Struggling to come up with a product or company name?

Find your product name by getting the foundations in place first. If you’re struggling to find a new name for your company or product, it may be because something else is still unclear. I experienced that in a conversation with a colleague in 2010.

Find your product name by understanding the product

She worked with PC software for women and needed a name for a new security product. But as we talked about the name, we started asking some more fundamental questions.

What exactly did the product do? How did it differ from antivirus and the other products? And how was the customer supposed to understand the difference? It turned into a good discussion about the business itself.

A free entry point or a product the customer pays for?

One option was a free version that could attract attention and help sell other products. Another was to charge directly. The two models involved different tasks in distribution, sales and marketing.

It was also important that the name and presentation didn’t make customers think the product could do more than it actually could. Simply saying it protected the computer could make customers understand it as all the protection they needed.

My point was to establish the product’s place in the customer’s mind and in relation to the other products before we started looking for the clever name.

What needs to be clear before the name?

Who will use the product? How will you market and sell it? What should it cost compared with competitors? Should it be exclusive or for a broad audience?

Once those things are in place, it’s easier to find a name that fits what you’re actually building.

The name gains meaning through what you build

I used Nike as an example of a name that doesn’t necessarily sound fantastic the first time you hear it. I felt the name gained value through sport, famous athletes and the experiences people associated with the brand.

So don’t start with the spire before laying the foundations. The name is part of the business, but it can’t make an unclear idea clear all by itself. You can find my own experiences of developing a business in Iværksætter til jeg dør.

We started with the name and ended with the business itself

I was actually on my way to lunch when I thought of a conversation with my colleague Laurie. She runs ChicaPC, which works with PC software for women.

She was working on a new anti-spyware product and asked me what the hell to call it. The idea was software for women with a bit of bling, a nice look and something you could understand. Away with the engineering jargon. I thought it was a bloody good idea.

But as we went back and forth over a name for the anti-malware product, I realised something more fundamental hadn’t been settled.

Don’t get me wrong: Laurie is a very smart woman, and she understands antivirus, malware and the various things involved. The question was what this particular product did differently from antivirus. What was the difference between viruses and malware in that context? Once we began exploring that, we could move on to the purpose of the product.

Was it supposed to generate sales of something else or make money itself?

She could make a free version. She could also make a product people paid for. Which should she choose?

The free option could act as an entry point, spreading widely and bringing sales of other products with it. The paid product could make money directly but might not spread as widely.

My assessment in the video is that it’s easier to get others to blog about a free product and share it on Twitter. If you charge right away, fewer people may write about it. On the other hand, you make money when people know it and actually pay.

It was a fairly simple scenario, but we hadn’t even chosen what job the product should do in the business. The conversation started with the name and turned into a really good discussion of things she hadn’t fully thought through.

What should the customer understand when you say the product protects them?

Fundamentally, we needed to know exactly what the product did. How did it differ from the antivirus product she also wanted to make? Was it an additional product, or could it stand alone? How should it be positioned in the user’s mind?

If we went out and said this product protects you, that would be true in some sense. But customers could quickly take it to mean the protection was sufficient and they therefore wouldn’t get viruses and the like.

If the product didn’t do that, the presentation would be dishonest and wrong. Nothing positive would come from giving people that impression.

In this case, she actually knew her target audience. What was missing was an understanding of the product’s precise place in the value chain, its purpose, and how it would be marketed and sold.

An unclear name can reveal unclear foundations

When I help someone with a product or company name, I often find the problem isn’t just the words. They aren’t entirely clear about what they’re making.

If you don’t know who your audience is, how you’ll market and sell, or what the prices should be, it’s hardly surprising the name is hard to find.

Before finding the name, work through the whole value chain. Who will use it? How will you get it to them? What should the price be compared with competitors? Is it exclusive or mainstream?

Once those elements fall into place, I find the name starts coming more easily. You have a much better idea of what it needs to fit.

Do you really think Nike sounded cool from day one?

Remember, a name doesn’t necessarily sound good straight away. One day, I asked someone if she could name a brand that must have sounded good from the beginning. She said Nike.

Seriously, do you think Nike sounded cool before the brand was built? I know the name has a meaning connected with a goddess of victory. But how many people know or care about that meaning? In the video, I use 99.9 per cent as a polemical illustration of how few people I think consider it, not as a measurement.

To me, Nike sounds cool because Michael Jordan and all sorts of other famous people have worn the symbol. Then we start associating the name with the big sports stars.

The passion, skill, competitiveness and all the values surrounding sport get boiled down like a stock cube and packed into the brand. At some point, the name starts to sound cool.

If the company had called itself something completely different from the start, some strange name like the nonsense word I invent in the video, I think she could have pointed to that as a cool brand instead.

You haven’t found the Holy Grail here, but perhaps a little hint: Start at the beginning. Don’t build the spire on foundations that aren’t even dry or properly established yet.

Best wishes, Martin