How to Come Up With a Creative Name for a Company
- 1). Think about your company--specifically, its products, history, motto and business plan. Decide on the exact way you want the public to see and respond to your company and its products and services. Once a clear picture of your company and its worldwide representation or "image" forms in your mind, you can far more easily come up with a word or list of words that associate directly to this image of your company as a whole. This can also form the same association in the minds of others.
- 2). Make a list of single words or word-sets that you or the public normally associates with your business or market. In addition, add to that list words you feel best describe your company and its image. Don't hesitate to add international, market-specific terminology or any word or words that you believe fit well with the image of your company that you thought of in Step 1.
- 3). Make sound associations. If you listen to the word spoken aloud and it creates a negative feeling, has a negative connotation in another language or doesn't "sound" quite right, remove it from your list. Conversely, if you find a nonsensical word or non-related word that sounds like it goes with your company image, add it to your list.
- 4). Choose words that automatically form a certain image in the mind or words associated with literature and the arts that already have a popular basis in culture in those areas, but not in your market.
- 5). Play with your words. Combine words to create new words or, if you have a core product or long business name, create acronyms using the first letter of each word. In addition, try rhyming words to come up with more poetic or flowing word-sets that a person hearing the words for the first time might remember easily.
- 6). Make color associations. Some words that describe colors form an association to color in relation to businesses that deal in color or in relation to certain emotions. It's one of the reasons that many "Rainbow Paint" house painting or paint manufacturing businesses exist. Rainbows evoke not only an image of a myriad of beautiful colors, but create a positive feeling. If your company doesn't sell paints, don't worry--you can still use color to create an emotional response. Simply consider the ways interior designers use colors to set a "mood" and think about the ways you can do the same by relating a color to your company's image or products.
- 7). Select a panel of employees or develop a public survey using your list of potential names to gauge reaction to your top 20 to 40 potential brand names.
- 8). Hire a professional branding firm that deals specifically in brand naming, like A Hundred Monkeys or namebase, to assist in reviewing your list of names or creating a brand name.
Source...