it very engaging.

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Larky
PROJECT: Name a startup company and mobile
app that keeps track of all your perks and reward
program memberships in one place. The name had
to be free of any app competition in the iOS and
Android app stores and have an exact-match .com
domain name available for purchase at a sub-
exorbitant rate.
LARKY: Larky is a quirky play off “lark,” a carefree or spirited adventure, harmless
prank, or family of birds who communicate with sustained, melodious songs. The “-ark”
of Larky is very similar to the “-erk” of perk, so Larky naturally alludes to “perk,” but in
an associative, non-literal way.
BRAND POSITIONING: Larky is fun, playful, joyous, melodiously singsong, and also
conjures up a “lucky” feeling. In other words, it is the perfect name for an app that is
ever-vigilant about alerting you to special deals sure to surprise and delight you with all
the perks and discounts you deserve from your memberships. If you belong to AAA,
AARP, USAA, an alumni association, professional association, museum, or any one of
thousands of member organizations covered by Larky, you’re entitled to valuable
discounts on stuff you buy every day. It’s fun, free, and really easy — no membership
numbers, no account passwords, no cost, no pain.
Get Larky and get what you deserve.

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TheWit
PROJECT: Name a new upscale urban business
hotel in downtown Chicago.
TheWit: Keen perception, sagacity, intelligence and
humor.
BRAND POSITIONING: “TheWit” captures the
essence of a remarkable hotel experience infused
with intelligence, creativity and joie de vivre, in a business hotel that refuses to take
itself too seriously.

The Address
PROJECT: Name for a new 5-star hotel and global
luxury lifestyle brand, with hotels to be located
throughout the Middle East and in key feeder
markets in Europe and Asia.
THE ADDRESS: As in the only Address you need to
know.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name, like the new hotels themselves, had to cater to intra-
regional leisure travelers throughout the Middle East, as well as business travelers and
long-haul international travelers to the region, primarily from Europe, Asia and India.
The Address captures the sense of spectacular location advantage, the feeling that “this
is where it’s happening, this is the place to be.”

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Zounds
PROJECT: Name a new advanced-technology
hearing aid and audio products company.
ZOUNDS: An interjection that’s an expression of
wonder, and a play on “sounds.”
BRAND POSITIONING: An early appearance of
Zounds in Shakespeare’s King John (1623), act II,
scene 1, line 466: “Zounds! I was never so bethumpd with words since I first call’d my
brothers father dad!” That certainly maps to an advanced hearing aid product that
allows the hearer to process words in a crowded room in a way they were never able to
before. Zounds is an exciting name that is by definition an “expression of wonder,” that
when combined with the obvious play on “sounds” and the oblique allusion to German
hi-tech engineering, makes it the perfect name for this company.

Oasis
PROJECT: Naming a breakthrough new “open MR”
product. Open MR devices are not fully enclosed,
and therefore are more comfortable for patients
(less noise and confinement); open MR devices also
have a greater imaging range than traditional,
“closed” systems.
OASIS: Emphasizing comfort, a refuge from the tumult of the usual MRI experience.
BRAND POSITIONING: The positioning goal was to highlight the idea that this device,
rather than being a source of patient discomfort and physician frustration with scanning
limitations, is instead a refuge from such drawbacks of the past, a haven where the
physician can more accurately diagnose a patient’s medical problem without causing the
patient to suffer more discomfort in the process.

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Heartstring
PROJECT: Guidant’s cardiac surgery division (now
owned by Maquet) needed to name their
breakthrough new proximal seal cardiac surgery
device.
HEARTSTRING: Tug at your heartstrings.
BRAND POSITIONING: The name needed to be as
elemental as the new product, and help the company dominate the market. The
assignment was to come up with a name that would achieve common, default usage. The
Heartstring device is a coiled string that is used in place of a clamp when making a graft
to the aorta during “off-pump” (beating-heart) open heart surgery. Besides being
descriptive, Heartstring has a secondary emotional meaning (“tug at heartstrings”), and
when the procedure is complete the surgeon literally “tugs on the Heartstring” to uncoil
and remove it from the aorta.

Mosaic
PROJECT: New name for Fontana Lithograph, one
of the most respected and innovative printing shops
in the Washington D.C. area.
MOSAIC: Putting all the pieces together, the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts.
BRAND POSITIONING: For a variety of reasons,
Fontana Lithograph knew that it was time to rebrand the company. The company
wanted to define an entirely new business segment, Corporate Print Collateral
Consulting, while retaining their core identity as printers. Their new consulting business
is all about managing the printed collateral that a large enterprise produces to establish
their image. Mosaic conveys the idea of arranging many visual pieces into the most
effective presentation possible, creating an artistic whole that is greater than the sum of
its constituent parts.

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Bigfoot
PROJECT: Re-name a maintenance management
software product.
BIGFOOT: Depth, breadth, and a big footprint that
covers all areas.
BRAND POSITIONING: The Smartware Group was
force by a trademark conflict to change the name of
its “Smart Maintenance” flagship CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management
System) software product. Since their best-in-class product could not be noticed or
remembered because of its generic name, this became a great opportunity to re-brand.
The name Bigfoot conveys the depth and breadth of the product over all aspects of a
company’s maintenance management and immediately differentiates this powerful
software platform from its competitors in a way that’s very different and memorable,
humorous and intelligent.

Trident University
PROJECT: Re-name an online university.
TRIDENT UNIVERSITY: A three-pronged featured
widely in mythical, historical and modern culture.
BRAND POSITIONING: TUI, an online university
founded in 1998 that serves all members of the U.S.
military, needed to differentiate themselves from an
old TUI entity they had split off from, and they wanted a more evocative name that
reflected their spirit. But they also needed to retain the acronym “TUI” in respect to all
their alumni with degrees from TUI. The new name, Trident University International,
perfectly captures their spirit, fits well with their mission and constituent military
community, and satisfied all the functional requirements of the project.

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7 Criteria For Selecting A Naming Agency
Stephen King wrote, “The scariest moment in writing is just before you start.” For
many companies, the prospect of hiring a naming agency is filled with nearly as much
uncertainty as the process of naming itself. In order to feel more confident with your
selection of a naming company, regardless of who you ultimately hire, here are a few
things to consider:
1. Check out the agency’s portfolio. Have they created any great names? Do they
demonstrate the ability to create a range of names, or only a narrow niche? Do
any of the names resonate with you?
2. Does the agency have a well-developed process for creating names? Is it
transparent and easy to understand, or is it missing in action, hidden behind a
proprietary TM-branded “black box” or riddled with alienating biz-speak and
obfuscating consultant diagrams?
3. Does the agency have a clear philosophy of naming? Do you get the sense that
they live and breathe naming? Does it seem like they enjoy their job?
4. Can you get company principals on the phone to discuss your project, and are
they helpful, or are you routed to “account rep” intermediaries?
5. Is the agency a thought leader, or a follower? Are they talking about the same
things in the same way as all other naming companies, or do they offer a fresh
perspective? Do they have strong opinions that they are not afraid to share? Do
they engage in conversations, or is it mostly just one-way marketing chatter
that’s all about them and how awesome they are?
6. Do you get the sense that working with this agency will be an enjoyable
experience? Is their process interactive, encouraging your involvement and
input? Are they good listeners?
7. Is the agency’s own name any good? Does it tell a story? Does it rise above the
goods and services being offered? Has the agency invested it with meaning and
built a strong brand identity for themselves?

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Colophon
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