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A Brand New Name Game

Let’s pretend for just one moment you’ve decided to start your own company. You’ve got the knowledge to put forth a great product, the staff to provide stellar service and a location that’s going to bring you the traffic you need to make a healthy profit.

Now, all you need to do is come up with a name for your new company.

Easy right?

Not so much. Coming up with a unique, impactful and memorable brand name requires a great deal of creativity and lots of homework. The process starts with a deep dive into your industry, your business, your product, your background, and even your personal preferences.

Then the real work begins.

If you look at recent brand development trends you readily notice that the space is crowded. This is a product of our digital age – the ability for private parties to camp on URLs that they perceive to be valuable, the relative ease to register a trademark, and the sheer numbers of businesses that exist make the naming process extraordinarily difficult.

We love the challenge, and not to brag, but we’re getting quite good at it.

I would go on to say that as we’ve grown as a company so to as our ability to undertake and excel at bigger, more daunting tasks. None of which are more exciting or challenging than naming a start-up or executing a full re-brand for an established company.

Here are some of the brands we’ve “invented”. Some of which we’ve won awards for, all of which are successful.

HiBuddy Organics
Clear Mitigation
RUME Property Management
North&Co.
Invincible Fitness

Full disclosure, a couple of these new brands are still in the works but we’re far enough along that I don’t mind sharing them with you. The backend work for a new brand includes preliminary brand vetting, a URL search, and the work of a trademark attorney that solidifies all the protection you need moving forward.

We’re lucky that the English language is so versatile. You can drop a vowel, disregard proper spelling or run a couple of words together and still get a nice, memorable brand. (See RUME and HiBuddy) That’s the space we have to operate in as an ad agency.

Looking for a name for your startup or thinking about a complete re-brand with an entirely new name? Shoot me a note or give me a call to set up a time to discuss next steps.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Ed Olsen is the president/owner of ReThinc Advertising. He has lots of opinions on all things marketing. To read more of them, click here.

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