A short recipe for naming

Naming can be hard. Excrutiating. Or a no-brainer.

Here is a simple method that I follow to cook up some great names for new products and businesses.

Use physical or virtual pen and paper and ideally a bunch of people who have an understanding of your customers, who you are as a business are (i.e. your values, purpose, people) and a mix of perspectives. Then ask the following three questions to spark a basket-load of ideas:

1. What names would clearly tell people what benefit there is to them of using this product, or simply, what it does. Let's use a desktop cloud computing company as an example.

• What it does for people: freedom, functionality everywhere, always-on, device freedom, easy desktops, forget about it. i.e. Get started (note - web design)
• What it is: a no PC PC, a computer without the box, a PC in your pocket, a vitual PC, tech-agnostic, flexible personal computing. I.e. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

2. Who are we? And why are we special?

• Exceptional architects, experience management, Ex consultants, Dynamic consultants, Old fixers, Men with spanners, formidable, Bob's PCs, business technologists, deep computing thinkers.

3. What is a name that is completely unrelated to the product or service, but has the potential to have meaning loaded within it (i.e. become a real brand). It is different enough in the industry to have cut-through and strong enough to create visual cues.

• For example, Yellow, Orange, , alice euphemia, Zara, Lululemon

Method:

Brainstorm.

Check in with customers.

Decide.

Go.

You? What do you think of this method? What names do you love and why?

Image credit

Endless loops

Workshops, actions, engagement, meetings, calls, following up, managing up, managing down, minuting, maximising...hurrying.

I wonder, what would the corporate world be like without the endless loops of communication, planning, sharing responsibility and activity organising. And we just focused on the doing.

What would organisations be able to achieve if we weren't spending time in endless loops?

Would the world be a different place?

Sparking some ways we could do this. What if....?

- The entire organisation had a 5-to-do rule. No more than 5 major areas of focus.

- Daily tasks can only be listed on post its (inspiration: 99%)

- Everyone does what they say they will, first time.

- The organisation celebrates when people say no.

- Work only in small teams, with discrete focus and fast actions (inspiration: Thoughtworks).

- From an organisational perspective - making really clear goals, resource allocation and basis for achievement > lessens jockeying (and associated time wasting activities) and improves focus.

- Shorter time-frames for delivery (no more than 1 week)

- Entire org run in an agile manner (aka 37signals and Thoughtworks).

- Have customer voting each week on what the org should do > pinpoint accuracy for delivery to customer needs.

- Say it is OK to fail. People try new things, better ways and stop wasting time covering their tush.

- Cookie cutter communications - clearly outlined 'you should communicate this and then', so people share what needs to be shared, without waste.

- The opposite - total acceptance of different working styles but ruthless accountability for the work that needs to be done.

- Task lists / business priorities with voting buttons - decisions made fast.

- Simple (gasp) paper signs on everyones desk - this is what I do, this is what I don't, this is what I decide.

- All work is integrated into some form of project, with project 'bubbles' sharing and overlapping. (note, need to be cautious with notional business aka SM style distraction

- Could have a 'mute' button on all incoming information streams for when we need to focus.

What are things you do, or could do to stop endless loops in your organisation?

Me, I'm going start with clarifying responsibilities and the post-it to-do list.

image credit: adriapocera

Why little brands are sexy

Having a conversation with another brand geek made me wonder - what makes it so hot to work with big shot brands?

So, you get social recognition (oh, you work for them.....ooooh), bigger budgets (oh, you managed that squillion dollar campaign.....oooooh), recruiter recognition (oh, you tick that box....oooh).

But little brands are sexy. Evolving, passionate, meaningful and unlimited potential. Sexy.

It is a hard choice as a marketer to say no to the platinum blondes of brands. However it is with little brands that you have the scope to do truly great work, shaping the positioning in the market, inspiring the team and being forced and allowed by your size to do truly creative marketing.

Some great examples: Mast Brothers Chocolate, Pom wonderful, Craigslist, McIlhenny Tabasco, Bacon Salt, Little Creatures, Cullman Liquidation, Carmans, Hummingbird Bakery, Honest Tea, Trunki, Maldon Salt, Fisherman's Friend, Monocle, Dumbo Feather. Filled with attitude, in touch with their customers and with brands that outweigh their org structure.

As a marketer, the small brand is definitely sexy.

Nope, don't care what its called.

And why should I? If it doesn't tell me what it does for me, what does it matter if it is called Loft, Links or Lollipops. Case in point: McDonalds. I know exactly what it does for me, not because of the name, but because of the brand.

Unless the name does something for me as a customer - I don't care.

Customers care what you do for them. If we delay until we find perfection in a name, its not focusing on the brand. Focusing on what really matters for customers and delivering that is real branding. Don't wait, do.

Urban observation: Unlaced...

Cool people don't do laces. If they do it is with a reluctant, just kicked on air. From Cons to this season's latest sharp lace up high heeled, fur lined and spike heeled ankle boot, it just doesn't do to be too tightly laced.

There are designer and even bespoke unlaced shoes, songs, forums, books (Ok - not sure this one is at all cool) radio programs, a facebook page and many fashion and footwear pages dedicated to the unlaced. There is even a how to...to not do your laces.

There are obvious parallels. But I wonder...at what point did it become uncool to be laced, or even, in control? Was it the translation of the prisoner shoe to the outside world, Run DMC in the 80s with their Adi's or did it begin with the rebellion against the corset?

Unlaced, a small detail, but a perfect signal that members of the 'unlaced' tribe will notice.

Cook kicks picture credit: how's your edge.

the many different faces of brand consultancy

We are currently going through a process of selecting a brand consultancy to work with and we are amazed, scared and excited at the different responses to the brief.

Branding is an inexact art with many different interpretations (there are 4.3m Google image results for branding process) and certainly my brief wasn't perfect. We are focusing on a visual look and feel to move a logo-mark to true brand expression.

From the same brief we received straight to art, perceptual directions, initial strategic thought with no clarification, no questions and some brilliant questions back to our business. Confusion. But it is a useful process for the reflection back upon ourselves, refining and revealing our thinking and aesthetic preferences.

Tips for branding consultancies responding to a similar pitch:

1. Read the material given (sounds simple).

2. Ask more questions! The companies who didn't did not think things through properly and responded slightly off the mark.

3. Use visual stimuli: to help discussion, taking things away from terminology and into hearts

4. Some companies repeated back the reasons why we hired them as original thought. Nice validation but sounded strangely familiar...and patronising.

5. Get passionate - we're excited and we need our partners to be too!

6. Customise. Let the customer and need drive the process, not the other way around. A process by numbers makes a client feel like just another number.

For some other thinking on how to delight potential clients and show them that you 'get it', check out this article in campaign, comments on being memorable, great suggestions on all stages of responses from experienced hands via the IPA who mention the classic - chemistry (note, this is more specifically directed at advertising)

This is by no means a complete list - what has your experience been, from either a client or agency perspective?

Meanwhile - we are excited about heading to the next stage!

Any brand can ignite a movement with its
customers, so long as the brand can move people to believe in a company,
to believe in a better way, and to believe in themselves - John Moore.

Thank you for the inspiration, John (brand autopsy blog).