Company Naming Strategy
How to name your company is extremely difficult. Here’s the company naming strategy and process we used and the story how we came up with nooQ.
We had been working on it for a several months, coming up with a new name as Alpine-iQ although quite good (some people wouldn’t go that far) it did resonate a little once you told the story about it, it still wasn’t quite a perfect fit for us and where we want to take the company.
So we were exhausting our brains, our friends brains, dictionaries, thesauri, naming guides, branding experts, cunning linguists trying to come up with a better name. We love crowdsourcing ideas, so this we tried this strategy twice, putting some suggestions out there, framing the context of what you are looking for and some of our initial ideas to be rated.
This is not as easy as it sounds, especially as we discovered via Seth Godin, all english words under eight letters, the domain names are taken. You have to come up with either a combination of one or two words, one word and a number in order to be in with a chance of getting the domain – 37Signals or 21Snap for example.
We loved the concept behind the nooSphere.
The atmosphere of collective ideas, collective consciousness, a global brain and knowledge ecosystem. Playing around with that we came up with nooQ.
We had previously debated versions of noo-Question.
We love the playfulness of the name and different contexts and meanings.
Gather ideas from all the nook’s and crannies.
nooQ it.
nooQ it as a verb, meaning obviously to get an answer or decision best thing is to nooQ it.
A lot of poor businesses, terrible processes could very much do with being nooQ’d – I can thing of many a call centre phone menu hell who could certainly do with some noo innovative solutions not involving chemicals, pacifists that we are. Some cheeky souls have also referred to the sexual connotations of nookie, well if only the world was getting more nookie it may be a happier place, so who are we to disagree and be associated with providing happiness.
Useful Links
We love to share knowledge so here are some relevant articles we found useful. Hope you like them, if you have other ones you like, please share them too.
Some great reference material’s we liked were for detailed in depth stuff
the book 22 Immutable Laws of Branding
plus the shorter How to popularize an edgy name and How to use colour in logo design,
Great Summary from Fast Company article Brand Naming.
“While the brand name is very important, a brand cannot survive on name alone. The brand name and how the brand is executed are equally vital for a successful and sustained brand life. A great brand name can serve as the anchor to your cause, a symbol to your story, a point of difference in your marketplace, a memory trigger, or just one important part of your branding arsenal. Go get you a great one!”
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