Vanilla Ice must’ve crowdsourced his name
Naming is a really fun exercise. It’s one of the few creative outlets we all share, and most of us are naming all the time. We name pets, kids, playlists, WiFi networks, Instagram accounts, pets’ Instagram accounts, faithful cars, a wide-tooth comb whose name made it a less frightening nemesis to a curly-headed girl…(I see you, Trudy)…the list goes on. We all name things in our personal lives, and when we do, we’re probably not thinking about their greater impact.
Naming a business is also a really fun exercise. But in this case, it’s a marriage of creativity and strategy — a careful weighing of pros and cons. Suddenly you’re thinking about audiences, motivations, competitors, and contexts — all resulting in one or two words that hopefully position you in a differentiated, engaging way.
The other — and sometimes most important — factor at play doesn’t even have to do with the name itself. It’s how you go about choosing it. For most businesses, naming tends to be an exercise in group dynamics. Understanding how a name will be chosen (and by whom) is a critical first step. The best results require a behavioral shift — challenging you to take an entirely new approach to something you do all the time, starting with who’s involved.
When you’re naming a pet, you can crowdsource — ask your friends, ask your book club, take a poll on social media, fly an aerial banner during a Giants game. At the end of the day, you’ll choose the name you want in the way you want to choose it. The stakes are pretty low, and your cousin’s neighbor Ted isn’t going to be insulted if you don’t name your cat Roary like he suggested.
But if you’re naming a company, there are a lot more considerations to weigh — and usually, you’re not the only one who feels deeply invested in the company and its name. At A Hundred Monkeys, we’ve found that having too many cooks in the naming kitchen is a recipe for all bland everything.
“Nothing ruins creativity like too many voices weighing in.” —from Don’t Call It That by Creative Director, Eli Altman
There’s an idea we throw around here called “the Ice Cream Principle”, coined by Founder, Danny Altman. It’s the idea that if you’re trying to get a room full of people to agree on an ice cream flavor, you’ll end up with something safe and middle-of-the-road, like vanilla or chocolate. If you ask people what they like individually, you might find out that they’re more of a Honey Lavender kind of crowd. The desire to please everybody inevitably results in a lost opportunity for something more way more interesting.
Like I’ve said from the jump, naming is fun — and it’s easy for people to want to get involved, especially in a company environment where they otherwise might not get to wear creative hats like this one. While there are plenty of ways to include them in the process, you’ll never reach consensus with a big group of people whose decisions all matter.
There are always going to be outliers, and there’s always going to be someone whose favorite name wasn’t picked. Or someone who strongly vetoes a name because it rhymes with that band that had that one song that was really overplayed that one summer. It’s much easier when there’s a benevolent leader at the helm — someone who can kindly, but firmly, weigh options and make a decision knowing that someone’s going to be bummed. And surprisingly, knowing that naming isn’t about reaching consensus can take a huge weight off.
The wise Alfred Yankovic once sang (to the tune of “I Love Rock n’ Roll”), “Chocolate’s getting old, vanilla just leaves me cold.” He loves Rocky Road, which is a polarizing but much more interesting flavor.
