The Name of the Beast

The process and perils of naming products, companies and brands
Neil Taylor

How to choose the right name for your company, product or brand by an expert in naming.

Giving a name to your company, or a new product or service, or to your brand should be easy. After all, how difficult is it to think up a word or two for something you are so close to? Often, what should be one of the most fun parts of your business ends up causing internal conflict, legal to-ing and fro-ing, and not to mention the occasional bout of media hysteria.

Naming expert Neil Taylor presents a practical but inspiring plan to help find the right name for your company, product or brand. The plan is based on three considerations. Firstly, there’s the strategy: how do you find a name that feels right? How do you make sure it stands out from the crowd? Secondly, there’s the practicalities, which are often overlooked. Plenty of naming disasters are down to people being naïve about the legal or linguistic implications of a name. And finally, there are people. Discussions about names are often subjective. Therefore, how do you convince people internally that a name is right, and then how do you convince the outside world? Taylor also looks at trends in naming and the lessons that should be taken on board today.

NEIL TAYLOR is an expert on brands, and how they use language. He’s creative director of The Writer (www.thewriter.co.uk), and has been described as “the David Beckham of naming” (when that was still good). He’s helped clients name everything from supermarkets to TV technology to toilet roll. He was previously a senior naming consultant at global brand consultancy Interbrand.

Most days, he spends his time training people to become better writers at work (when he’s not writing the menus for Greek restaurant chains). He works with people like the BBC, Unilever, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sotheby’s and 3. He’s also written Search Me: The surprising success of Google, co-edited From Here to Here: Stories inspired by London’s Circle Line, and is a contributor to Common Ground: Around Britain in 30 writers and 26 Letters: Illuminating the alphabet, also published by Cyan. And he’s on the board of business writers’ group 26.

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