Unlike other companies that may take months to develop a name for a client, NameStormers will create your new name in a few short weeks, without exhausting your brand-building dollars. Our simple, straightforward process is geared to generate memorable names that cut through the clutter and grab immediate mind-share. You’ll achieve payback on a name development effort in days or weeks, not months or years.

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We interview key team members, customers, managers and investors to develop a Name Development and Brand Strategy Overview.

We ask questions like:

• What do you want the name to do?
• What are your brand archetypes? What is your positioning?
• What personality or persona do you want the name to reflect?
• Describe your prospective customer today? Tomorrow?
• When and where will the name be used?
• Who are your competitors? Where is the competitive opportunity?
• What name ideas have already been considered and dismissed and why?
• What are some names you like and don’t like and why?

The Gather step might span a couple of days up to a week, and include a review of your positioning, competitive intelligence and top line research results. We’ll also visit competitor web sites and often conduct field trips to view retail products on the shelf.

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After refining the Name Development and Brand Strategy Overview with you, we begin more extensive internal brainstorming and name ideation sessions.

We first identify the emotions associated with your brand’s archetypes and then focus on the key “dimensions” to pursue for name development. For example, we might identify “Textures” and “Shapes” as two dimensions to dive into when naming a new kind of doughnut. We may then come up with specific name candidates (like RingLeaders or Softballs) after pondering related word, concept and semantic associations.

Some of our team members feel that naming is more of a science than an art, and may start by following a linguistic architecture or sound symbolism approach. Others start with nothing more than a blank sheet of paper. And so on. The backgrounds and approaches of the team vary as greatly as the names we generate.

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We prescreen all of our best name ideas for U.S. Federal and/or Canadian trademark issues and weed out those that fail before presentation to you.

We can also take your favorite names through a deeper preliminary trademark and linguistic screening which typically includes checking for:

• U.S. and international trademark issues using Thomson & Thomson’s databases
• Common law usage issues over the Internet
• Phone book listings
• Dot-com availability
• Profane or off-color meanings in multiple languages

If you’re still not satisfied with the names that make it through the deeper screenings, we’ll repeat our creative and U.S. / Canadian trademark prescreening steps as many times as needed, until you’re satisfied with the results, at no additional charge.

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We present the names that have passed our screenings to you. We provide you with the rationale behind each name as well as many tagline ideas to help frame the name in a context similar to the way your customers might see it.

We will then ask you to evaluate each of the name ideas in three ways:

• Your initial, intuitive reaction and rating
• A deeper pondering, where you consider the name’s potential to grow into a strong, distinctive brand with the right care and feeding, such as the right graphics, promotion, advertising and other marketing communications wrapped around the name
• And most importantly, stickiness or memorability, the single most important characteristic of a great name

We discuss with you and your team members the thinking behind the ratings, other comments and new name suggestions for future rounds of name development.

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For each name, we take each of your team member’s ratings and comments and enter them into a spreadsheet. The names are sorted on various metrics, such as average brand potential, weighted brand potential and highest score received. We recap the feedback for each name by individual, sales office or country, including specific comments and new name suggestions. We then review all feedback with you, using it to guide the development of more focused and on-target names.

This creative / name generator / ideation process is repeated as many times as necessary, at no additional charge to you, until you are satisfied with your short list of name ideas. Typically, this requires two or three rounds of names over a two to three week period, although this time frame can be compressed, if necessary.

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Optional Quantitative & Qualitative Name Evaluation Research

We can conduct a hybrid name test that allows us to combine our traditional quantitative, on-line study with one-on-one, live moderator “deeper dive” sessions. This approach often provides the statistically significant quantitative data needed to evaluate both existing and new customer name preferences across the U.S. or globally, not just in a few key markets. It will also give you deeper insights behind the name preferences, insights that have historically required one-on-one phone or in-person interviews, or traditional focus groups.

Key deliverables from this step include:

• Recap of insights regarding each name’s compatibility with concept, memorability, extendibility, differentiation and other key issues
• Moderator summary report highlighting common trends and important comments from the one-on-one “deeper dive” sessions
• Transcripts, cross-tabulations and a complete PowerPoint presentation

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Once your NameStorming project is completed, you’ll have several strong name candidates that have made it through two levels of preliminary legal screening and one or two levels of linguistic screening. You’ll be presented with the rationale behind each name, tag line ideas and a solid understanding of how each name fits your positioning and differentiates you from the competition. If we also conducted name testing research, you’ll have the supporting data, the comparisons to national norms and the customer insights needed to help you select your top name candidate.

Oftentimes, the initial launch of your new name pays for itself in just days or weeks, not months or years. Many of the names we’ve developed for clients have proven to generate an internal excitement and energy that is contagious, self-propagating and almost viral in nature. It’s not uncommon for our clients to tell us things like, “We paid for the entire name development and roll-out effort with the first trade show!” This is what a great name is all about.