Landor Perspectives 2008 - How not to name

Anthony Shore

Anthony Shore gives his six tips on what NOT to do when naming a company or product. These include: waiting until the last minute; be sure the new name is descriptive, begins with the letter A and has no negative connotations; develop names that have no meaning; invite the entire company to brainstorm; have a contest; and have a focus group to pick the winner.

Perspectives 2008 - How not to name

Anthony Shore

At some point in your career, you may face the daunting prospect of naming a company or product. The path to a trademarkable brand name is steep and treacherous. Curvy, too. Fortunately, help is here. The six tips below offer suggestions for what you shouldn’t — and most importantly — what you should do to get on the most direct path to a winning name.

1. Wait until the very last minuteNaming is easy and takes almost no time at all. There’s no need for any up-front thinking about strategy,...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands