I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about names recently. Working in a team, we’ve come up with a bunch of alternatives and pretty much settled on one. On the way through though, someone asked, “how do we know when we’re ready?”

For that matter, how do you know when anything is ready? The name, the new product, the presentation, the logo, the promising member of staff being considered for promotion. Are they ready?

“When can you have the report ready?” says the client.
“Er. When do you need it?” says the consultant.

After a point, state-of-readiness is really state-of-polish. Could something or someone be better? Yes. Does it matter? That depends on the answer to another question:

• Will it do what you promised?

Almost everything could be better, but if it does the job you need it to do, and in the way that it should, then it’s time to ship.

No name is perfect but now we have one that works, it’s time to move on.

Neatly filed under Keeping Promises,Making Promises on April 21, 2009

Whether to name your company Bland or not is one of those decisions you’ll live with for a while – a few months at least and probably for years. It can be tough though – probably better done in a series of 10 minute discussions than with hours spent at the whiteboard or domain-name engine.

In Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki suggests:

A remarkable name for your organisation, product, or service is like pornography: It’s hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Coming up with a good name is easier than creating a product or service, but you wouldn’t think so based on the atrocities out there.

So the challenge is set.

Looking for a name myself, I came across the fantastic wikipaedia – list of company name etymologies – that walks through 440 (on the day I looked) company name stories.

Here’s how they break down (allowing that some names made it into more than one category):

• 149 – based on founder names (like Adidas)
• 142 – portmanteau words or initials (like Amoco)
• 76 – based on location (like 3M)
• 62 – clever names (like 3Com)
• 31 – quirky names (like Blaupunkt)
• 27 – language based names (like Akamai)

Three caveats: the source is wiki-selected, so not cleverly chosen to be representative of all names; my categorisation isn’t scientific (or probably repeatable, even by me); there’s no suggestion that these names are particularly good, although most are extremely well known.

However, three things strike me about the results:

1. With all the creativity that founders show to get their new business out of the traps, fully one third have fallen back on the names they were given by their parents. Does this mean that naming is unimportant or difficult? That founders are vain? That the search for clever is overwhelmed by the need for a working title?
2. Location – Pacific this, Brazilian that, Stanford the other. Is this a cheap form of marketing (we’re from the same place as you) or again, is it expediency?
3. 34% come from letters a-e.

I find it comforting to know that others find naming difficult, and liberating that some of the most well known companies have changed their name along the way, some more than once.

Names are important, no more than that. A great name is inspiring, but finding one shouldn’t get in the way of building a great company. I’ve spent too many hours fretting in meeting rooms, coffee shops, offices, (and bed) often to the detriment of Getting Things Done. Not smart.

The alternative might be to get someone else to do it. A little outside perspective is always useful but take care with companies offering naming at a fee. Salon covered this a few years ago (which you can find here) – sadly they’ve deleted the main copy, this link leads to the for-printer version.

Neatly filed under Foundations,Making Promises on April 14, 2009

When Mark Twain said,

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”

he wasn’t talking about naming a new power generating company. But he could have been.

Naming a product of company isn’t something most (any?) of us do every day, so in some ways it helpful to know that even Twain struggled to come up with the right word. That knowledge may be power but it doesn’t make naming any easier.

People who do naming for a living find this stuff difficult too, and in reality they’re not much better at it than you or me. They may be good at checking for meaning in 72 different languages but these are the same guys who came up with Consignia (definitely worth a trip to this BBC report – Nine letters that spelled fiasco, don’t worry, I’ll wait), and Transco (for gas, now replaced by the National Grid).

Is it worth the effort anyway? After all, it’s extremely unlikely that the only thing someone knows about your business is the name. They’ll probably know a little about what you do, they’ll associate you with your category, where and how they came across you, maybe a tag line or a recommendation or two. With all that wrapped around someone’s brain, how important is the name anyway? Extremely. Seth Godin recently suggested naming everything, and came up with baxter as his own contribution.

Your name is the anchor point for all those firing neurones. A good name will stick, will stand for something and will make all of your other marketing efforts just a little bit easier. A slow factor that controls the quick.

The English language is rich – the name is out there. So how do you come up with the right word? There is no guaranteed method but here are some guidelines, so you know the right name when you see it.

So, accepting that this is going to be tough, what are the guidelines?

• Short – if you use more than three syllables everyone, including you, will shorten in anyway. International Business Machines is IBM to all of us, British Telecommunications PLC is know as British Telecom is known as BT.
• Early in the alphabet – you never know, maybe all you other marketing efforts have left a potential customer above the water line and she’s looking in a directory. Push your name above the fold with an A-to-G name. BTW – nobody likes AAAA Anything.
• Spell-able – a friend told me about flikr long before I saw the word in print, to find the site I had to ask for a link. Numbers are difficult, do you spell onetwothree or 123?
• Simple – by which I mean don’t try to be clever, try to avoid having to start sentences with “It comes from the greek for …”
• Obvious – names that capture what you do can be very strong but are difficult to pull off. Mule Bar (energy bars) is good.

Google is a great name that works on every level.

Missing the mark on any one dimension is ok, but compromise too many and your name will be weak or bland.

So what’s wrong with Bland? Tick, tick, tick, tick, ooops. Unless … maybe, just maybe, there’s an un-fashion company waiting in the wings. (I just checked, www.bland.com is a holding page – watch that space.)

Neatly filed under Foundations,Making Promises on April 1, 2009

To get customers you have to get in the market, and being in the market means being in the marketing business. Where is your marketing now?

1. Are you making promises?
2. Are you making promises people will care about?
3. Are you making promises people will care about enough to pay you to fulfil?
4. Are you making promises enough people will care about enough to pay you to fulfil?
5. Are the people who care aware of the promises you make?

Most business owners worry about the number of messages when the key is making the right kind of promises.

This isn’t the art of pretty features or crunching costs per thousand names.

What value will you deliver?

Neatly filed under Making Promises on March 28, 2009

At a conference yesterday I managed to snag nine business cards. Not actually a good thing as I didn’t ask for any. I guess I stuck my had out when they were offered so I got what I deserved.

Of the nine, only one conformed to the old standard of name, job title, company contacts, logo. Not including the mandatories the word count splits like this: 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 18, 18, 48, 52.

The 2 card – “wooden jigsaws” – nails the point of a good business card. I might not remember the name of the fella or his company, but if I ever want some wooden jigsaws I’ll know where to start. One of the 18s – not the worst – says “Benefits realisation through user involvement”, the other thirteen words don’t make it any clearer. Will I call this guy? No. Why? I don’t know when I should.

If you’re going to put some extra love on your business card, make it count.

Business cards aren’t clever, they can’t do your job for you. It’s a very rare sole who will squint their way through your printed verbiage to work out why they should remember you. If you’re not sure what to write, ask your customers – they normally have a pretty good handle on why they give you money.

Mr Jigsaw tells you what his company is up to, great. If the best you can do is just filling in the white spaces, leave it blank.

Neatly filed under Making Promises on March 27, 2009