Naming Idea – Define the Brand Personality Before Naming Your Business
The business naming process should start before you begin generating name ideas.
There are a couple of things I recommend prior to developing name candidates that will help you determine the brand’s personality, and thus the types of names that will be most relevant.
One is to create a “brand story”. This may come from expressions of your business mission, vision, values, position and culture. It may also be more personal than that, reflecting the way you’re different from competitors. It will certainly express what you “stand for”.
Naming ideas can be sparked through personality question
Hand in glove with the brand story is the expression of “personality” you wish your brand to convey. Here you attempt to personify the brand using a series of questions.
You ask yourself several brain-stimulating questions such as: “If MY BRAND was an animal, what animal would it be?” You might relate the brand to a celebrity, sport activity, geographic feature or music type in the same manner.
Those exercises can give you some direction and inspiration, thus sparking some name candidates, too. And it will provide direction for creating other branding elements as well.
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Brand personality is a great concept, and one that gets missed far to often. I like your idea of identifyig it early, rather than having it evolve over time. Much like helping a child develop his or her personality, it’s important to set values, priorities and limits in the beginning that will guide how things develop. Thanks for a great post!
Lorne, thanks for your comment. Yes, setting limits and priorities are important up front. However, we must also provide some room for the creative process to flow and spark. I’m not one to give a “creative” free reign, and I know that most of them welcome knowing the playing field they’re on before they begin. Yet, I do want to give them some latitude. Takes some balance and experience to get good, directed work.
[...] think about your brand story as I mentioned last week, and the personality you want associated with it. See if there isn’t a character – [...]