“You don’t need eyes to see, you need vision” – Faithless

I was going to lead this post with some tired Shakespeare quote about roses, but frankly, that quote gets too much pub as it is, and I wanted to differentiate this entry from the myriad of other entries on naming.  Just as the branding company Igor does with their naming guide Building the Perfect Beast.  I mean talk about a great name for naming, Building the Perfect Beast. Right at the heart of it, I feel intrigued, and interested.

So let’s look at the contents of Building the Perfect Beast, and see if it holds up to the naming strategies outlined by Igor.  So there are 6 steps to Name creations per the Igor process, and there are 3 ways to evaluate the names that are developed.  Hmm, sounds a bit sketch already, but lets give them some run, because if a formula can come up with the names Igor and Building the Perfect Beast, there might be something to it.

Step 1 Cut a hole in a box Competitive Analysis

Ok, so what are the Building the Perfect Beast competitors?  Simple Google search on naming guide produced

• Baby Name Guide Not a competitor clearly
• Business Name Guide  from a site called BusinessNameGuide.com
• Product Naming Guide looked like a competitor until I clicked in and found it was an analytics company recently acquired by IBM

Step 2 Positioning

So how does Building the Perfect Beast position Igor’s thought leadership?  I think we’ve got a couple of great things here.  First is the word “perfect” which denotes that what this guide will do for you is create something that is exactly what you want.  The second is the word “beast” meaning that you are creating something living and breathing, and connotes something that may be pissed off and ready to kick a little ass.  Isn’t this what you want with your company name?  Finally, I’ll touch on the first word “building”, which indicates there should be a process here, that one creates by putting things together constructively.  Now contrast that with the positioning of Business Name Guide.  While Business Name Guide certainly lets you know right away what its about, I want to pick it up and read it about as much as I want to pick up the manual to my camera.

Step 3 Name/Brand Development

Igor breaks down Names into four fundamental types

1. Functional / Descriptive Names  (Subway, International Business Machines)
2. Invented Names (Verizon, Accenture)
3. Experiential Names (Navigator, Safari, Explorer)
4. Evocative Names (Yahoo, Virgin, Apple)

To Igor, the distinction between Functional and Experiential is the emphasis on the consumer’s human experience not on what the product or company does.  Per Igor, the further distinction between Evocative and Experiential, is that it evokes the underlying positioning.  This delineation is flimsily explained here, but I think they do a better job in the name evaluation process to fully bake this out. I will say that Igor is a much more evocative name that businessnameguide.com.

Step 4 Trademark Prescreening of Names

Just as simple and boring as it sounds. Interestingly, the name “Building the Perfect Beast” is a borrowed name from a Don Henley solo album, and I thought his solo discography was limited to The End of the Innocence. So I’m guessing this name scored low on that category.

Step 5 Creative / Testing

Start pairing the suggested names with logos, etc, to see what each idea looks like fleshed out. I have yet to find a logo for the Building the Perfect Beast, though I did find many images of the Don Henley album cover “art”.

Step 6 Names and Taglines

Start pairing the suggested names with some Taglines. Intriguing that Building the Perfect Beast’s subtitle is The Igor Naming Guide, which is much more descriptive than evocative in nature. I suppose though at some point you have to be descriptive if you want to be picked up by a Google bot.

And voila! You have a name, or something…

Naming Tools

Or a set of names you want to score against one another. The first step for Igor is the naming process filters.  Let’s try it to see what the name invokes…

Building the Perfect Beast

• Says we’re crazy scientists like Dr. Frankenstein or David Banner
• Conservatives may be offended in that only God should be creating living things
• Don Henley fans (I assume they’re still out there, how else does The Eagles Greatest Hits stay at the top of the all times sales charts?  Full disclosure: I think I own that album, and The End of Innocence, though neither are on my iPhone, and I’m not sure I remember how to work a tape deck) may be offended that we ripped off the name of his album

Oh wait, that didn’t correlate at all, lets try that again understanding how the name correlates to the brand.

Building the Perfect Beast

• different, alive, exciting, process driven, perfect results, ready to kick some arse

OK we got through all that, we’re good right?  I’ll let the immortal Winston Wolf of Pulp Fiction fame address that.

Name Evaluation

This next step is where the engineer in me comes alive, its a ranking exercise.

The categories are pretty self-explanatory, but Igor has all the notes you need, including the 33 of Rolling Rock fame.

Finally there is a taxonomy exercise, where every the names are displayed across the four categories of name type above (Functional/Descriptive, Invented, Experiential, and Evocative) and then ranked by engagement levels from -2 to 5.  This last exercise is designed to help out ones understanding of the competitive landscape within a segment.  However, determining the engagement levels must be part of the Igor secret sauce, as they give little explanation around what makes a 5 vs. 4.  I’m guessing its all somewhat subjective, but that Igor has some rules they use when advising their clients.

So, when going through this great document, I found myself thinking about the name of this blog, Cosmic Wanderlust.  I chose the name, partly, as I used the name as a part of my signature in my personal emails.  “Still suffering from that cosmic wanderlust” would be the last words one read in an email from me.  I’ve been thinking though, how good of a name is it for this blog? So I reviewed it in the context of the categories.

Name Type: Evocative or Experiential – I’m not sure which, but its definitely not functional, nor did I invent either word.  To me the name is Evocative, in that brings out in me feelings of constantly needing to stretch ones boundaries, and wanting to see more places throughout the Universe and learn new insights.  To others it may be experiential, as people may think of the feeling of wanderlust, the need to travel.

Competitive Analysis – What is the competitive landscape for Cosmic Wanderlust?  Good question, I guess that all depends on how you define the competition.  Always define your market as narrow as possible initially.  So, how many blogs are there that review non-fiction books about design, economics, and marketing?  Well, I just did a search for those terms in Google.

Here are the competitors:

• Business Week Book Reviews – Not sure if they’re a competitor, as they’re not even really a blog, but they do have all the requisite book review categories, and they have the Business Week brand behind them.  I wonder what the crossover audience is?
• Brandthroposophy – Say that five times fast.  Heck say it one time slow.  It’s a mouthful.  Its also the blog of Robert Kozinets, dedicated to “Marketing, Social Media and Research”  Lots of entries on this blog, and not all of them are book reviews.  I must say though, I do like the ones that he has embedded from Slideshare, presumably from students in one of his classes.
• 800 CEO Read – Ah yes, remember when things were named after 800 numbers right before the internet took off?  It always seems quaint to me when I think of 800-Flowers.  They’re also in the business of selling books, I’m not sure I’m the same target, I think they’re a little broader than I am.
• Prepare and Share - Well, a different take for certain, but many of the same types of books I like to review.  Prepare and share I think has a good name, but apparently its also the name of one of the blog author’s, John Steinberg, books.

I could go on, but the internet is near infinite, at least until I pare down the types of books I review.  In terms of other naming aspects, I think I’m pretty well positioned against my competitors from a naming perspective.  It feels less corporate, and more whimsical, which is what I’m going for here.  In terms of trademarks, I have no idea, but then again I don’t really need it as I own the domain name.  I’ve never tried Cosmic Wanderlust with a tag line.  Hmm….

• Cosmic Wanderlust – Exploring the Cosmos of Knowledge
• Cosmic Wanderlust – Sure John Glenn is more qualified, but has he read The Black Swan?
• Cosmic Wanderlust – Self-awarely self-indulgent
• Cosmic Wanderlust – Blog on Books
• Cosmic Wanderlust – A journey shared

I see now why I don’t have a tagline for this blog.

Happy Naming

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