

Ask HN: How do I pick the best brand name? - mcgeadyd

Ok so I've come up with a half dozen brand names for a product that I'm developed, and I want to find a method to pick the best one. Of course I can ask friends and family, but beyond that are there any ways to run it by many people quickly and cheaply? Any ideas are really welcomed!
======
chefsurfing
If it's for a product, I say start with the name that most clearly
communicates what it is that the product helps with / problem it solves. Think
"Can Opener". That's the kind of name you want for your brand or product to
start. Even the big brands started out more specific... McDondald's was
"McDonald's Hamburgers" for a very long time before removing the Hamburgers.
Apple was "Apple Computers Inc" a long time as well.

When you are small you have to be more specific because you have a lower
number of impressions ( chances to talk to your potential customers ) and you
need to make sure you are sending the right message. The big brands can afford
to put their message in more places, so they can be more abstract. Small
brands don't have that luxury.

------
markddotme
Make sure there are no live trademarks associated with the name. Also, go for
a natural sounding made up name and avoid combining common dictionary words,
it's more defensible that way. Use the wordoid tool for this purpose.

------
mcgeadyd
I guess what I'm wondering is if I follow those suggestions and I end up with
maybe 3 candidates, how do I select between the 3? The obvious answer is to
ask friends and family and then ask facebook friends. Beyond that though, was
wondering if there might be another way of picking a winner.

Also: 1\. Thanks for your comments people - genuinely appreciated 2\. Wordoid
is awesome! Never seen it before, but its a lot of fun! Will certainly play
around with it 3\. Yeah, I'm ruling out anything that doesn't have a free .com
domain name (twitter handle gets bonus marks!)

~~~
markddotme
One thing you could do is lock down the brands you've chosen (all social media
services, Gmail acct, domain + privacy with a deep discount promo code, etc)
and put up temp pages (i.e., Launchrock). Then soft promote them (PPC, build
links, Facebook, etc) and see which one resonates better with your target
market. Don't spend too much money/time on this though unless it's for a
project where you can recoup your costs/investment. Keep in mind though that
people typically associate more with what's actually behind the brand -
quality/consistent blogging, engaging conversation on Twitter, insightful
presentations, video, events, etc. - and that's where you'll find the
traction/following that will eventually build your chosen brand.

------
lignuist
Write it down. Does it look nice?

Is it easy to type?

Is the spelling obvious?

Is it easy to pronounce?

Does it explain something?

Does it sound similar to something else? If so, is this a good thing?

~~~
eclipticplane
Also, does it have a good domain name free, and a domain name that fits your
market? If your market is old ladies, you may want to avoid choosing a ".io"
address.

~~~
jaredsohn
Also, try Googling the name to see what shows up right now (kind of similar to
it sounding like something else) and check if the most obvious twitter handle
is available or not.

------
caw
Besides the obvious (lignuist's post is good)

One thing my friend did with naming his service was to ask his friends about
the names. Two weeks later he called them back up and asked: What was the name
of the service I asked you to name? He overwhelmingly got 1 answer that they
could remember.

------
cschmidt
I used Amazon Mechanical Turk to run a multiple choice survey. That got me
several hundred opinions in a day or so. (Make sure you have the domain
reserved first, just in case.) It is fairly easy, even if you haven't done it
before.

------
chrupi
If you ended with only two names, try Pickfu.com to choose the best. It worked
for me really well, I got 150 people reply in about 2-3 hours.

------
miriadis
This is an amazing blog about naming <http://www.thenameinspector.com/>

------
mcgeadyd
Ok, what I might do is Ask HN to pick from my 3 favorite brandname candidates!

