Hello, My Name is Awesome Read online

  Some kids post photos of their lunches via Instagram and Snapchat.

  TARGET AUDIENCE

  Who are the customers you want to reach?

  Moms, ages 25–45, with children, ages 4–12, households of 3+, income $45K+

  Kids, ages 4–12

  COMPETITION

  List your competitors so you know what you are up against and to help you steer clear of similar names, which could pose trademark conflicts.

  Pepperidge Farm, Nabisco, Annie’s, Plum Organics, Smart Snacks, Keebler, Moon Pie, Lunchables, Little Debbie, Dunkaroos, Teddy Grahams, Animal Crackers, Fig Newtons, CheezIt, Cheese Nips, Ritz Bits Snacks, as well as makers of cookies, fruits snacks, pretzels, popcorn, and potato chips

  DESIRED BRAND EXPERIENCES

  The best names evoke a positive brand experience that makes a strong emotional connection, such as “This tastes great,” “I will feel better,” or “This is fun!”

  Moms will think

  This company makes snacks I can feel good about feeding my kids.

  I trust this is good for my kids.

  I feel good giving my kids something healthier than they usually snack on.

  Kids will think

  I know this is going to taste yummy.

  I am going to tell my friends about these.

  I love the fun shapes.

  BRAND PERSONALITY

  The 5–12 adjectives that best describe the tone and personality of your brand. (This exercise is much easier to do if you think of your brand as a person.)

  Fun, playful, smart, approachable, likeable, lighthearted, kid friendly, energetic, modern, fresh, healthy

  WORDS TO EXPLORE

  List some words you may like to have in your new name.

  Kitchens (e.g., Cartwheel Kitchens), Planet (e.g., Planet Snack / Snack Planet)

  THEMES/IDEAS TO AVOID

  Don’t even think of going here:

  Animals (our competitors have done this to death)

  Acronyms (not kid-friendly)

  Anything that sounds too young

  WORDS TO AVOID

  List any words you would not like to have in your new name.

  Health/Healthy (repels kids)

  Nature/Natural (everyone does this)

  Green (dated)

  DOMAIN NAME MODIFIERS

  List modifier words that will help you secure a domain name, which may not be available as an exact match to your new name or may be out of your price range:

  ____Snacks.com

  Enjoy____.com

  Eat____.com

  KidsLove____.com

  NAME STYLE LIKES & DISLIKES

  List 5 brand names that you collectively like the style of (and why).

  1. Twizzlers (fun!)

  2. Lunchables (fun, says “lunch,” kid and parent friendly)

  3. Jamba Juice (fun to say, energetic)

  4. Pop Tarts (good visual imagery)

  5. Plum Organics (cool name)

  List 5 brand names that you collectively dislike the style of (and why)

  1. Pedialyte (sounds like it’s full of chemicals)

  2. Nibs (too silly—no one wants to say this name out loud)

  3. Toys “R” Us (grammatically incorrect)

  4. Little Debbie (very old fashioned)

  5. Oreo (doesn’t mean anything)

  ACID TEST FOR USING THE NEW NAME

  Write how the new name would be used in a sentence.

  ______ ______ makes wholesome and healthy snacks that kids love because they taste good and come in fun shapes and flavors.

  ALSO GOOD TO KNOW

  List anything else you think would be important to the name development.

  The snack aisle at the grocery store is a good place for inspiration. (Just don’t go on an empty stomach.)

  After you complete the creative brief, you and your team will have all the information you need to start brainstorming ideas.

  CHAPTER 5

  How to Be an Idea Machine

  Brainstorming names is a blast when you know my secrets to coming up with great ideas. While counterintuitive, my method is highly effective, and you will be surprised and excited by how many good ideas you will generate and how quickly you will do it.

  The Wrong Way to Brainstorm

  Brainstorming meetings are terribly ineffective. Most corporate conference rooms have bare walls, fluorescent lighting, and, sadly, little mental stimulation. Group brainstorming is not process based. It’s a mad free-for-all, where extroverts throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. Introverts, who may have good ideas, may fear speaking up. Everyone sucks up to the boss. No one in the room has an objective filter for what makes a name good or bad. And if any name does get chosen, it’s often a mediocre one that’s met with the least resistance—instead of the best name,

  Gathering friends over a bottle of wine (or two) is equally unproductive. Good ideas don’t materialize out of thin air. Nor do they come from games of Drunken Scrabble, Ouija boards, or Magic 8 Balls.

  The Right Way to Brainstorm

  What is the ideal number of people for brainstorming name ideas? One: you. What is the optimal environment? In front of your computer. The single most powerful brainstorming tool is the Internet. Everything you need to come up with great name ideas is online.

  When you brainstorm online, you’ll find yourself clicking on unexpected links and going down all kinds of rabbit holes. You never know where a good idea will come from. As my extremely creative mother says, “The creative process is an idea orgy, where you can jump into bed with any enticing idea that comes along.”

  After nearly thirty years of working as an advertising copywriter and a namer, my personal brainstorming process is pretty organic, but for teaching purposes, I’ll demonstrate how to do it in a structured manner, using some of my most lucrative online resources.

  Before you get started, here are three helpful tips:

  1. Open Your Mind

  While you look up words, phrases, and images associated with what you’re trying to name, let your mind become a playground. Bounce around. Turn things over. Put the unexpected together. Visualize. Fly overhead. Look at it from another angle. Take the lid off. Be fearless. There is no one there to shoot your ideas down, so go for it.

  2. Write It Down

  Write down all your name ideas. Even those that don’t feel exactly right. They may later inspire you with a real zinger. When I create a list of names, I divide them into categories: Spot On, Maybe, and Sparks. By sharing these with my naming team, they can build off of my ideas and often turn the Sparks into fire.

  3. Have Your Creative Brief Handy

  Before you dive in, make sure you have written a detailed creative brief (as shown in the previous chapter). This background information and naming strategy will be your ingredients list. It helps to print out your brief to jot down ideas.

  Let the Fun Begin!

  To demonstrate the brainstorming process, I have recreated the online ideation exercises I performed to name a frozen yogurt franchise. Here are some key details from the creative brief and calls with the client. As you read this, imagine yourself going through this process for your own name.

  GOAL OF ASSIGNMENT:

  Develop a name for a new healthy, low-fat, frozen yogurt franchise. It will serve two flavors: green tea and tart. The first store will be in Utah. The client wanted to name it Zenyo or Swayo. (Yikes!)

  TARGET AUDIENCE:

  Primary—Teenagers

  Secondary—Everyone else

  BRAND PERSONALITY:

  Hip, fun, cool

  CONSUMER INSIGHTS:

  Utah teens are not as square as you may think. Teens want to socialize outside of school and church.

  BRAND EXPERIENCES:

  Kids will think

  I will look cool if I’m seen here.

  This is a fun place to go with my friends.

  The name is so cool, I want to buy the T-shirt.

  WORDS TO AVOID:


  Pink, or any color

  Berry, or any fruit

  THE WARM-UP — LIST 12 WORD SPARKS

  Before you jump onto your computer to look for ideas, write down at least a dozen words related to the brand or brand experiences. (You should be able to get a lot of these from your creative brief.) This word association exercise is not meant to be a list of names, just sparks to fuel your search for the perfect name.

  For the frozen yogurt franchise, I wrote down these twelve words:

  Next, choose one word from the above list. In this case, I’ve selected cold. (You’ll later repeat all of these exercises using the remaining eleven words.)

  Mine the Online Goldmine

  There are countless places to get name ideas and inspiration online. These are some of my favorites. Be sure to try all of the tools and techniques below, as each one will yield many different ideas.

  Open the Thesaurus Treasure Chest

  Begin your online brainstorming on a thesaurus website, where you can find a jackpot of synonyms and related words. My go-to one is Thesaurus.com. Here are some of a few of the dozens of words I found when I searched for cold:

  Bitter

  Arctic

  Nippy

  Snowy

  Chill

  Polar

  Wintry

  Goose Bumps

  Shivery

  Let’s take a closer look at the results:

  Arctic — could be something there

  Bitter — This would make an excellent edgy and fun name, especially because one of the two flavors is tart and bitter.

  Chill — a little dated, even for Utah

  Goose Bumps — I love the name Goosebumps (spelled as one word) for this frozen yogurt store. It’s unexpected, and teenage love is all about goose bumps, so it works on two levels.

  Nippy — funny, but no

  Polar — The word on its own is dull, but Polarize would be fun because it has the double meaning of the two flavors being so polarizing.

  Snowy— not a good name, but it leads me to my next brainstorming resource

  Shivery— no, but there could be something with Shiver, which makes a nod to teen love, like Goosebumps

  Wintry — weird word but Winter could be fun to play with

  Of course not every word in the results is going to be the name, yet there are some excellent candidates:

  Bitter

  Goosebumps

  Polarize (inspired by the word Polar)

  Shiver (inspired by the word Shivery)

  While the other words aren’t ideal as names, they definitely spur more ideas. For instance, Snowy makes me think of building snowmen, which brings me to my next go-to brainstorming tool …

  Supercharge Your Imagination with Images

  A picture says a thousand words. And many of those words can inspire awesome names, which is why I always do image searches to fuel my creativity.

  Inspired by Snowy, I point my browser to images.google.com and type “snow fun” into the search field. Immediately I see photos of kids building snowmen, having snowball fights, making snow angels, and flying down snow banks on saucers. Snow Angel could be a fun name, although I think the teens in Utah would love to shed their angelic image.

  Next I type “snow sports” and get an array of photos of people having fun on skis, snowboards, inner tubes, sleds, toboggans, mountain bikes, and snowmobiles. I also see photos of a naked guy sitting on a slide at a snow-blanketed playground, two golden retrievers humping in the snow, and what appears to be a member of the Swedish Bikini Team, gliding down a bunny slope in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit. Note: If you are in a cubicle or at a café and don’t have Google SafeSearch turned on, be warned that you may be exposed to these kinds of unexpected images, which can appear in the most innocuous searches. Professional stock photo websites such as istockphoto.com and gettyimages. com are also fantastic places to get ideas. I personally like to use Google because the amateur photos are more fun and it’s endlessly entertaining.

  The photos of the skiers and snowboarders are the catalyst for my next idea….

  Comb through Glossaries of Terms

  Every sport has its own lingo of fun words and phrases. You can find pages and pages of them online by searching for “glossaries,” “lingo,” “vernacular,” “jargon,” “dictionaries,” “thesaurus,” “terms,” “words,” or “slang,” which are essentially the same thing but will turn up different results in searches. Be sure to experiment with some of these.

  Back to the frozen yogurt names. My image search of snow sports has inspired me to look up glossaries of lingo for snowboarding and skiing, two very popular sports in Salt Lake City, where the first location of the frozen yogurt store will be. I search Google for “snowboarding lingo” and hit the jackpot at gnu7.wordpress.com/snowboarding-lingo:

  If you’re going to be a snowboarder, you have to talk like one! Here’s a crash course in some common rider lingo….

  Here are some of the words and definitions I found on the first page of this website.

  Shreddin’ The Gnar —riding the terrain (Basically it’s a really cool way to say, “We’re going snowboarding.”)

  Chatter —when the board shakes because of the rough terrain (usually occurs when riding on an edge)

  Yard Sale —a fall where someone’s equipment falls off

  Taco —a kind of fall where your body folds over a rail or box creating a taco shape

  Reviewing the terms, the one that jumps out at me as being a fantastic name is Chatter. This is a rich word because it has so many layers of meaning. To snowboarders, it’s lingo for a shaky board, but customers don’t need to know that to appreciate the other meanings. Chatter implies cold (chattering teeth) and teens chattering with each other, which taps into the frozen yogurt store’s desire to be the new place for teens to socialize (chatter) with each other. I add it to the list.

  You can spend hours looking through glossaries to find ideas for names. Remember to try different keyword combinations while searching, such as glossaries, jargon, terms, slang, and dictionaries. While many of the terms that show up in glossaries will have the curse of knowledge and may be too insider for a name, you will usually find gems like Chatter that work regardless of whether someone knows the glossary meaning.

  Glossaries are also helpful if you’re searching for metaphorical names. For instance, if you were naming something fast, like a microchip, by thinking of other things that are fast (e.g., race car driving) and looking in those glossaries, you would find a lot of words and phrases that evoke speed.

  Dictionaries Have More Than Just Definitions

  You might be wondering why I would go to a dictionary website because, after all, everyone knows what cold means. However, dictionaries are deep wells of ideas. The one I like best is The Free Dictionary (thefreedictionary.com), which provides much more than definitions. It’s also a thesaurus and an excellent source for phrases and idioms. I type in the word “cold” and get a mile of results and name ideas. Since there are 2,710 words for that entry, I’ll simply give you the most fruitful and fun highlights of the definitions and phrases I found, some of which would make interesting names. Others, not so much.

  DEFINITIONS OF COLD

  Sexually unresponsive or frigid

  Lacking emotion; objective (cold logic)

  Marked by or sustaining a loss of body heat (cold hands and feet)

  So intense as to be almost uncontrollable (cold fury)

  Dead

  PHRASES FOR COLD

  common cold

  cold sore

  Cold War

  cold feet

  cold shoulder

  in cold blood

  Sometimes Clichés Are Good

  Clichés—common phrases, such as Eat My Words—are some of the best sources for names. I typically find some unexpected ideas at clichesite.com. And even if I don’t, it’s always good for a laugh. Here are some results I got when I typed in “cold”:

/>   a cold heart

  cold turkey

  cold as a witch’s tit

  stone cold sober

  cold as ice

  to get cold feet

  While most everything above isn’t right for a name, stone cold sober could be shortened to Cold Sober, which I think is a funny name for a teen hangout in Utah. I add it to the list.

  Go Googlestorming!

  In addition to image searching, there are a myriad of other ways to utilize Google for brainstorming, or, as I call it, Googlestorming.

  Continuing to explore the word cold, I type “coldest places on earth” into the search field. The first result looks promising: http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/photos/7-of-the-coldest-places-in-the-world -to-live/bone-chilling.

  7 of the coldest places in the world to live

  Winter is here and it seems like a good time to look at some of the insanely cold places where people actually live.