Alexandra Watkins - Nir & Far - Episode #22

Hi, I'm Nir Eyal and this is the near and Far Podcast. This podcast is about business behavior and the brain. On this show, I do a few things. I read quick articles I've written about topics shaping your behavior. I interview authors of books I enjoy, and from time to time I devote episodes to answering your questions. If you want to ask me a question, visit the podcast page on itunes, go to Ratings and Reviews, and ask me a question by leaving a review. I promise to read it and possibly include your question in a future episode. So please ask me anything now. Enjoy the episode and for more, you can always Visit me@nearandfar.com.

What'S in a Name? Well, today's guest says everything. Welcome to near and Far. I am Nir Eyal and today's guest is Alexander Watkins, who is the author of this book. Hello. My Name is Awesome how to Create Brand Names that Stick. What an awesome title for a book. And welcome.

Thank you.

Good to see you. So, so tell us, why are names and brand names so important?

Well, it's really important because your name is your identity and it's the first thing people see when they come in contact with you. And it also lasts forever. Your name's going to be around longer than your most loyal employee, longer than your cell phone, your photocopier, whatever it is you have. Your name is probably the longest investment of something that you'll own forever. So you want to make it good.

And you've worked on some pretty prolific brand names. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and experience in the field?

Oh, sure. I started out as an advertising copywriter, and every once in a while I would get thrown a bone and get to name something. And I love naming, but I had no idea that naming was actually a profession that people got paid for. I thought it was just something fun I did once in a while as a copywriter. And when I found out that naming actually was a sole profession, people got paid a lot of money. I'm like, oh, I'm going to do that instead. So, yeah, I have been able to work on some really cool names and fun things. Probably my the one I think people in San Francisco know is the ice cream store Smitten, which now I think has 10 locations. And another frozen dessert company, Spoon Me Frozen Yogurt is a favorite one, as well as the home robot Neato from Neato Robotics. And they've been around 10 years and both founders just started new robotics companies, which I also named Fantastic.

So tell us what. Okay, so we're starting a new company, maybe a line extension, a new brand. What do we need to think about when it comes to naming our product or service?

Well, the five key things to think about when you're naming something are. I created an acronym for this. It's Smile. And there's also one called Scratch, and it's based on that. A name should make you smile instead of scratch your head, which is really the main thing to think about. But to break it down into Smile, the five things to really think about. You want a name that's suggestive, not suggestive in a naughty way. Just suggest something about your brand. A positive brand experience. Don't make people guess. And the M in Smile stands for meaningful. You want your name to be meaningful to your customers, not just to you or your engineers. For instance, we see that happen a lot here in the Bay Area. The I stands for imagery. People remember images and pictures in their head much more easily than they remember words or letters or especially random letters. They have nothing to hook their brain onto. And then the L in Smile stands for legs. And that's where you can extend your brand through just a theme. So, for instance, at Eat My Words, our blog is called the Kitchen Sink. Right? We have a package called the Whole Enchilada. So we have a lot of fun with that. So if you give your name a. A theme to it, you'll have a lot of fun with it. And finally, the most important letter in Smile is E stands for emotional. You have to make that emotional connection with people. It's so important because so many people make purchasing decisions based on emotion.

So that's how to think of a great name. What about how not to? What are some of the biggest mistakes.

That you see companies making? There's a lot of mistakes. I'll take you through Scratch really quick, and then I'll tell you some other mistakes. Scratch is when to scratch it off the list. Again, an acronym S stands for spelling challenge. This is huge. Ask Siri to find, you know, hey, Siri, can you find whatever your name is? If Siri doesn't know what you're talking about, question the name, right? Or if it's spelled in a weird way, it's just frust. You don't want your name to frustrate people. You have to think of your name as a welcome mat, right? Not like you don't want it to be unapproachable, where people are like, what? What is that? How do I pronounce it? So spelling challenge, do you think by.

The way that companies like, I'm thinking Google or Ship with the.

Yeah, ship. I have a real issue with ship.

Do they succeed despite the name?

Yeah, well, I know because their office used to be around the corner from my office. And when I be coming, walking around with people in the neighborhood, they'd say, what is that shape? And so, I mean, people don't know how to spell it. And that's an example of somebody getting the name. Because the domain name was available for 9.95 on GoDaddy. Right. So that seems to be a big problem. I'll take you through the other ones, but we should definitely loop back to domain names because I have a lot of advice for people on ways to get around the frustration of not being able to find an exact match. So the first C in scratch stands for copycat, and that's where there's Twitter, right? But then there was like yammer and chatter and like, those are kind of copycat names. So don't be a copycat. Be original. The R stands for restrictive. You don't want to outgrow your name. So be really careful when you are naming your brand that. Look in the future and make sure that your name isn't going to restrict you in the future. The A stands for annoying, and that's where you spell your name backwards. Like famous ones. Xobny, X, O, B, N, Y, inbox spelled backwards. Most people would not intuitively know that looking at it unless they were dyslexic. Honestly, I have a dyslexic namer friend who, like, you know, he gets those instantly. The T in scratch stands for tame. You don't want your name to just fade into the woodwork. You want it to stand out. It has to. There's so many brands vying for people's attention. The second C stands for curse of knowledge, and that's where only insiders get it. Oftentimes it's a foreign word. Or again, back to the engineers. It's meaningful to them, but not to your customers. So, you know, don't give your name any disadvantages. And finally, the H in scratch stands for hard to pronounce. And back to the welcome mat. You want to be friendly and approachable, so I'd say all of those things are deal breakers. And they're all on my website, eatmywords.com on the homepage it says, does your name suck? And then you can go to the smiling scratch test and take it for yourself.

Yeah, go Back to the URLs. How do we.

So domain names okay, let me just break some myths for you or for the audience. I think you probably know these things. If you can't get an exact match domain name, do not let that stop you from having a great name. You can add a modifier to it. For instance, Tesla, for, I think, 20 years, up until very recently. If you had gone, if you wanted to get a Tesla and you went to tesla.com, you would get to a landing page that said this site is owned by gandhinet. Now, what would you do? Would you just give up? No. You just go to your Tesla car or something. Exactly. And then you see it. Boom, you're there. Okay, you're there. Have you noticed what the domain name is? No. It's Tesla Motors. Do you care? No. Are you not going to buy a Tesla because they don't own tesla.com? wow, that's interesting.

So you think paying thousands of dollars for a special.

Yeah, it's heartbreaking, especially if, I mean, I heard of an author recently who, you know, paid thousands of dollars for his domain name, his exact name of his book. But if he had just added the word book, it would have actually helped with his search engine optimization.

Interesting. Interesting. Wow. Yeah, you're right, because people aren't typing in necessarily the URL. They're being linked from somewhere, typically from Google.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. So I'd say just add a modifier and if it can help you, and a descriptive word that can help in this, in the SEO, do that, save some money.

What if we're building a new product and we're really just in the beginning days? How do we brainstorm? How do we come up with these?

Okay, that's a great question. My book is full of ideas on how to brainstorm. But let me just make a point that I don't think I made in the book because it dawned on me later, but I say it all the time now. Okay. Sitting in a white room, staring at a whiteboard, which is how I think 99% of us brainstorm. Sitting in a white room staring at a whiteboard is not where colorful ideas come from. They don't. And I get it. In the old days, that's what we had to do. But now we have an Internet. We have this instant kind of brainstorming tool right in front of us. So things that you can do, go to Google Images or go to stock photo library and just type in a concept word. Let's say you're naming a new processor and it's very fast. Go to Google Images and type in and you'll see all of these images for. Maybe it's a puma, maybe it's somebody running track, maybe it's a roller coaster. So you start to get ideas. A picture says a thousand words. And that's way more efficient than sitting in a room with a bunch of people who have these rules. Oh, there's no such thing as a bad idea. Yeah, there is. And you have to be polite and nice. But if you're brainstorming on your own, go to a thesaurus online. Also, look up fast. There's going to be a lot of words and ideas there. Go to glossaries of terms. There's so many tools online, we don't even look in books anymore. And we never sit in a white room. But we just use the Internet as a fantastic tool.

I love it. But you use specifically Google images.

Yeah, we do.

So do you recommend thinking about what's the most important attribute and that's the.

Attribute you're going to type into Google images?

Yes, yes. So it could be fast. Easy is hard. We get a lot of clients say, we want to say it's easy, but I would just say with easy, with any new technology especially, or anything disruptive, people know it's kind of implied that it will be easier. We just know that.

What are some of your favorite brand names in the technology sphere? A lot of people who watch this show are building tech products. What are some great names?

Well, I love Thumbtack because it's visually evocative. I can remember it. And it says handyman to me. That was one that I could remember really easily. You know, Google, I think, has grown on people. I'll tell you this, though. We always ask our clients, give us examples of 10 names that you love. And inevitably our tech clients always list Google. And I ask people, and I remind them, what did you think the first time you heard the word Google? Did you love it? And most people say no. Right? You didn't. Right. There was a npr.

Now it's become an association.

It has. But to let you know how uncomfortable it was for people back in the day, they were advertising on NPR and the live announcer was reading, sponsored by Google. And the guy was too embarrassed to say it. He cringed every time he did.

Wow, that's amazing. Okay, so I'll give you an example of one. This is a company I invested in, actually was started by my former co founders at my last company. They started a company called Marco Polo, which I just think is such a great name. It's so memorable. Because they have tons of competition. It's an app that you can send messages back and forth.

I love that.

And of course, as kids in the pool. Marco Polo.

Right. It's just such a.

You get the image of what the product does just with the name. I just thought it was such a great name to come up with.

Yeah. We did a back and forth one too for a company in India and we named it Ping Pong. And it was the same thing. Yeah.

Very cool. As opposed to. They've got tons of competitors. I can't really think of any of them. Even though there's a lot of products that do something very similar other than Marco Polo and Ping Pong. Very good. Yeah. What other tips or recommendations? Things to avoid pitfalls that maybe companies should know on the path to finding a fantastic name.

Don't start with a domain name. Everybody does. We don't. It will depress you and then frustrate you. Just go there later and then figure it out. Also, don't think just because you own the domain name that you have the trademark. You don't. And it's really important to run trademark screens before you invest more than 9.95 in a domain name. I did a consulting call with a guy who had paid 45 grand for a domain name and then found out that he couldn't legally use it.

Oh, gosh. Wow. That's really, really good advice. Who would thinks of that when they' registering their domain?

Terrific.

Well, this has been really, really fantastic. Thank you so much for coming in. And tell people where they can find more information about you.

Eatmywords.com and then my book on Amazon. Hello, My Name Is awesome.

All right, and here's the book again. Hello, My Name Is awesome. How to create brand names at 6. Alexander Watkins. Thank you so much for being here.

So good to see you.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of.

The near and Far Podcast. You can always find more at my blog, nearandfar.com and don't forget, if you have a question you'd like me to.

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