First of all, a company is a business entity, an instrument with a business model, whose primary purpose is to be profitable, bring profits to its shareholders, and make money. It is an entity that can be later sold, or abandoned when things go bad, or not as planned. A baby on the other hand is a human being, are you going to be making money off of it? or treat it as an investment that can be sold down the line? You are not going to abandon it if things go bad, right? It doesn’t matter if you give your baby a sucky name, your baby will love you just the same. A company on the other hand will not be so forgiving if you screw up.

A company needs, product/ service, a solid business model, a marketing plan, a great team to execute it, and a great name, a launch pad that is going to support the concept, and help to lodge it easily into people’s minds. That is why its okay to ask for outside help with naming your company, you don’t have to be THE creator of the brand name, because a company is not a baby, and naming a company is certainly NOT the same as naming a baby.

Of course there are no hard rules to naming, even if there were hard rules to follow, “the rules are more like guidelines” as Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbeans) once said:), and guidelines exist for good reasons, reasons which are based on user input, experience, and identifying naming trends.

So recommending to forget every articles ever written on naming and saying names don’t really matter and discounting the value of many companies whose sole business is “name development”, branding, domaining …. is borderline ignorance.

I believe those who say a choice of business name doesn’t really matter, simply miss-communicate their intent, my guess is that what they intend to say is “a good name alone” won’t bring you success. But saying it doesn’t matter is simply bad and misleading advice that is often given. This bad advise motivates many startups to just picking any company name haphazardly which often leads to undermining ones perceived credibility.

Every company creating a new name for their business should start by asking themselves questions like:

• Will this name give our company wings, or will it undermine our credibility?
• Am I creating this name for myself to bolster my ego, or for my customers, so they can easily find me, interact with me, and help spread my message.

A company name is one of the first and most important business decisions any company will ever make, because it will be the first thing every potential customer will see, always.

Here is a thought, a (domain) name is a brand name, an investment, a foundation on which your company will grow, and appreciate in value. If you are starting a new company you will invest considerable money in physical commodities like, computers, printer(s), office furniture, office space etc… All those things will eventually depreciate in value, however your brand name won’t, it will appreciate (if chosen carefully), that is why rebranding later on is so costly. Isn’t it smarter to invest money, time, effort, into something that will appreciate in value? Like your company’s (domain) name.

Saying a name doesn’t matter, is like telling a job seeker a resume doesn’t matter, because the resume itself will not get you a job, it’s like saying the way you present yourself doesn’t matter because a suite and tie alone won’t land you the job. Yes they won’t get you the job, but certainly they will increase your chances significantly if you treat them like they matter. And it is the same with names. Obvious stuff, right?

Names do matter, a lot more than one thinks.

The Number one enemy to naming your company is of course ones own ego, which unfortunately you can’t get away from, that is why I would recommend either buy a name from a professional, or hire them to develop one for you, if not just for their unbiased opinion / perspective.

Listen, just because one little screw is a fairly small part of an airplane’s jet engine, doesn’t mean the airplane is going to fly (for very long), if the little screw is not seamlessly integrated into the plane. The same way if a domain name is not carefully crafted, the company is not going to fly (for very long). Let’s look at a couple of examples of names we encountered recently that won’t fly very far.

1. www.waterfilters-camping-water-purifier.com
The owner asked, “Nearly 3000 clicks but only 2 sales, what is happening here?”

2. www.WeSellHomes-MotherDaughter.com - received this one in mail,
Here are some site visitor comments:
- “My Goodness, that’s a crappy domain name”
- “Yikes. They actually use that domain? No way!”
- “That looks as if it’s a ‘home-made’ hobbyist type site, and I doubt that is the image they wanted to portray. I wouldn’t feel confident buying a home from them”

Granted these are two extreme examples, but still how do you know yours isn’t part of that group, if you’re not in the naming business? Your Company Name (Domain) is the first thing people see and interact with, it’s the “first impression”, especially online. Do you really believe it is a minor part of the business?

Obvious, right?

So why do companies so often miss this shortcut? Before you make the domain name you’re going to make, find something (in the name) you want people to be reminded of. Or even better yet find a Name that they want to be reminded of (because its all abound them, not YOU, remember? bottom-up is the new top-down). Feel free to discard this model if you don’t want want to make a point (the ipod did not remind you of a Sony CD player), but discard it on purpose. If you’re writing a book, for example, your goal (probably) isn’t to reinvent what it means to be a book. You’re merely trying to reinvent the words and ideas. So when it comes to the Domain Name Jacket, steal relentlessly from insta-credibility names. Your audience will thank you, because when they can (remember you, reference you, refer you) more easily, it’s one less thing to process.

When in doubt, ask your colleagues, “what does this Domain Name remind you of?”

It also facilitates organic public evangelism by providing a concise destination for visitors to relate to other potential users. This means that the burden still rests on the domain developer to create a brand, build awareness and drive initial visits to the site. That said, a domain name is not a substitute for aptitude when paired with a dumb idea, a weak team or underinvested marketing initiatives.

The other advantage of a category-defining domain name is, and I say this with the benefit of experience, the defined potential it dictates when scouting for corporate development partnerships. Our portfolio company CEOs have consistently reported back that having the category-defining domain name gets them access to decision makers, almost without exception, for alliances, clients, or acquisition targets.

Rick Schwartz, explains why Natural Branding may be the simplest way to describe what a great domain brings to the table, and why Category Killer Domains are the perfect vehicles for Natural Branding.

Summary:

1. Memorability – its ability to lead customers back to it on subsequent visits.

2. Corporate Partnerships – its ability to develop stronger corporate partnerships, by leading you directly to decision makers.

3. Shortcut to Destination – its capacity to lead customers directly to its destination on the first visit.

4. Natural Branding – simplest way to explain the power of a good category killer domain name.

Because Naming is part of marketing it should not be done as an afterthought haphazardly by Tech Startup founders before a Marketing Team is formed. This is usually the case though because by definition bootstrapped startups do everything themselves, they are in incubation stage, they can’t afford a marketing department just yet. This is were namer.ca comes in, with pre-designed names. Name design and branding consultations are typically expensive that only large corporations can afford, due to necessary expertise and time costly process. We make branding affordable for startups by pre-packaging name designs.

Naming services might not look cheap, to a bootsrapping, cost-saving startup, but they are extremely cheap, when one considers the cost of wasted millions in advertising and opportunity cost in a struggle to brand a poor choice of a name.

The best Naming Process is conducted together with the help of naming specialists who understand marketing, branding, domain names, seo, ppc … who focus most of their attention on name design. The biggest advantage that naming specialists bring is their lack of the inherent industry bias. This bias that startup founders carry with them, precludes the necessary outside perspective, that is needed in creating a remarkable, marketable brand name.

Seth Godin, a Marketing Guru in his book Purple Cow, explains why Marketing should be Built-in as part of the business model and not something done to a Product\service as an after thought.

A Company’s Name is also an essential part of the built-in marketing message, that should help in communicating your marketing message, and should not work to its detriment as so many company names do. And since Naming is part of marketing, should it not be done by marketers, with help of marketing experts, or those who understand it? Many companies especially high-tech startups do not incorporate marketing until a later stage, and understandably this explains in part why so many bad company names are out there.

Why is it that sales professionals, seldom at loss of words in pursuing an order, so often seem unable to find the right ones when it comes to naming their businesses?

Few distributors—or suppliers, for that matter—would christen their businesses “We’re Just Like Everyone Else Promotional Products Co.” But that’s what the nameplates of so many firms seem to be saying.

Playing The Name Game
Your company name is your brand. Most companies want their brands to differentiate their firms from the competition. Do this and you have a better chance to match former soda pop baron Roberto Goizueta’s boast, which was essentially: Take everything away and just leave me the Coca-Cola trademark; I’ll still be able to raise billions. Hardly an exaggeration since the physical assets of Coke amount to about $24.5 billion—but the company’s brand value is estimated at a whopping $70 billion. Your firm’s corresponding figures may be slightly less, but you get the picture.

Despite the fixation on creativity, firms in advertising and marketing don’t seem to show any more imagination in naming than those in other industries. Consider these sparkling appellations of ad agency holding companies: Interpublic, Omnicom, WPP Group. Leave you bedazzled, don’t they?

“Well,” says Lisa Tollner, president of Cintara Corp., “That’s because ad agencies tend to be managed by financial people focused on big media budgets not creatives who may be more attentive to how they’re expressing their own brand.” Cintara, based in San Jose, California, is in the naming business—a growing industry because so many businesses are having trouble finding the right words.

The Name-It-After-Me Practice
Promotional products firms should pay more attention to naming, contends Hal Meyer, CEO of Naming Systems in Wakefield, Rhode Island. Since so many distributors operate at a transactional level, they need something in a name that distinguishes them from their competition. And this need for differentiation applies also to branding promotions and suppliers’ products.

For many distributors, differentiation means simply posting the owner’s name on the door. About 30 percent of distributorships are named after founders, either exactly or in a derivative form, including initials or the truncated combinations known as portmanteaus.

“We call those functional or descriptive names, which in general tend to have little value in all industries, although there are exceptions where they are appropriate,” explains Jay Jurisich, co-founder and creative direction of San Francisco-based Igor International. “With so many companies doing this, you completely disappear.”

These eponymous nameplates, the ones bearing the founder’s moniker, are often ego-driven. That’s understandable. My money, sweat and risk, my name on the marquee. An ancient tradition in much of the world, the name-after-me practice is not likely to disappear. But framing the company name in terms of your customer’s needs is better according to Jurisich. “If your company is named after you, then you’re automatically sending a message saying this business is all about us.”

And if you’re involved in an ownership change such as adding or dropping a partner, think about all the signage and letterheads that need to be changed.

Isn’t today’s economy all about your customers, so instead of making a name for yourself, why not make your company name for your clients? They will thank you for it.

AAAlphabet Soup
Another familiar naming convention is to get your company the best seating at the front of the yellow pages by prefacing the name with the letter A—or maybe two or three As for good measure.

Hackneyed as the practice may be, Hal Meyer doesn’t dismiss alphabet primacy as lacking merit. “If you have a good name that happens to start with an A, this could bump it up to a great name,” he claims. “But if you have a lousy name and it is prefixed with an A, you’re not going to save it. Phone and directory advertising are only part of the marketing mix.”

Case in point: Miningco.com was a popular website reference on various subjects but, says Meyer, “management recognized they never really got the branding right.” The new name, About.com, denoted the nature of the business, was shorter and easier to spell, and advanced the alphabetic positioning from M to A. The website advanced too—from around No. 80 to No. 8 in its category in terms of hits. “It’s probably one of the most successful rebrandings ever,” opines Meyer.

Descriptive Versus Symbolic
How important is it that the name state or denote the nature of the business? Does “promotional products” have to be in there somewhere?

Descriptive names are effective, but they often aren’t very creative, says Tollner. If a balance can’t be achieved, she suggests leaning less to descriptive names and instead to ones that are metaphorical or symbolic.

If you can find the right word or combination of them, you can convey the connecting image. With a name like FITS (UPIC: FIT00001), the Lenexa, Kansas-based supplier of uniforms has nicely encapsulated its product line. And Justin Case (UPIC: justinc), in Markham, Ontario, Canada, connotes that its line of first-aid and automobile safety kits are nice to have around—just in case.

It took all of about 10 minutes in 1984 to come up with a name for Phoenix-based distributor Commotion Promotions (UPIC: IDEASTAR), according to Karen Kravitz. She credits the name to her husband and partner, Ken. “It was his idea,” she declares. “We kind of make a little bit of fuss. We’ve always had a lot of energy, so I think that’s what we were trying to convey: this high level of energy, excitement about promotional pieces and enthusiasm about really being creative.”

The commotion connotation wasn’t lost on business prospects. “This really did help us get in the door with clients and generate that excitement,” reports Kravitz.

Innovative companies, Tollner observes, tend to pick names that are creative and then use tag lines to describe what they do. She elaborates: “Let’s say your company name is Breeze—just a generic word. Let’s say your products are all about making things easy and effortless, maybe because they are based on technology. You really want to leverage the concept of ease and the convenience and comfort factors for your customer. Do that and you could pair your company name, Breeze, with a tag line such as, ‘Technology that makes your life easier.’”

Since most distributors focus on a single business activity—promotional products—they don’t need ampersands to connect a stable of dissimilar enterprises like Bob Newhart’s comical Alice B. Ferguson Airline & Window Sash Co. Suppliers, however, often have a diversity of product types, and this presents an identity issue. But this can easily be addressed with the line name. The IRIS Companies (UPIC: IRISLTD) in Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, furnishes an example. IRIS (for Image Recording & Identification Systems) may be cryptic, but the supplier’s line name, Attachmentville, seems to be an apt descriptor for the badge holders, pet leashes and neck lanyards the company sells through distributors.

Merging Companies, Merging Words
Merger mania has spurred much of the demand for naming services. When two large West Coast distributors, Wood Associates and Made to Order, linked up, Cintara was called upon to find a name for the new company. After gaining input from management of the consolidating companies, Cintara concentrated on finding the right word to describe an organization in the business of brand building. Tollner and her associates proposed juxtaposing the verb brand, meaning “to make a mark or establish ownership” with via, from the Latin word for “way.” The result was Brandvia (UPIC: brandvia).

When the right word doesn’t pop up, some companies coin their own. Igor shies away from these neologisms, and Jurisich says he can think of only a few good ones, among them Kodak and Xerox. “They were done many years ago when there were fewer names, making them quite unique. Now so many people do this that they aren’t exceptional,” he says.

Made-up names have no positives or negatives; they are just neutral, Jurisich avers. “One way to get a made-up name to work for you,” he explains, “is to make sure it at least has a poetic sound, such as Oreo, or plays off known words or concepts, as Google does.”

In making naming recommendations, Jurisich says his company looks for words with cultural resonance—“the most conscious and unconscious collective myth, story or history behind them.” This gives you a head start on branding it in people’s heads, whereas neologisms are a blank slate “and you have to start from scratch to get people to remember,” he says.

But what about Jurisich’s firm, Igor—isn’t naming it after Frankenstein’s oddball assistant a little, well, quirky? Sure, the company co-founder admits, and some businesses consider names like this to be a negative.

Perceived negativity, however, doesn’t faze the namers at Igor. Actually, negativity is what gives a name life, Jurisich contends, and consumers never process those negatives. He cites retailer Banana Republic. “It’s one gross negative, a slam at small, third-world countries. There’s nothing positive about it. Yet, no consumer ever thinks this when they step in the storefront.”

Don’t worry about perceived negatives being taken out of context. Jurisich insists names are always in context. “And in a website or an ad,” he says, “it’s never in the abstract. This context allows you to frame the brand positioning.” He suggests that Igor, for example, could play off its monster-image association in advertising using tag lines such as “no job too horrifying” or “a few spare parts in a good storm.”

When Ron Padawer and Laura Forbes merged their distributorships in 2000, they held a contest and challenged employees of the Memphis, Tennessee-based firm to create an unusual name that signified “being different.” The result was Zebra Marketing Corp. (UPIC: ZEBRAMC), which has “When creativity counts” as one of its tag lines.

Zebra? “Well, there’s a medical term,” Padawer explains. “When scientists at St. Jude’s Hospital or other research hospitals are looking under a microscope and they see something that shouldn’t be there, or something that is an anomaly, they call it a zebra.”

Padawer thinks the name, like the conspicuously striped African horse it evokes, will be a durable one, not to mention easily remembered. “We could have picked something like Out of the Box, but that’s a trend; it’ll be here today and gone tomorrow.”

Trend Offend
Name durability is a consideration, because naming trends change rather quickly. Whimsical, made-up names, which branding authority David Aaker calls the “empty vase” or “blank canvas” approach, were popular during the 1990s, because these random-association handles could mean whatever companies chose them to mean. Such flexibility is valuable for companies spreading into non-related businesses. “But,” writes Alex Frankel in Business 2.0 magazine, “the problem with these meaningless names became clear as the number of companies adopting them grew. As more and more Accentures and Covisints dotted the landscape, it became harder for consumers to keep track of the differences between them.”

Hence, the current trend: real-word names that are simple, easy to spell and remember. Look no further than to the airlines. Today, people are flying carriers called Ted, Song and JetBlue.

If you insist on something faddish, Naming Systems’ Hal Meyer advises, “Try to start a fad so you’re the standard bearer.” He cites eBay. Being among the first out of the gate helped the online fixture make good, but most of the e-prefix copycats didn’t survive.

In the search for individuality, there is a danger in overcompensating. The desire to avoid pedestrian clichés often produces over-the-top or pretentiously cutesy names. “You don’t want your company name to be a joke,” cautions Meyer. “You want people to take it seriously, do business with you and speak highly of you. If it’s too cutesy, it’s not going to advance this objective.”

He acknowledges that, when created with some restraint, cutesy can work for you, and he points to Krispy Kreme. Affected as the name may be, the company sells a lot of doughnuts.

Then there’s Mickey Mouse—the sort-of-cute cartoon that works well for Disney in entertainment. But it probably wouldn’t work for a firm in the investment business. Tailor the name to the product or service, Meyer advises. “If it’s a mismatch, you’re going to have problems.”

Marks Of Distinction
In addition to the name, another aspect of corporate branding is the trademark. The importance organizations attach to their marks is not lost on promotional products companies. Imprint the client’s mark out of register or with the wrong PMS color, and you’re going to hear about it.

Some promotional products firms have their own marks—after all, they are in the logo business. But many do not. Nevertheless, few will dispute the value of a distinctive trademark.

Just as name choices can be ego-driven, trademarks can also indicate self-absorbed companies that focus on No. 1—when No. 1 isn’t the customer.

Jurisich singles out the financial industry “where you’ll see, alongside the company name, the images of a skyscraper with maybe a view from the boardroom of the city beyond, meant to show how big they are.” Other ubiquitous insignias are globes, maps, compasses. “One we often see in the advertising industry,” he declares, “is a coffee mug or a coffee pot meant to show that they’re all charged up and on the ball.”

At Commotion Promotions, management never gave much thought about adopting a logo. It took an experience with which distributors are all too familiar. The distributor invested a long stretch of time and talent into developing a campaign for a prospective client, after receiving assurance that the execution would not go out for bidding. So, prospects never lie? When this one did, Kravitz says she was not only “mortified” but also miffed at being dissed like a commodities vendor.

Her father had some advice. Since she considered her organization to be a creative house—attested to by an impressive array of PPAI Golden Pyramid awards—she needed to project the company’s work as art. He also recommended that she convey the idea that anybody can buy pricey canvas, paint and brushes but not everybody can use them like Picasso, Rembrandt or Degas.

“From that moment, we developed an entire marketing campaign for ourselves, and we use the tag line ‘The Art of Promotion.’ Our logo has a paint brush, kind of like a Disneyland, sparkling concept thing,” Kravitz declares.

Commotion Promotions applies its art-gallery theme to its website and print collateral. On first appointments, clients are given mini-painting kits to express the pitch, “Let us paint you a picture of who we are.”

With the graphic-design resources at their disposal, promotional products firms should be able to devise distinctive marks, registered or not, without breaking the bank. But do the research; make sure the mark is yours and yours alone. A number of years ago, NBC decided to bag the peacock. After spending millions to develop a replacement featuring the letter N, the red-faced network retracted it. Trademark infringement! cried the Nebraska public broadcasting system which earlier had, for a fraction of what NBC spent, created a similar design.

Competitive Analysis: Tag—Your Theme Is Not It
Picking a stand-out name would seem to be a congruous activity for firms engaged in creating tag lines for clients’ advertising and promotion campaigns. Perhaps the biggest difference is that company names are expected to stay aloft for awhile. Tag lines and campaign branding don’t need all that hang time, although some are so successful they have earned exceptional longevity. Campbell’s Soup has been “M’m! M’m! Good!” since 1935. Coffee drinkers first learned that Maxwell House is “Good to the last drop” in 1915.

In looking for a promotional products campaign theme or slogan, the answer to “What do we call this thing?” is often suggested by the merchandise. ’Fess up—who hasn’t advised a client: Let’s go with the box cutter, and along with your name we’ll silk-screen “A cut above the rest.” The ease in which relevant copy can be linked to the merchandise is one of the strengths of the medium. The result may not be original, but it works.

Keep in mind, however, that campaigns designed to generate enthusiasm can struggle if the creativity behind them is shopworn. Who hasn’t dredged for campaign themes and tag lines in ponds like sporting events and movie titles? Hence, all those promotions tagged “Go for the Gold,” “Back to the Future” or “Mission Impossible.” Obviously, a lot of distributors have seen the same flicks.

Commenting on theme-tag line naming, Jurisich observes: “In industry after industry, 90 percent of the companies are saying the same things to the same people in the same way. The first thing we do in any project is map out the names, tag lines and primary messaging of all the competitors to show the client where everybody is. These are all areas where we don’t want to go because everyone has already done it, and you’ll just disappear.”

This is the last thing suppliers want for the new products they introduce to distributors. Names can enhance marketability, and often the right name does come along.

Sometimes it pays to listen to mom. A business operated by Tom Blundell’s folks marketed a stuffed doll that never became a hot seller. In 1979, Blundell’s supplier firm, Bipo Inc., Oklahoma City, introduced a fuzzy pompon character to the promotional products industry. “What do we call this thing?” wondered Blundell. His mother suggested resurrecting the name of the doll. Blundell recalls, “It looks like a little person. You have the hands and the feet and you squash the body out of it. We thought, well, why not?”

Thus one of the best sellers of that year and many more to come was launched—the Weepul. Blundell figured the little-people stick-on would only be a flash in the pan, “but it just got a life to it, and it still isn’t ready to die.”

Making A Name Change
Unless reformulated, products usually die with the same name with which they were christened. Should the company name also be immutable? You may be comfortable with your business’ long-standing name and confident that your customers recognize it. So why change?

Tollner says that depends on what you think the name change would bring to your company’s value. She claims 50 percent of her clients are firms with established names. “What happens,” she explains, “is their market or capabilities have changed, or there are major shifts in the direction the new leadership is taking the company.”

Tradition is an obstacle many business owners can’t get past, even when to do so is in their own best interests. The typical status quo defense: We’ve had this name 50 years. Why should we change?

“People say this all the time,” reports Meyer. “The biggest regret most of these companies have, once they change names, is they didn’t do it sooner.”

Suppose the day comes when you feel the need to embark on a name search. What do you do—gather some of your colleagues and ask them to submit lists of their top 10?

Not surprisingly, naming professionals tend to discourage this. “A lot of companies think naming is a pretty casual thing that almost any middle manager can do. A lot of marketing flops show this is not the case,” contends Meyer. In-house naming searches can experience a number of problems, among them “political logjams” caused by factions with contending preferences. “Sometimes the name that has the most merit doesn’t get picked,” he says.

Naming agencies, Tollner explains, use methods that permit them to explore a broader, more diverse range of possibilities. Many naming agencies have their own versions of the three-step process Cintara uses:

Research. Input is solicited from client management to ascertain their vision of the organization and the primary impressions they want to convey.

Name generation. Here naming teams examine perhaps thousands of words and word roots, which are not necessarily restricted to English.

Trademark research.

There is also naming software on the market that enables do-it-yourselfers to crank out name possibilities to their heart’s content. But this option doesn’t impress Meyer. “You can get a lot of stones” he says, but that doesn’t help you “separate the glass from the diamonds.”

If asked, naming agencies may differ as to the kind of handle they would recommend for your company, but there are some precepts upon most would agree:

Short is better than long.

Easy to spell is essential.

Memorability versus the head scratcher is a no-brainer.

Clarity beats ambiguity.

Relevance is not bad.

A one-of-a-kind trumps me-too every time.

Tollner adds a couple of guidelines for the process. Do the legal research, she advises. Naming professionals or trademark attorneys can be invaluable here. One thing more: keep an open mind, she urges, and have the courage to break new ground.

A NAMING TAXONOMY

Functional/Descriptive Names. Functional names are purely descriptive of what a company or product does.

Invented Names. There are two kinds of invented, as in made-up, names: those that are built upon Greek or Latin roots, and those poetic constructions that are based on rhythm and the experience of saying them.

Experiential Names. Experiential names offer a direct connection to something real, to a part of direct human experience.

Evocative Names. These names are designed to evoke the positioning of a company or product rather than the goods and services or the experience of the goods or services.

Premium Acronyms. A new emerging name design trend, not widely copied yet due to its novelty. It is principled on bottom-up approach which makes it something almost everyone can relate to, and hence positions a company as easily memorable, yet short and catchy with empty-vessel benefits. Almost an all-in-one, perfect company name.

14 COMMANDMENTS OF NAMING

1. Think Big. Even if you are planning a local business, plan for your future, which can include national and global expansion.

2. Avoid “Me Too.” The point of marketing is to stand out and be different. Copycat schemes don’t deliver.

3. Keep it simple.

4. Make it memorable.

5. Design a Visually Appealing name – Remember First Impressions Count.

6. All things being equal, an alphabetically desirable name helps—a lot.

7. Watch out for undesirable connotations, both in English and other languages.

8. Watch out for trademarks that belong to other entities.

9. Try to connote what you do or offer as well as the nature of your product/service.

10. Get outside viewpoints from professional namers.

11. Allow yourself the possibility of imperfection, and consider the opinions of consumers and focus groups. Allow yourself the freedom and right to re-name or replace obsolete names.

12. Own your countries ccTLD (.ca, .co.uk, .de,…) domain extension of the name.

13. Consider Usability – user name experience on the Internet and other mobile devices (example: iPhone).

14. Don’t underestimate the value of a good name, (domain name)!

Sources:

- From Promotional Products Business magazine
What’s In A Name? By Rick Ebel, Issue: 2005NOV
- Hal Meyer, CEO of Naming Systems
- Cintara Corp, San Jose California

That is an interesting point, and a fine example of selling based on fear.

Securing Brands may have been appropriate in the past, but is it productive today? Is there really a need to secure your own brand? Can You really secure your brand on all existing and exponentially growing media platforms? Is the the cost of trying to secure your brand and control how its used worth the effort? Can an unsecured brand be actually more valuable than a secured brand?

Not only is it becoming an impossible task to secure brands, with new ways of communication emerging everyday at exponential rate, but also i would argue it is ridiculous and counterproductive. The same goes for trademarking etc … the only true way to secure your own brand, or trademark is to own its domain name, that is the one thing you can realistically control, and which is worth controlling. Domain Name trading, that is buying, and selling is the most efficient and cost effective system of trademarking.

Why shouldn’t you secure a brand?
Because you don’t want to control the conversation. An uncontrolled conversation is more valuable. It gives you real feed back about your brand, good and bad.

When someone uses your brand name for purposes other than the originator conceived of that is a good thing. They become an unintentional marketer for your brand, a creative marketer, this type of marketer, self-motivated marketer working for you, out of self-interest is much more valuable.

Imposter or jokesters will take over your name? In today’s attention economy, isn’t any publicity good publicity?

Why focus on the fear of negative outcomes, just as well the imposter could be your brands number # 1 fan, a sneaser spreading your ideas virally.

You will have both types of sneasers ofcourse , but guess which type people will remember more?

Let go of control and fear, and you will reap benefits greater than you have ever imagined. One simple example is the authors of CC (Creative Commons) work on flickr vs Copyrighted. Guess who gets more credits, traffick and fame?

• “From an offline marketing standpoint, shorter URLs are easier to promote in postcards and in classified ads — and they also pull better online than longer URLs. See for yourself.” – SearchEngineExperts.com

• “This is the truth we’ve almost doubled our sales with a simple name change. It’s amazing” – PearseStreet.com

• “Very true. Folks that think a name doesn’t matter are the same people that dress like dorks and think they’re cool.” – PushingEnvelope.com

• “In 1969 while speaking at a small scientific conference, Sir Roger Penrose, a Cambridge physicist announced his discovery of what he called a ‘gravitationally totally collapsed object.’ The world yawned.

  “Months later, he changed his description to a ‘Black Hole’ and the news of his discovery raced around the world. Today, the term Black Hole is a part of the world’s working vocabulary.

  “What is the difference between a ‘gravitationally totally collapsed object’
  and a ‘Black Hole?’

  “To us, everything.

  “We can’t understand, nor do we care about a collapsed object. But a Black Hole is something very different. It is provocative, intriguing, exciting, and conceptual. Most important, it is believable.

  “If someone tells you that a name really doesn’t matter, tell them about a Black Hole. Tell them that a name does matter.” – Lexicon-Branding.com

• What’s in a name, but WTF is Wallop ? … they could have survived if they would have come up with better name - anonymous

Any new business startup, or a product marketing campaign launch, based in Canada will need to make the following decision in regards to their online visibility. More specifically which domain extension to choose for their internet presence, .ca or .com?

TOP 9 13 REASONS for CHOOSING .ca

[1] Marketing Advantage

There are over 77 million .com domains registered, compare that to just over 1 million .ca domains. While .com’s strength lies in numbers and popularity, this fact is also its greatest weakness. There is a reason why many believe “all the good ones are taken”, this is because most of them are taken. Now you might still be able to find a name registrable name that is respectable to you, most likely you will be picking a brandable name of secondary quality, degrading your ideal first pick for the sake of .com extension, and in doing so you are blending yourself with 77 million other equally brandable names. After which you will burn millions of dollars in advertising and effort in order to make yours somewhat distinguishable. However in this sea of meaningless hard to remember names lies your opportunity to stand out in an easier, less expensive way, with a short, memorable, .ca domain.

While in the current market conditions your .ca domain will command only a fraction of the .com’s resale value, as can bee seen in the top 100 .ca sales vs top 100 .com sales. This resale value should not be a deciding factor for most businesses. The Canadian extensions value and those of other ccTLDs lies in its differentiability, in its ability to standing out from the crowd. You’ve probably heard by now the saying if you try to appeal to everyone you end-up appealing to very few.

See a few domain examples of how dot-ca and other ccTLD sites are already doing it. Which one would your customers prefer springrolls.ca or springrollsonline.com ?

Domain Registrations Count:
————————————-
1,072,120 .ca domains registered
77,007,000 .com domains registered

Compare 1 million .ca domains against 77 million .com domains, that are currently registered, then ask yourself which extension is crowded? There is 1 .ca domain for every 77 .com domains. Which one do you think will make it easier for you to stand out from the crowd?

[2] Purchase Price

$14,855 is the average price of top 100 .ca domains sold

$300,682 is is the average price of top 100 .com domains sold so far in 2008

A premium Quality .ca domain that is going to be easily remembered by your customers is simply much more affordable than a medium quality .com

[3] Reach Canadian Audience

Canada is one of the world’s most wired nations and early-adopters of new technology. Canadians continue to use the Internet for personal and business reasons in ever increasing numbers.

When running a campaign that targets specifically the Canadian marketplace,
running on a .ca domain, will give you a competitive advantage. A dot-ca website will tell people that your website is proudly Canadian, that is why over 75% of Canadians prefer to shop on a dot-ca websites. Canadians ordered $5 billion worth of goods online in 2005 and 63% of these were with Canadian vendors. This means that for every $100 spent by Canadian adults on-line during 2005, $63 was spent with Canadian vendors. Reach this valuable target market with a dot-ca domain and get a piece of the pie.

Population Facts:
—————————————————————-
Canada has approximately 1/10th of the population of the USA

Canada: 30,000,000
USA: 300,000,000

For more information go to www.onemilliondomains.ca

[4] Insta-Credibility and G7 Economy

Canada is part of the G7 economic group.
With world’s 9th largest economy.

This fact alone has a positive impact on the way your domain extension is perceived. Dot .ca is not an obscure domain extension, it stands for Canada, from Canada, Canadian Quality, as a result it carries a higher level of trust value than lets say a .cc from cocos islands. Why not use Canada’s prominence to your advantage.

Alternatively you can opt-out for a more anonymous .com, although this strategy has its own benefits, it makes your company’s image less transparent to an internaut, to whom it is not immediately clear whether you are operating from a shady part of the world or not.

[5] Ambassador of .CAnada

If you are not convinced yet, that .ca might be a better choice for you.
Perhaps you might want to do it for your kids, register a .ca domain for a better future of Canadians.

By running your business on a .ca Canadian brand, you are unofficial Canada’s ambassador and marketer, promoting Canada globally on the internet. If your business offers a reputable product or service, you are increasing not only the value of your own brand but also the Canada’s brand value for all Canadians, and global customers.

The benefits of your work and positive reputation not only impact directly your business name but also Canada’s image, thereby increasing Canada’s brand value in the eye of global consumers. This of course trickles down to Canadian based businesses of today and the future, albeit in small but nevertheless meaningful way. With a .ca you are not just a drop in the ocean, you are part of the Canadian brand. Ask not what Canada can do for you, but what you can do for Canada.

[6] Value and Benefits of ccTLD’s

What are Others Saying?
————————-
Don’t just take our word for it, let’s see
what others are saying? about .ca and ccTLD’s

“In the domain world, the .com domains are among the most sought after domains on the market”

“However, the popularity of Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) such as .ca and .cn have been gaining strength in the domain market”
“So what is causing the boom in ccTLDs? Well, unlike the .com, these ccTLDs like the .ca and the .cn seem to be attracting more end users. These ccTLDs can provide geo-targeted and often times exclusive traffic, which is a benefit the .com doesn’t boast on its resume.

The popularity of ccTLDs is not limited to the .ca and the .cn. In all, the ccTLD registrations grew to about 51.5 million in the past year. At this rate we should be expecting to celebrate more milestones in the near future. ”
- Joe Palombo, Key Accounts Manager, SEDO

“The ccTLD brands a domain with a cultural identity and National Identity.
Choosing the appropriate ccTLD is akin to using a country’s national language in advertising.”
- Freddy Schiwek, EuroDNS.com

“I wish I had taken ccTLD’s more seriously. I think this is especially true for those of us that resell our names. While I was in Spain this summer, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the small and medium businesses I saw had .es ccTLDs. Many large companies marketed ccTLDs locally as well. If only I had registered 100,000 of them to sell at 1000-10,000 Euros a piece!

The Domain In Spain Falls Mainly On The .es Extension

Instead I sat there comfortably fooling myself that .com was all that would ever matter.

More than anything I like the ccTLD names and I’m kicking myself in the ass for not having more of them.

We are noticing it is easier to get a website ranked in Google.ccTLD if you have domain.ccTLD. In other words, Our aeiou.com customers are reporting higher traffic on their ccTLD names from the respective countries.”

- Rick Latona

“I have always liked ccTLDs and with Internet penetration having now reached critical mass, allowing people to find a local provider of just about any product or service online, the various local ccTLDS are more attractive than ever. Over the past year or two I’ve noticed an increasing number of aftermarket sales for .es (Spain), .fr (France), .ca (Canada) and many others (along with the long-time .de and .co.uk powerhouses).

As an American, if I cannot get the term I want in .com, I see .us as my next best option. Unlike .net (which would be most people’s preferred alternative) the .us extension imparts a valuable message in the domain name by telling surfers where you are based. Many countries have looked to their local ccTLD first because they want to buy locally and there is also an aspect of national pride there. To a large degree, people around the world are the same, so I think Americans – when increasingly forced to look for an alternative to .com due to the scarcity and expense of names in the gold standard extension – will increasingly give serious consideration to their .us extension.”
- Ron Jackson, DNJournal.com

[7] FREE Privacy Protection

Thanks to Jeffrey Behrendt and his interview on Canadian Domain Law, with Zak Muscovitch, Canada’s Leading domain lawyer, we get a glance on how the Law in Canada might make .ca domain names more valuable.

[8] Privacy Policy Free of Charge

While many domain registration entities nickle and dime you for protecting your privacy. Canadian Internet Registration Authority, gives you this option at no charge.
CIRA privacy policy

[9] is .com really Global?

The global presence argument still misguides many new Canadian start-ups. Many of them register a cocktail of hard to remember characters in the .com extension as their domain name, because they are misinformed by the “it must be .com argument”, (although this is becoming less common). This happens regardless whether they are international corporations or not, they want to have a global presence or be seen as a global company. Who doesn’t? and why limit yourself to only local Canadian market right? But is it really true that having a .com domain gives you automatically global presence\reach, while .ca is a sentence to provincialism?

We do not think so. We believe that in the marketing arena, the benefits of a short, memorable, easy to type, and hard to misspell premium .ca name, far out weight any benefits of a medium quality empty vessel .com domain. Our advise is don’t settle for mediocrity when the .com you really want is either taken, or out of reach financially. Consider a premium .ca, establish a presence, and after your business takes off and you really want a .com, it will be more affordable to you then. Look at sedo.com as an example, a German company in the domain aftermarket business, they started from the German country code .de as sedo.de, later to acquire sedo.com

In making a naming decision One has to remind oneself, is it really about you or is it about your customer, if it’s about your customer then don’t you want to give them a name that they can easily remember and experience (remember they are going to type it in on a daily basis, on their iPhones, Blackberries …) isn’t that the purpose of the name after all. Also don’t forget your marketing team, and give them a charismatic name to work with.

If you area tech startup, most likely you will be in need of funding, which means pitching presentations to Venture Capitalists. Put yourself in VC’s shoes for a second, venture capitalists see hundreds of pitches, the first thing they see is your company name, most of which are horrible and easily forgettable, since naming is a type of creative process that is not a natural fit with talented people from the technical field. Making a pitch under a memorable name, makes you stand out and thus makes the VC more receptive of your business plan idea, and puts your company automatically in a more advantageous position. This is easier done with a dot-ca of course.

Given the option of a premium .ca and a mediocre .com, is the choice starting to look more clear?

“dmitri says:

Travel helps, but it is not really necessary to travel to understand the value of ccTLDs. Open Financial Times (readily available anywhere in the US), what do you see? Sure, some .coms here and there, but mostly co.uk and org.uk! And lately – .tv. (From what I hear from my British friends, tv is advertised left and right in the UK).
In Russia, com is virtually non-existent. .ru is king (or czar, if you will), with .net (for whatever reason) in the second place. When I mention .com, people stare at me – what’s that supposed to mean? No kidding.
Bottomline – com is mostly an American thing, not even global.”

[10] Better Ranking on Google
It is no secret that your website will rank higher organically on Google Search Result Pages for people searching in Canada or on Google.ca. For internet users searching in Canada, Google will automatically redirect you to Google.ca, unless you explicitly specify you want to search on Google.com.

For examples of how .ca websites rank higher, you can test this out quickly yourself. Any local or national business running on .ca with moderate rankings will show this.
Search for the term “Namer” on Google.ca and you will see our site Namer.ca on first page, while on Google.com we will show slightly lower, due to a more competitive landscape, we suppose.

[11] TV Advertising => Increasing Mindshare

If you watch closely most commercials and TV ads in Canada nowadays showcase company domain names with the .ca extension. You might still see an occasional .com but it’s getting rarer and rarer.

What this means for any business registered in Canada is that companies are spending billions of dollars on advertising, promoting the .ca on tv, in print, online, …in short everywhere. This means if your company runs on .ca it is getting free prime time exposure, its mindshare is increasing while the early adopted .com is decreasing, and in the future will be perceived as odd and less trustworthy when compared to its .ca counterpart’s, at least in Canada. Although this trend is arriving late compared to a higher .co.uk saturation in United Kingdom, and .de in Germany, nevertheless it has arrived in Canada as well.

Don’t believe me? Just read, Is .ca the domain extension of choice for businesses operating in Canada?

[12] SEO Benefits
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Internet Marketers understand how to rank, and dominate in the search engines like google. One of the SEO techniques you will learn from them is the importance of “having the right and relevant anchor text people use when linking to your website”, the anchor text is the keyword(s) you want to rank well for. Having the exact keyword domain allows you to influence the anchor text people use when linking to you, indirectly and naturally without asking for it. This is a huge advantage.

And of course it is still relatively easy to obtain exact match domain names in the .ca extension at affordable prices, you have been warned, get them while you still can.

[13] Canada Ranks 2nd as a World Brand

“Global credentials of such magnitude are a tremendous boost to the reputation of Canadian businesses. So if you have a Canadian based business that provides goods and services internationally, don’t be shy to say “made in Canada”. Much like an athlete flaunting his or her endorsements, post it on your website and marketing material, say it proudly and show it off.” – Ezra Silverton from 9thSphere.com