How to Create a Super Sticky Name for Your Product or Service [Video]

The wrong name for your product or service can be the difference between success and failure. So, how do you choose the right name? That’s what I discuss in this episode with Alexandra Watkins.

Alexandra is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. If you have ever eaten a Wendy’s Baconator, you have literally eaten the words. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first sight brand names for countless companies including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google.

Alexandra has always been good with words. When she was younger, she had a role as an advertising copywriter and loved her job. Occasionally, her boss would throw her a bone and she would get to name a product or service. While she enjoyed the work Alexandra had no idea that “naming” was a profession that paid well. When she discovered that it is a lucrative profession around 20 years ago, she decided to take a leap of faith and go all in to the profession.

Alexandra has a few acronyms in the book, my favorite two are the SMILE test and the SCRATCH test. Her philosophy is that a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head. People like to “get it” and feel clued in, not clueless.

SMILE outlines the qualities of a super sticky name. It’s the five qualities that make a name great.

SMILE

Suggestive: If it’s suggestive you want your name to suggest a positive brand experience and clue people into what you do.

Memorable: Meaning that it’s based on something familiar that people already know as opposed to something unfamiliar and foreign.

Imagery: This aids in memory, just like something based on the familiar.

Legs: Meaning it lends itself to a theme, it has legs to walk on and carry itself throughout your branding and marketing messaging.

Emotional: It’s important that your name makes an emotional connection with your target audience or else it will just go right over their head.

If the name of your product or service fails the SCRATCH test it’s time to scratch it off your list because it makes people scratch their head with confusion. Here’s what the acronym means:

Spelling Challenged: If your name looks like a typo scratch it off the list, it will forever frustrate people.

Copycat: You don’t want to copy somebody else. Nobody likes copycats; we learned that early on in school. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself? In the bigger picture of things, you don’t want to open yourself up to trademark infringement.

Restrictive: This is where you have a name that limits your future growth. You don’t want to get trapped with a name that pigeonholes you into one business if you’re eventually going to be doing something else. Examples include 24-hour fitness. What if eventually they don’t want to be open 24 hours? Another example is 1-800-FLOWERS which sells more than flowers, but you wouldn’t know that from the name. Diapers.com sells more than diapers and, again, you wouldn’t know that from the name.

Annoying: This means that your name frustrates people. You want your name to be friction-free. An example of a source of frustration could be if you spell your name with a number in it, people won’t always be able to spell it correctly.

Totally Ambiguous: This means that nobody knows what you do. You want your name to be welcoming, the opposite of annoying.

Curse of Knowledge: This means that you know what it means but nobody else does.

Hard to Pronounce: Your name should be intuitive to pronounce and only pronounced one way. An example of what not to do is the company “Cricut”. They meant it to be pronounced “cricket” but people could see it as “cry-cut”.

In this episode we also discuss:

• Why naming your company primarily based on available domain names is the wrong way to go.
• What to do if your existing company’s domain name is taken.
• More branding tips to make your marketing messages memorable.
• …and more golden nuggets of advice!