The Art of Naming: Insights from NameStormers

Mike Carr, co-founder of NameStormers, highlights the company's 40 years of experience in addressing naming challenges like budget constraints, team disagreements, and legal issues. Key considerations include name length, spelling ease, memorability, branding alignment, and competitor differentiation. Their process involves understanding client needs, creating tailored strategies, and using AI tools. Clients receive valuable insights and actionable strategies, whether or not they form a partnership. NameStormers combines AI with expertise to vet names legally, culturally, and linguistically, with successful projects like Angry Orchard, Cherubs, and Tapestry for Hilton. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Common Naming Challenges
• 1:03 Key Considerations for a Great Name
• 1:50 What to Expect in a Consultation
• 2:34 Leveraging AI and Team Expertise
• 3:25 Success Stories and Conclusion

Transcript

Mike Carr (00:10): 

Hi there. I'm Mike Carr. I'm one of the co-founders of NameStormers. We've been helping folks like you come up with great names for almost 40 years, and I'd like to help you too. I know you probably are looking for a great name. Maybe you have no money or very little money, or maybe you have very little time or you thought you had a great name, but guess what? You can't get your team to agree with you that it's a great name. Or in the 11th hour, your lawyer came back and said, oops, you can't use it. We have been there and we have done that. And there is nothing that you should feel frustrated with or uncomfortable with because all of our clients have gone through these types of challenges and coming up with their name. How long should your name be? 

(01:03): 

This is easy to say, this is easy to spell. Can people just flat remember it, or is it so forgettable? You're never going to get where you need to go very quickly at all. Does the name align with your branding strategy, with your value proposition? Does it differentiate from your competitors? Do you even have a branding strategy? Have you even done a competitive assessment? It's okay if you haven't. Those are the types of questions that we can help you with. So if you do decide to have a call with me, and we'll put a link at the end of this video where you can simply select off of my calendar a time slot that works for you. We're going to try to do the following things. First of all, I'm going to listen to what your specific naming need is. I'll probably ask you some questions. 

(01:50): 

Your targets and your competitive situation. You need a new company name and product name, what's your growth plan, what's your vision? All those types of things. And then we went together, going to outline a strategy on how to address your name. You need, it may be a strategy you can do on your own without us. That's fine. You may have some very specific questions like, Hey, I want to use ai. What's the best way to use ai? How do I prompt a Chat GPT or a Gemini or a Claude three or whatever? How do I prompt it to maybe get me started to maybe use it as a brainstorming partner? So at the end of the call, you're going to have three things. You are going to have a clear understanding of your naming. You need what to do about it, and whether or not we're a good partner for you. 

(02:34): 

And if we're not, that's fine. I still think we can provide some value and some expertise and some guidance. Whether or not you decide to use it at no charge to you. If you do decide to partner with us, we're going to bring in all that experience, right? We're going to bring it in our team. And we may use the AI solutions that are out there today. We may not. Even if we do use them, I can promise you that's just the first step. It's a team of seasoned namers that we have, some of whom have been doing this for decades, that understand the nuances to really come up with some creative that's amazing, and we can help you vet that, those names for legal issues, for cultural issues, for linguistic issues, we can help you test the name like we've done in the past for other clients. 

(03:25): 

And some of our clients range from Boston Beer. We created the Angry Orchard name to Desert Glory. We created the cherub's name for grape tomatoes that you can find at a Costco or Sam's or probably in your local grocery store. We named True by Hilton for Hilton Hotels, as well as the tapestry chain for Hilton, their boutique hotel line. We've come up with names in a variety of other spaces. Ultra Shield for Coppertone, a ridge cut for Tractor Supply. And the list goes on and on. The point is, we've done this before. We've seen every problem, every combination of problems, and we've almost always successfully navigated our way through that to come up with something that really resonates and really gets our customers and hopefully you where you need to go. So I'm really looking forward to talking to you, understanding a little bit more about your particular situation and sharing some of our learnings and some of our experiences to at least get you part of the way to a solution. Hope to talk to you soon.