The Snippet is a Weekly Product Management Newsletter for aspiring Product Leaders.
One of the things a Product Manager will be involved in at some point in their career is Naming a product they are working on. Its quite a responsibility, especially if you’ve never “named” anything before.
Sometimes people compare “naming” a product to finding a name for your babies. The first problem with that comparative is not only that Not everyone has kids, but also that your product is not your baby. While for babies a warm and loving name is a job well done, when you are launching a product in the wild you need to take note of several other objective factors.
Several years ago, I found myself with the opportunity to name a product we were working hard to build. All the while we were building the product, the team had an “internal” name for it— “FLEET”. That’s what everybody else in the company called it too. To this day, I don’t know who came up with that name.
Anyway, It was a SaaS product that helped people manage multiple Wi-Fi thermostats through a web app. Said another way, you could manage a “Fleet of Thermostats”.
“Sure, it just makes sense”— or so we thought. We were quite sure that’s what we wanted to call the product “Fleet”.
What’s in a Name?
A product’s name in a lot of ways captures the essence of the product. That’s true at least pre-market, in the eyes of the team that is building it.
But once launched, a product’s name takes a life of its own. It transforms into a brand shaped by market forces in the real world. It becomes a symbol of whether or not the product delivers what it promises. Sometimes, the noun transforms into a verb (Photoshop to Photoshopping, Rollerblade to Rollerblading), at other times, the name creates a whole new category —like a Yo-Yo.
What the Name stands for is very different— to the team that built the product versus the customers that will use it. The former always has an emotional connection with the product, the latter develops that connection through the product’s performance against their personal utility functions.
As you can imagine, how you name a product depends upon a myriad of factors —and there is no one way or a set rule book. But in the course of finding a suitable name for my own product I learned that while mostly enjoyable, you can experience some nasty and expensive surprises if you’re are not careful.
The Obvious Stuff
When selecting a name, there are several ways you can go depending upon your product, industry, target market, etc. Here are the obvious ones
Used to be the case that a product’s Name must be somewhat associative with the Product itself —but that’s increasing out of vogue now. That being said, it’s still a good idea to think of a name that helps customers understand what the product and its attributes might be. This is especially true if you are naming a first-gen product. For instance, the name Microsoft suggests the product has something to do with software, but Apple? — not so much.
Make it easy to spell and say: Talking about Apple, how do you even spell this? Is it “X” or Roman for 10?
A Name that stays with you: A good product name is one that stays with you— and with so much noise these days, that’s hard to do. Most people simply don’t have the attention spans to think twice about the name they just heard. So where possible, using techniques like alliteration in names, or slightly weird names gives the brain a tiny challenge and dopamine hit as it tries to unravel the weirdness. The brain is tricked into attributing this pleasure to the product itself!
Here’s Nick Kolenda’s amazing guide on coming up with a name for your product. Thank me later.
The Not So Obvious Stuff
When considering a product name, here are the things that people forget to think through. These are factors that are not that obvious, but equally important.
Sales & Marketing Strategy: It's not immediately obvious as to why your sales strategy would matter — but here’s why. If your primary lead acquisition and sales channels are online —you are most likely going to depend heavily on SEO and Keywords to rank on searches. And having a product name that contains those keywords is a brilliant way to climb to the top of rankings on the first page. This becomes especially important if you don’t have multi million dollars in sales and marketing budgets and want organic rankings to work for you.
Your Customers: Always pay attention to what your target customers look for / ask for/ search for when they are seeking/using your product. Personal experience - As we ran an invite only private beta for “FLEET” — I noticed that our beta users kept calling it the “Thermostat Manager”. It was interesting. Fleet didn’t make any sense to them. Of course it didn’t. Thermostats are not cars.
Watch your competitors: Keep your customers front and center, but always keep your competitors in the rear view mirror. Take a look at how your competitors have named their products. You have two choices after that —either use that as a guideline to narrow down your choices, or go with a name that is significantly different than how competitors have named their products. Companies with a disruption mindset often take the latter path.
Make sure the name you are going with doesn’t mean something bad or culturally offensive in other parts of the world —atleast in geographies where you will sell the product.
The important stuff
Legal. This is where most of the real work needs to happen. Naming your product successfully is not just about internal consensus building - but also about actually being able to use and protect that name in the marketplace.
Imagine how you’d feel if after so much thought, team meetings and discussions you finally came up with a winning name, and then were told that you can’t use it? This is why PMs must work with their legal counterparts to ensure that the brand names are (a) defensible, and (b) are not infringing upon other people’s legal rights.
Trademark research and application.
My wife recently started her own business and listed one of her products on amazon. We created a new brand and recently went through the whole Trademark exercise. I recommend that when doing this engage a professional trademark lawyer, but here’s the gist of what’s involved for US Trademarks.
To be legally protectable in the marketplace —your “name” must not be words that in everyday use. In other words, they must be adequately distinctive. E.g. Apple has brand protection on the term “iPhone” but not on the term “Phone” . It cannot prevent competitors from using the term “Phone” in their own promotions, but can sue if competitors promote their own products using the term “iPhone”.
If multiple parties file trademarks for the same “Name” then the party that demonstrates “first use” wins the exclusive rights to the trademark.
In the U.S, if you file an application to register a mark before someone else has started to “use,” then the first filer ‘wins’ the race to exclude others, even if the first filer is not USING the mark at the time of filing . This is another reason for you to start the registration and filing process as early as possible.
You need to actually sell something under that brand name / use it to maintain ongoing rights to the trademark. If you don’t use it for sometime, the trademark protection may be lost.
Two or more companies can apply for Trademarking the exact same names for their products —as long as their products are considerably different and consumers are not confused.
Remember “Fleet”? We ended up launching it the under name Multiple Thermostat Manager. It wasn’t a fancy name, infact most people made fun of how simplistic the name was! But that was exactly the point.
The descriptive name made people take notice—”really? you call it multiple thermostat manager?” . It stayed with them. We also saw rapid SEO rankings growth and that helped us reduce our ppc expenses tremendously. Most importantly, our target customers immediately understood what the product was and it made total sense to them.
In summary, when naming a product simply getting the basics right will go a long way. If you want to be more rigorous and structured about it, follow this guide I shared above. And yes, make sure you get your brand name trademarked as soon as you are able to.
Ultimately , whatever you do please don’t overthink it. Here’s how Spotify got its name if you want some inspiration :)
Thanks for reading,