Naming in an AI Age

Naming Hacks for Success in the AI Age

• The NameStormers • Season 3 • Episode 10

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In this episode of Naming in an AI Age, Mike Carr shares 10 essential naming hacks to improve the success of any naming project. He emphasizes starting with the right mindset by asking who the name is truly for—usually not yourself—and what you want the name to do. Strategic thinking should precede AI use, which can otherwise become a crutch too early in the process. Team dynamics matter: remove negativity by encouraging advocacy, delay initial reactions, and gather independent, anonymous votes before discussion to reduce bias. AI can help with early trademark and linguistic checks, but not final legal clearance or accurate name testing, which still require real humans. Testing is vital because target audiences—not internal stakeholders—are the ultimate judges. Finally, when presenting a name, pitch it with passion, polish, and context to help others see its full potential, especially since new names are fragile and easy to dismiss without a compelling story.

Mike Carr (00:07):

Here we are again this week, naming in an AI age. We're going to talk about 10 naming hacks. First hack is the first question to think about is who is the name for this is the most important question, and guess what? It's probably not you. And this is the mindset change that's so important at the outset of any naming project is think about the target, the customer, the employee, the investor, the partner. That's who the name's for, not you. So your opinion may not be quite as important as you think it is. It sets the stage for the right mindset throughout the process and getting everybody thinking the right way. Hack number two, what do you want the name to do? One question hard to answer. It's not about all these other things. Well, it's got to be short and it's got to be easy to say and spell, and it's got to relate to these 10 things.

(01:01):

Convey these benefits and fit our brand, fit our positioning. Simplify all down to one question. What do you want the name to do? Just think about an answer to that question. I will tell you an answer that A CEO gave me once that I thought was one of the best answers I ever got. Not easy to do what he wanted it to do, but his answer was, I want the name to sell itself. That was it. Now, that was a heavy lift for us to do, but it was an interesting answer to that question. Hack number three, don't use AI too soon in the process. There are some great ways to use AI when it comes to naming, but what we've seen more and more of our clients do is use as a crutch too soon before you've really thought through what's the strategy? Who is the name really for what do we really want the name to do?

(01:56):

What's the runway we need the name to have over time? What we might grow into. While you might expand this name into ancillary or adjacent areas, how will the name be used in different venues on a booth, at a trade show, in a white paper, on a website? Think about all those things before you start using AI to develop names. They'll inform your prompts. You'll have a better prompt hierarchy. You'll have a better thought out prompt. Otherwise, AI might come up with a name right off the bat that you think is pretty darn good. He may just stop. But if you haven't prompted with all those strategic questions in mind, you're going to end up with something that really isn't going to fit the bill for you down the road. Hack number four, this is really important when it comes to your team and any stakeholders are going to be involved in the process.

(02:51):

Take the negative off the table. That is don't have people think about a name as a critic, we specifically tell folks when we're presenting names, wear the advocate hat. You're not going to like most of the names we present, don't worry about it. And the rest of the names you may not even be that excited about, but there might be a few that are interesting. We'll put that advocate hat on. And if you had to advocate for one or two of these names, which ones would they be? And then talk about why they might work. And by taking that negative off the table and by having them wear that positive advocate hat, you get them thinking the right way about these new names that are fragile. They're like these little babies. They have no context, no story, no anything really wrapped around them. Hack number five, present names, but don't allow any initial reactions.

(03:41):

When we present names to clients or team of clients or a board, what we ask them to do is say, you can ask us questions, but we don't want you to react until you've heard and seen all the names. And this makes a huge difference selling the names right? We're wrapping as much sparkle and as much polish around each name as we possibly can. We're dropping the names onto the side of a building or onto a business card or onto the website so they can see how the names come alive. And we want them to fully think through each name and see the context and the story wrapped around it before they react to the name. And then once we presented all the names, here's hack number six. Have them all vote independently. We use a software tool to do this, but you can do it on pencil and paper.

(04:30):

Software's a little bit cooler. You can do it real time. Everybody can get on their phone and sort of do it independently. The key here is it's done anonymously and no one's reacted to any of the names or no one's has spoken to which names they like or don't like yet, right? So everyone's seen the names and they hopefully haven't communicated with one another. And now you're asking everyone independently, what are your top five or what are your top three or what are your top eight? Give us those names in ranked order. And so you're getting that independent read from everybody in the room before there's any discussion or there's any bias introduced in the conversation, which is hugely important. And then what we'll do is we'll display up on the screen the ranked ordering of those names and we wait each vote. So first place vote, if there are five votes, might be five points.

(05:15):

A fourth place vote might be four points. And so you're getting names where maybe not everybody voted for it, but those that voted for it, it was their first or their second place kind of vote. And that's a big deal. The seventh hack is use AI for preliminary vetting. AI can really do a pretty good job, especially if you're in the US on initial trademark assessment. Now you have to prompt it the right way. And if you're not sure how to do this, just give me a call or shoot me an email and I'll be happy to get on the phone and sort of talk you through the process. But with the right prompts, you can get a pretty darn good idea as to what trademark problems might you bump into, at least in the us. And actually it's getting a little bit better now.

(05:58):

Some of the AI LLMs are getting a little bit better now in doing this outside the country and the EU and other places like that, you can also use it for linguistic issues. Doesn't name mean anything offensive. Is there any slang, meaning folger, meaning it's not quite as strong based upon our testing yet, but it's interesting, it's helpful. It's not going to be as thorough as what you're ultimately going to want to do, but it's a great way to call out some names right off the bat. Now, name testing though is something that AI really can't yet do. There's been discussion about the synthetic respondents. Do you notice a synthetic respondent is what's a synthetic respondent? It's a fake person. Why would you use AI in synthetic respondents to test a name? Well, the school of thought is with enough data you can actually create personas that your typical target is let's say a mom at home with a couple kids and she's between 25 and 45 years old and she's out there shopping for this family.

(06:59):

And so you can build these personas. And then the idea is with enough data, you can have AI mimic how they might react to a name, how they might evaluate a name. We haven't seen that work yet. It may never work because the key to testing a name is not what name they say is their best name or their favorite name. It's which name do they react to. And this gets into Daniel Kahneman's book system Thinking Fast and Slow. Ray talks about system one and system two thinking it's very academic, but there's a lot of data and we are happy to talk to you. If you want to talk more about name testing that you can do yourself or platforms you can use or name testing we can help you with. Again, just give me a call or shoot me an email and be happy to talk to you about that.

(07:42):

But name testing is important. The reason it's important, this goes back to the very first question, who are you targeting with the name? And it's not probably you, which means your opinion on this name. As much as I hate to tell you this probably doesn't matter a whole lot. Now, if you're the CEO E and you're watching this, you're going to say, oh my gosh, I'm the CEO of the company. Of course, my opinion matters. Well, if you can think like your target does great, but if you're a 55-year-old white guy like I am or older like me, and you're targeting a Genzer or a Gen Alpha or someone that's a lot younger than you are, trust me, you're probably not going to understand how they're going to react to that name. So that's why I think the testing can be such an important part.

(08:27):

Hack number nine, final legal and linguistic clearance. This is real important to do and it's something you should have professionals do. Trademark attorney and IP attorney can do the final full searches. AI can not do this. Do not rely upon AI to do this. It will not do as good a job as a trademark attorney. I'm not beholden to any trademark attorneys, but we use 'em all the time and it's an invaluable last step. And then also linguistic clearance. We three linguists in country, they're in each country we're targeting that are fluent in that language. They're grown up in that country that are exposed to the media. So even though the name may not be profane from an academic standpoint in Mandarin or an Hindi or in Farsi, but in that country, that name sounds like something that's been in the press recently that would cause consternation or confusion or disconnect.

(09:19):

You can only do that within country linguists. You cannot do that with ai. I'm sorry. It just isn't going to be as nuanced and understand sound and phonetics and confusion, like real boots on the ground folks. And then step number 10, when you pitch the name, once you've gone through all these other steps and when you're pitching that name to the final decision makers or the naming committee or just to two or three people in your company, you got to sell it like your life depends on it. This is not a time to be objective and say, well, the data shows us this and it's got these positives and these negatives. No, no, no. You have got to pitch it and you want to say everything you can. That's great and exciting and challenging. You want to address the name up as I've already talked about, and you drop it on a side of a building with ai.

(10:10):

Put it on your website. You do mockups, create an incredible tagline, which AI is very good at. Build the story around it and go through all that to really make it sparkle, to really make it shine. And the reason that's so important is a new name is like an infant. It's like a baby. It's fragile, it's delicate, and you can kill it so easily. It doesn't have any of the story, any of the context, any of the muscle, any of the growth wrapped around it yet that really makes a name come alive. I mean, I can remember when Amazon came out and was laughed at. Google was a silly name. So was Apple. We've got some names on the table right now on Go and Healthcraft and Vigo. That with the right story can really come alive. You can go to our website and check those out if you want to sort of see what we've done with those names just as examples.

(10:55):

But without that, it is just going to fall flat. And so when you pitch that final name, and there are different ways to do this and there are different numbers of names to pitch and strategies on how many names you pitch and all that kind of stuff. And again, I can help you through that if you want, but just be sure and make it a sales pitch and give it your best. You get the buy-in you need, the excitement will follow. The passion will build what you're after, right off the bat is an initial decision. So anyway, Ted Hacks on naming and naming an AI IH when to use ai, when not to use ai. Have a great week.