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Strategize—About Brand

The first step in the Strategize part is to clearly define who you are as a brand.

How would you describe your brand and its personality?

In this first exercise, we need to sum up in a clear and concise language: your category, services/products you offer and your target market.

And a great way to do so, is by describing your brand in three statements (Credit: Jeremy Miller—"Brand New Name")

Here, we're going to simply complete 3 sentences.

1. The first statement is about your category.

(Fintech) Roboadvisors are the new way to invest for millennials and Gen Zers.

AI Trading is the future of asset management.

Cryptocurrency is the digital finance of the future.

“The brand is X” (e.g. Design agency).

2. The second statement is about the service/product you sell. (“The brand does X” (e.g. “Designs logos and identity systems”)

We allow anyone anywhere to invest in web 3

We provide automated investment strategies tailored to our users preferences

We are democratising wealth management to transition people from scarcity to prosperity

3. The third statement is about your market.

We serve crypto enthusiasts

We provide systems for the beginner investor

We service tech savvy millennials & gen z

“The brand serves X” (e.g. “Startups and small businesses”)

Completing this exercise can be quite easy or a bit difficult, depending on your business.

If you’re naming a brand in popular category then it might be easy, but if you’re creating new technologies, then it might be a bit challenging.

Take about 5 minutes to sum up what you're naming—describe your brand in three simple statements.

We connect people to automated web 3 investing in 5 min

We Simplefi web 3 investing to make it accessible to everyone

We help people understand their invest goals and plan for the futer

So if you’re pioneering something new, then it might be helpful to add one more clarifying statement: "Our brand is like X".

For example, the founder of Uber could have said:

“Our brand is a peer-to-peer cab company” which later could morph into “ride-sharing”.

Now, the second part of this exercise is to define your brand personality.

_________________

In this exercise, list adjectives that would fit your desirable brand personality.

And this exercise is much easier to do if you think of your brand as a person.

So if you brand was a person, who would it be? How would he or she act, talk and dress?

Take about 5 minutes to select 4 to 8 adjectives that would describe the tone and personality of your brand.

Bold

Visionary

Innovative

Dynamic

Relatable

Empathetic

Trustworthy

Transparent

Confident

Approachable

Passionate

Responsive

Agile

Collaborative

Progressive

Entrepreneurial

Fearless

Authentic

Disruptive

Open-minded

Need some inspiration?—Check out my article where I describe personalities of famous brands.

Once we've got your brand defined, now It’s time to think about your users.

2. Strategize—Brand Users

Now, in the second step of the Strategize part we’re going to step into the shoes of you customers and think from their perspective.

So we’re going to define your target audience by understanding:

Who your brand will serve and what they expect from your brand?

First, we need to think about who are these people.

So ask yourself:

Who’s going to interact with your brand? Who is going to know and use the name?

To kick-start this exercise, let’s create a list of potential users or customers of your brand.

If you have customers already, try to use names of real people.

Some people you know or people whom you can picture using your brand.

First, we have a "Label" on the left—this is just to shortly describe your customer.

For example “stay-at-home mom”, or “busy young professional”.

Take about 5 minutes to describe your most common customers by giving them a short label.

Here you can use some demographic information like: age, gender, profession, income, education, location and so on.

The Crypto Enthusiast needs

Robustness, Automation, Hype, Custody, ROI better than BTC, one stop shop,

The Beginner Investor

Education, simplicity, automation, accessibility, low risk, curation

The Tech Savvy investor

Credability, historic performance,

There are no rows in this table

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Now, in the next column “Needs” let’s think about what the user need from our brand.

Here, we need to really think from heir perspective to reveal people’s behaviors as opposed to preferences.

For example: If I was naming a healthy snack brand for kids, I could come to conclusion that anything "healthy" might not be seen as "cool" by most kids.

What can we do with that?—It can help us later on with choosing the right name.

We're going to pay close attention to that insight and don’t settle on something that sounds healthy.

So in this exercise is really important to think beyond what customer may like or dislike about your products or services.

Here, we need to consider other circumstances that lead them to using your brand.

Take about 5 minutes to describe your customers' needs and wants as it relates to your brand.

Now, once we’ve defined the brand and their users, now let’s focus on the objectives for your future name.

Because without a clear goal in mind, you can’t really make a meaningful decision.

Naming is definitely not “I will know it when I see it” kind of thing.

So the next step in the Strategize phase is to define your name objectives.

3. Strategize—Name Objectives

The goals of this exercise is to define what a good outcome looks like for your naming project.

It simply answers the question:

What do you want your name to achieve and why?

Here, we have two questions that we need to answer in one or two sentences each.

The first question is about your goal:

“What do you want?” (e.g. "An easy-to-remember name for vegan snacks.")

Here you can also add something along the lines: "It should convey that the product is natural, delicious and healthy”.

A catchy name for an investment product that conveys automation, simplicity & cryptocurrency, wealth management and trust. (dependable)

A name that suggests the future of finance will be web 3

By answering this question you basically state your naming objectives.

Do you want the name to be easy to say and remember like Uber?

Or perhaps it should sound foreign and premium like Haagen and Dazs?

And then we also add a sentence about what do you want to convey.

Do you want your name to convey the personality of your brand or benefits of using your products?

For example: Uber means superior and outstanding (superior to taxi services).

Take about 5 minutes to state your your goals (what do you want the name to do?)

And the second question is about your positioning:

“Why do you want it?” (e.g. "To stand out in the grocery, so that consumers can make healthier choices")

The name should peak user interest

The name should instill a sense of familiarity

The name should be easy to remember

RICH

By answering this question you basically state WHY do you want the name you want.

Do you want some stand out from competition? -

Do you want to position your brand to a certain demographic? -

Do you want it to be provocative, so it creates viral content? -

For example: Slack is a short and memorable name, but it's flawed.

The word “slack” has a negative meaning—"laziness" is probably something you would rather want to avoid when naming an office messaging app.

However, it works! And this is because it’s different—It’s gutsy and it’s memorable.

Take about 5 minutes to state your positioning (Why do you want to achieve this goal?)

So once we have those two questions answered, let's talk about the Naming Trends.

4. Strategize—Naming Trends

In this part of our naming strategy we’re going to analyze the competitive landscape.

Here, we simply want to:

What are the common naming trends in your category?

Here, we want to identify naming trends, so that you can develop strategies to make your brand name stand out.

Analyzing your market will help you see how competitors position their brands, so that you can spot cliches to avoid.

You can also spot some opportunities to differentiate yourself from the pack.

In this exercise, we're going to plot your competitors' names across two axes: Name Type and Name Construction*

*Credit: Jeremy Miller—"Brand New Name"

There are no rows in this table

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Name Type—Is the name descriptive, suggestive or abstract?

Name Construction—Is it a real word, constructed or invented name, a misspelled word or an acronym?

Here you might notice that in your industry there’s a trend toward Abstract-Invented Names, or you might see that all your competitors use similar words.

Take about 5 minutes to create a list of 20 to 30 competitors and then plot them in the chart in corresponding boxes.

PS. Check out my other article to see different types of brand names.

If you find it challenging, you can also look for brands in related regions or markets.

Once you’ve created the competitive chart, now we can come back to our first worksheet and define the naming criteria.

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5. Strategize—Naming Criteria

The last exercise in the Strategize part is about developing the criteria for your new name.

What are the criteria for your naming project?

Let’s make a use of our competitive analysis and draw insights as to what are the words/styles we should explore/avoid?*

*Credit: Alexandra Watkins—"Hello, My name is Awesome"

How names are used in your industry?—Here are five questions to help you see some patterns:

Are there any common words or phrases?

What types of names are common?

How do the competitors position themselves?

What tone or stories do these names convey?

Are there any standout or remarkable names?

As you think about how to answer these questions, first—let’s write down some words and styles to avoid.

For example: If you’re creating a new frozen yoghurt brand, you might want to avoid using any “berry” kind of word in your name.

This is because Pinkberry is a pretty successful chain of frozen yogurt, so any name like Peachberry, Kiwiberry or Lemonberry will sound like a copycat.

Not only that, this could potentially get you in legal troubles—you can face a trademark infringement case.

So based on our example, we would want to avoid the word “berry” or any type of fruit in our brand name for that matter.

Another example of an often copycatted name is Twitter, we have Yammer, Jabber and Chatter.

While these names might not be a cause for trademark infringement, they are certainly not winning any award for originality.

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