The short answer: name a brand last, not first. Before you brainstorm a single word, know the market you're entering, who you're for and who you're not for, how you're different from every competitor, and who might want to buy the company one day. A good name is a strategic decision that happens to sound good. A name that only sounds good is a liability with a logo.
Most founders name their company the way they'd name a boat: after something they like. I understand the impulse. But the value of a company is tied directly to how it's built and positioned in its market, and the name is the first piece of that positioning anyone sees. At Unrth, naming comes after the research, never before it.
Why do most brand names fail?
They're chosen for the founder, not the market. "What do I like?" is the wrong first question. Better ones:
Where is this market going? A name that fits today's category can box you out of tomorrow's.
Who is this for, and who is it not for? A name built to appeal to everyone signals nothing to anyone.
How are you different from every competitor? If your name could belong to any of them, it doesn't really belong to you.
Who might acquire you someday? Build something worth buying and your brand ends up in someone else's portfolio. A name that only makes sense with the founder attached is worth less without her.
Step one: research before you brainstorm
I have a science background, so I set up everything like an experiment, and every experiment starts with research. Before naming anything, we look at where the market is and where it's heading, where the company would stack up against its competitors (a blue ocean matrix shows where competitors crowd together and where the open water is), and how pricing works in the category. The name has to fit the position the company is actually going to hold.
Step two: unearth the original story
People will always resonate with stories. Before there was a written tradition there was an oral one, and before that, pictures on cave walls. Stories reach the brain in a way a list of features can't. When Princeton researchers scanned the brain of someone telling a story and then the brains of people listening to it, the listeners' brain activity coupled with the speaker's, and the more closely it matched, the better they understood the story (Stephens, Silbert, and Hasson, PNAS, 2010).
So we dig. What really happened? Why did the founder start this? What makes the company different from its competitors in a way they can't copy? The name usually lives somewhere in the answer, and a name that carries the true story gives every future piece of marketing something to echo.
Step three: decide who you are before you decide what you're called
Next we set the foundation: who the company is, who it wants to be, where it's going, who it's for, who it's not for, its mission, and its values. That's what points the whole ship in the right direction. Color belongs here too, because color carries meaning before a single word is read. Marketing research has linked specific hues to the personality traits buyers assign a brand, such as red reading as exciting and blue as competent (Labrecque and Milne, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 2012).
Step four: name for the position, the story, and the sale
Only now do names go on the table, and every candidate gets pressure-tested against the work:
Does it say who you are and where you're going, or only what you sell today?
Does it set you apart from every competitor in the research?
Does it carry the original story?
Would it still make sense, and still be worth something, inside an acquirer's portfolio?
How I named my own brands
Unrth
Say it "unearth," because that's the job: getting down into the dirt and digging for the truth at the core of a brand. So many agencies put a bandage on a problem and upsell every bell and whistle you might not need. We investigate the wound first: where it came from, how it happened, and whether something is keeping the business from healing. That process is the Unrth Method™, and you can read how it works in what strategic design actually is.
PoloFlow
I've played polo all over the world, and every game is a production: finding the right horse, getting into a game, sorting out handicaps. PoloFlow is named for what it does: it makes polo flow, so organizing a game is easy wherever you are. That's the slogan, too: polo, wherever you are.
OilMoney.io
"Oil money" has a bad reputation, and OilMoney.io is named to reclaim it. Much of what we wear is petroleum-based. Almost everything we buy reaches us on a truck that runs on fuel. Oil isn't the only way to make money or the only energy source we need, and it shouldn't be. But it isn't a dirty word or a dirty business when it's done responsibly, without leaving zombie wells behind, alongside every other source of energy the planet needs.
Ditë Society
Ditë comes from Aphrodite. The society is about blending the masculine and the feminine within womanhood: permission to be everything and nothing, both ends of the spectrum, the dark and the light, the soft and the ferocious. The name is an invitation to fully embody everything it means to be a woman.
Sabbatical
Sabbatical is named for the thing itself, and for an idea from Tim Kreider's essay "Lazy: A Manifesto": that laziness isn't a defect but a requirement for innovation, invention, joy, and productivity. The way you get anything meaningful done is, in part, by resting.
The short version
Research the market, the competitors, and the pricing.
Unearth the original story.
Define who you are, who you're for, who you're not for, and how you're different.
Name for the position, the story, and a future buyer, in that order.
Naming or renaming a company? That's an Unrth project: research first, name last. Start at unrth.com.
