Jeremy Miller - Brand New Name: A Proven, Step-by-Step Process to Create an Unforgettable Brand Name

Contents

Make Your Brand Unforgettable

Names Are Strategic

The Anatomy of a Name

The Persuasive Power of Words

Unlock Your Creative Genius

Lets Get Naming

Stage 1: Plan

Stage 2: Sprint

Stage 3: Select

Naming Resources

Thanks!

Endnotes

Meet Jeremy!

Landmarks

Cover

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

Body Matter

Everything has a name.

Without a name, could a thing even exist?

Every entrepreneur, business owner, and marketer has to name somethingat least once.

Its part of the job. You need a name to start a business, create a product, launch a campaign, or share an idea. Everything, literally everything, has a name: babies, products, drugs, books, beers, gods, companies, cats and dogs. Thats just scratching the surface. There are names for molecules, stars, countries, towns and places, wars, cults, hurricanes, causes, churches, and laws.

Everything has a name. Without a name, could a thing even exist?

Naming is one of the most fundamental building blocks of how we communicate and understand the world around us. As Eve Ensler wrote in The Vagina Monologues , I have always been obsessed with naming things. If I could name them, I could know them. If I could name them, I could tame them. They could be my friends.

Names are everywhere, and to name something is one of the most important decisions you will make. But naming sucks!

There, I said it. The process of naming can be awful. Its time-consuming. Its hard work. And every time you think youve found a great name, you discover its already taken. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to find a name that is absolutely perfect, only to discover that some jagweed has stolen it from you.

Okay, sure. They found the name first. Theyve been using it for years, and theyve trademarked it and made it their own. But they definitely dont deserve it. Your use of the name is so much better. Screw them for taking it!

So after a temper tantrum or three, you come to terms with the situation. The name is ideal, but its not yours. Youve got to find something else. So you keep digging and testing and looking for the right name. You know its out there. You just havent found it yet.

Michelangelo is believed to have said, Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. The same is true for you. Its your job to dig and brainstorm and create to find that name that captures your brand perfectly.

The hard part isnt coming up with interesting words or phrases that represent your brand. Thats actually pretty fun and easy.

The challenge is finding an available name. Brand naming has never been more difficult, because names are becoming a diminishing resource. With the growth of apps, small businesses, and global competition, the demand to find and secure relevant

brand names is explodingbut so too is the difficulty in creating unique, defendable names.

According to statistics from the Small Business Administration, there are over 29.6 million small businesses in the United States. Whats even more astounding is that over 543,000 new businesses are started each month. Most wont survive, but they all need names!

For the first time in human history, were experiencing a naming drought, and we can see this in the scarcity of available domain names and trademarks. In December 2013, the last available four-letter .com domain name was registered. From AAAA .com to ZZZZ

.com, all 456,976 combinations had been consumed. The three-character .com domains had all been registered by 1997. It wont be long until all the five-character names have been registered too.

According to Verisign, there are over 342.4 million domain names registered across all top-level domains. The .com and .net categories account for 44 percent of all domains, with 151.7

million registrations. 74 Its not slowing down, either. The demand for domain names is only increasing year over year.

Here is where it gets even crazier. The Merriam-Webster 20

dictionary contains 470,000 words. 75 That means less than 0.7

percent of the .com and .net names are even in the dictionary.

People and companies are scooping up names faster than we can invent words.

Trademarks are also in limited supply. The United States Patent 20

and Trademark Office registered 367,847 trademarks in 2018. 76

Companies are essentially trademarking language, with common words like twitter, square, and apple being co-opted for commercial use.

This goes well beyond common words. Companies are rewriting history in the form of brands. Greek and Roman mythology, for instance, have been completely picked over and trademarked. The gods and goddesses would be horrified to discover their names are being used to peddle everything from soap to software.

I dont share these stats to alarm you or put you off before you even start the naming project. I share them because this is the reality youre facing. Naming is hard, because youre trying to find a word or phrase that hasnt already been taken.

Without an effective naming process, finding an available name that is right for your brand can be a nightmare. You can spend countless hours brainstorming and combing through the internet looking for available names and still wind up disappointed.

Thats why Brand New Name exists. In this book you will discover a proven, step-by-step process to create an unforgettable brand name. I will show you what to do every step of the way, using exercises that generate lots of naming ideas, combined with tools and techniques for testing which names resonate the most.

Youll discover how names persuade people and get stuck in their minds, and youll learn the origin stories of interesting brands.

Brand New Name brings together a practical how-to guide with loads of examples and inspirational stories so you can create a name that you will be proud to own.

My ask for you is to embrace the journey. Naming a brand can be transformational. Take the ideas and exercises in this book and put them to work, because I am confident you can create an unforgettable brand name.

There Are No Bad Names, Just Bad Strategies Everyone has naming advice, especially when it comes to talking about bad names and naming no-nos. This is unquestionably false. Successful businesses create successful brands, and never the other way around. Your brand name is important, but it wont mean diddly if your product, service, or business is not successful. Lets unpack this idea.