DON’T NAME YOUR COMPANY ‘HOOLI’
In the heyday of the internet boom, it was a necessity that your web startup have a name that was fun, sounded cool, and perhaps meant nothing. After all, we were all still figuring out what this wonderful invention of Al Gore’s called “the internet” was going to do for us, so best to take a non-descriptive name and figure out what you’ll actually BE as a business later. The high-profile success of
”Google”, “Yahoo!”, “eBay” and others convinced startups during the resurrection of the internet economy in the early and mid-2000’s that the best name is a ‘meaningless’ name. It didn’t hurt that [every-word-in-english].com was already being squatted on by those anxious to get rich reselling their domain acquisitions. Thus, the rise of the meaningless, made-up, mispelled, or otherwise random modern/internet business name. Of course, meaningless names pre-date the internet; “Haagen-Dazs”, “Xerox”, and “Sony” didn’t mean anything and went on to become massive companies. So, if you’re considering a rebrand or launching a startup, should you search for something like “Hooli” to be your brand? Probably not...
Don’t get me wrong; some of these names are great and have become household terms that you could hardly imagine being the same by another name. As such, most people presume that since seamingly meaningless names can take off, it’s not important that your name convey anything about the value or intent of your business. But that’s not necessarily the case; there’s a lot more to many of these names than you realize, and lessons to be learned in naming your business.
Take “Haagen-Dazs” for example. It’s completely meaningless. It has no translation to Danish or German or whatever other european language it might sound like. It is entirely made up, PROOF that a meaningless name can launch a massive brand! Well, not exactly. Just because the name is meaningless doesn’t mean it doesn’t SAY anything. The name was crafted in the 1960’s by the founder who was searching for something that sounded old, steeped in tradition, and crafted in high-quality. A recipe from Denmark that had been handed down for centuries. It works, you hear that name and it immediately sounds foreign, luxurious, old, and expensive. When you sell a product to the mass market, of universal appeal, and with an intrinsicly ‘obvious’ initial value proposition, like high-quality ice cream, your name isn’t that important. Everyone likes ice-cream, so you don’t have to worry about them not knowing what it is and quickly attaching the name to the product.
“Google” is a mispelled short-form of an actual word (googolplex) defined as a massive amount of data. It was an attempt to be descriptive, but ended up meaningless. It doesn’t matter, the name was fun, playful, left ample room for Google to become almost anything, and described a service (search) that the web needed desperately to be done more effectively than existing options. “Yahoo!” isn’t meaningless, Jonathan Swift had defined it in Gulliver’s Travels to mean "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." In both instances, the purpose of the name is to evoke a feeling; Google infers massive, all-knowing and expansive, while Yahoo! says irreverant, free, and edgy.
There’s a difference between meaningless and purpose-less, and every name should have a purpose, especially as your audience shrinks from ‘everyone’ to a specific type of buyer. You may have noticed a lot of businesses that take on a family name, which is meaningless, right? True, but most of these businesses add a descriptive suffix so that you know what they do; i.e. “Alex & Sons PLUMBING”. Getting found without people being able to instantly know what Alex and his sons actually do would be difficult. Why add an unecessary layer of abstraction to people knowing what your business does?
So what’s the point? There is no perfect formula for arriving at the right name, and often when you think you’ve found it, it’s already taken. But consider these concepts as you evaluate your ideas:
Evoke a metaphor, feeling, or descriptive term: You want people to think or feel something from your name. Even if it’s a meaningless word or common term, it should evoke your purpose, your unique value proposition, or intimate something about your approach as a business.
Consider adding a descriptor when the core name doesn’t categorize the business: You can free yourself from the contstraints of a descriptive name if you consider making your business category a modifier before or after your name. If you don’t fall neatly in an existing category like ‘plumbing’, revisit #1 and consider a name with as clear a relationship to your purpose as possible; you don’t want people to try to figure out a meaningless name in a non-existent space.
Evaluate against your advertising, sales & customer acquisition/interaction model: Perhaps the most important guideline is to think about your go-to-market strategy and the role your name plays. If you’re planning to invest heavily in mass-media marketing, you can get away with a more obtuse name because you’ll have a lot of exposure to build the brand recognition with customers. If, on the other hand, you’re acquiring customers through email and cold-calling, you have less time to get your point across. And, if you’re hoping to get customers online via INBOUND means, consider what your name would say to you if you searched for the underlying need.
For some examples, look at some of the businesses and products synthesis has named (or advised), most of which are descriptive without being literal, or inspired by a feeling/value of the business:
Centermark - putting the Franchise CMO back at the CENTER of his MARKeting operations.
SafeCentral - one place to go for completely secure online transactions.
re•currency - brining customers back for quick service restaurants.
texium - technical advisors to help you navigate modern business connectivity.
synthesis marketing consulting - Simplifying value and mission into a clear story, and communicating it to the world.
There’s no magic formula, and always exceptions to the logic outlined in this post. Naming a business is among the most difficult tasks, and isn’t really the key to success - it helps more to be GOOD at what you do ;-). However, have a purpose and think about what your name is telling people.
