The Pain and Process in Choosing a Name

A recent naming exercise reminded me of the rat hole a naming exercise can be, and how, after many years, many attempts, and improved processes, it all comes down to a personal choice. I’ll attempt to explain one process that works but also point out how it can be sidetracked at the last moment.

But first a wisdom alert. Marketers must judiciously apply the “If no one loves it or hates it, it’s probably too generic” rule. To use this rule, remember that there’s a wide range outside of love and hate. Now back to my story.

Having worked at many startups, there is little to no budget allocated to hiring a “naming firm” to create a brand name for products. The fees often run in the tens of thousands, and, even then, you may not get a name you like. If you have the budget, hire a naming firm, as a professional firm will guide you through the process and reduce or at least highlight hidden biases in the decision process.

If you don’t have the budget what do you do? You should prepare for the exercise with the realization that it’s more than a mission in name selection. The name design process has several key steps, and depending on the type of product, you may add other steps. I break this process into several steps, each of which come with some cat herding, input selection, and some post-processing to insure alignment around the process.

• Step 1: The brainstorm. Get all stakeholders to systematically provide input in the following key areas: what the product does, characteristics of the product, results of using/owning the product, and word association around the product. Request that participants provide at least three for each part. In this brainstorm, do not remove ideas.
• Step 2: Meta brainstom. In this phase, get everyone in the room from step 1, put all the ideas on a the wall, and ask the group to add more to the lists.
• Step 3: Require each participant to mark the top 3 in each section that the love and hate (6 total).
• Step 4: Stack rank all the choices for each section based on the votes, from most loved to least loved, tossing all the ones no one voted for or hated.
• Step 5: If any items has both love and hate votes, the item is announced for removal, and people have 1 minute to present what they love or hate the item. If the “hater” wins, the item is removed, if not, the item remains on the table. At this point, the group should have a list of descriptors that are mostly loved and mostly acceptable.
• Step 6: The sections are reduced even further by another round of voting to determine the top 3 for each section. This should highlight the core values of the product and align the participants around the core values.
• Step 7: The naming begins, with another brainstorm where group members submit names that fit the core values and a “searcher” is selected to find other terms that match the agreed upon core values. The searcher also researches connotations, conflicts, url implications, and baggage associated with each term.
• Step 8: The search and term analyses are presented to the group, who then vote for the top 5 names
• Step 9: A “searcher” then looks into language and cultural aspects of the top 5 terms presenting them to the group. With the new information, the group votes again, leaving a stack rank of choices.
• Step 10: The CEO or product owner makes a decision.

This process usually insures some transparency if the stakeholders are chosen from a wide base, but usually the process yields a bland vanilla name. All that work and the name still sucks? This often happens in a design by committee group where group members are focused on being the least offensive. Another risk is the hidden last minute legal check to find out whose trademark is being violated. Another more common risk is the CEO intervention - the CEO likes something and that becomes law.

There it is. Naming can be difficult. The more people to please, the more difficult it is to do a good job. On the other hand, if you start with clear goals and a good process, you might, just might end up with a good name.

Make Your Groupon or Deal Put More Money in YOUR Pocket

Deal sites like Groupon, Living Social, or Zozi seem like a great idea:  Using the power of Groupon-like sites and their millions and millions of users, your business gets massive exposure, a boatload of new customers, and the coolness factor associated with one of the hottest Internet companies of the today. It doesn't cost you anything upfront, and it can be budgeted as a marketing expense that only occurs when people buy your product or service.  

In fact, Groupon has many satisfied customers, and you could be one of them. Not so fast. There's also the 'other side' of the story, where some businesses say that Groupon sucks - damaging your brand, drawing the wrong customers, destroying profit. There's even a PC World expose on it. There was even a report published (and covered in HuffPo) that most small businesses hate Groupon.

That brings me to a deal I saw on Yahoo Deals from a music studio. For $20, I could get rehearsal studio time for 3 hours. I'm not even sure if I'm good enough to be called a 'real musician', but at that price it's something I would consider and not feel like I was being too indulgent. As with most deals, if I'm interested, I read more and do a little research to see how shady or reputable a firm is. In this case, I clicked through to the website and found a pleasant surprise. I did have to make a decision on the spot to get that $20 deal. The studio was offering the same price on a web-only special.

It may not be a good deal for the deal company, but it was suddenly a better deal for the studio and for me. Sure, I would get the same price, but now I didn't have to pay ahead of time in the hopes that I might use my deal voucher. At the same time, if I had a charge/transaction problem, I could deal directly with the studio - or have my credit card deal directly with them. The studio, on the other hand, no longer had to give away the 50%+ in the reduced fees that it would receive from the deal, it would be paid immediately when the transaction cleared, and it received free advertising from Yahoo and the originating deal company. Now that's leverage.

This particular studio may be banned from future deals with this deal company, but if they believed that they would end up like other small businesses that hate the deal sites and never use them again, then they haven't really lost much. Even better, the deal was favorable to deal site and non-deal site users, unlike the deal that caused user backlash from FTD.

Simple or Complex - the waffle paradox and the not-so-easy answer

Seth Godin's "waffle paradox" is one of those topics that seems to trip up fast acting decision makers. After all, people like simple answers, they make great sound bites -- and who needs complexity?

On the other hand, as Seth Godin points out:

"Nuance is the sign of an intelligent observer. Nuance shows restaint and maturity and an understanding of the underlying mechanics of whatever problem we're wrestling with. After all, if the solution was simple, we would have solved it already."

This goes back to a discussion I recently had over search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO). The person I spoke with had been pitched by an SEO firm which told him that he needed to pay $30,000 to SEO his site to drive more traffic, close more leads, increase revenues, etc. It sounded so simple that he could just pour money on the unverified problem, and things would magically happen. The pitch was short, sweet, and direct -- AND good enough that the person asked me if it was worth it.

My response was "it's not that simple". I had a number of questions: Did he even know if there was a problem? If so, how large was it? Were there any signs of lost business? Would he really recover the $30,000 costs through increased sales? What would he really get for that $30,000? Did he get a free audit from any of the hundreds of SEO firms that will do free SEO audits in hopes of winning the business?

I worried that my response was too complicated. My colleague appreciated the list of questions, as they justified the uneasiness he felt during the SEO firm's pitch. He wanted nuance, but that would not have captured his ear. As it turned out, nuance had to combat simplicity. Of course, I had the context to ask the right questions.

So I don't blame the SEO firm for over simplifying in their pitch. Simplicity works - increase revenue, cut costs, don't leave money on the table. That get's my ear. On the other hand, simple may get you to the dance floor, but a business relationship is closer to a Tango with intricacies that are just more complicated.

Don't be correct, be accessible in your marketing message

I recently had a conversation with someone who discussed a "bifurcated costing model for predictive analysis" - and yes, I too almost glazed over as I heard this. While I may have the math and science background to understand that phrase, and it may be technically correct, there's a cost or penalty for using such an accurate description in communicating your idea or message.

I try to look at problems and solutions as a opportunity to explain it to my mother. Granted, she's pretty smart, but she has no reference point to the math or statistical phrasing involved in technical solutions I often have to explain. In fact, all she cares about is that there's a problem and I try to solve it. If she can grasp the problem because I explained it using accessible terms, all the better. I'll explain why this matters later.

Realistically, a "bifurcated costing model for predictive analysis" appears to have no bearing on everyday life, it's worth another look. While "bifurcated costing model" is mostly descriptive and sets context, the key phrase, "predictive analysis", has a real-world application in behavior. The result was framing the message as a solution - a way to help predict people's behavior during online transactions. It may not be perfect, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

Now why is that important? By using accessible language that my mother understands (or the general public can grasp for that matter) has led to connections, introductions, and even future business, as people quickly understood that I somehow helped people manage or improve the buying process. No one in their right mind would ask their network if they knew someone who did "bifurcated costing models for predictive analysis", but they might ask for a contact or reference to someone who might optimize or improve targeted behavior.