When we started, we didn’t have a company or website name. But we needed one, and we needed one fast. So as we went through the day-to-day process of designing and implementing our first application, we had to divert some of our time to coming up with a brand identity.
How hard could that be? The World Wide Web was our oyster and we had an ocean filled with possibilities! We were filled with boundless enthusiasm, and felt that settling on a name and staking a claim on a domain would only take a few hours. Days at most.
We started by brainstorming the concepts that encapsulate our products and our philosophy. We then wrote down common words that succinctly described those concepts. Our list turned out to have dozens of words and phrases. We felt a few of them were excellent and we put them on the top of our list, but we also felt comfortable with our myriad of backup names.
As we plugged in those names into our website provider to see which were available, we were in for a big surprise: All the names were taken!
How disappointing! They were all taken, except for a couple names that weren’t taken but were already used by entities on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites.
We were disillusioned to find that most of the oysters were already open with their pearls long gone, and others were closed and wouldn’t open unless we paid through the nose. For example, MindOverMatter.com was taken by a Quantech, an ‘instrumental biocommunication’ company. MoodMinder is a rock band, who uses that name in MySpace and Twitter. iMinder is not being used, but is owned by an entrepreneur who hopes to sell it for profit.
We found out the hard way, what marketers and advertisers have known for a long time:
- Your company and website name is your “Brand” – it is the identity your customers and the public have of you and your company.
It is no accident that McDonalds, Pepsi, Disney and Oprah all have unique names that also conjure up strong, positive feelings in millions or even billions of people. Its not enough to have a quality product; you have to sell it and spin it; you have to show you are trustworthy, and you have to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
- Long website names are cumbersome, hard to remember, hard to spell and should be avoided.
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.co.uk is a fun site, where the awkwardness of the name is part of the novelty. Average users won’t be able to spell it on their own without a link, much less talk about it to their friends.
- Along the same lines, short names are better.
Think “Yahoo” or “Nike” or “3M.” Brief and sweet. Easy to remember. Less chances to be misspelled. Uses less ink.
- All the best, common and short names have been taken.
What? The best names are already taken? Well, of course. If there’s a good name, someone has thought of it and reserved it. But popular may not translate into memorable or unique. We found that “Wellness.com” was taken, but really, thank goodness! The word wellness is too generic and too widely used in everyday speech to be cultivate a brand identity around. Better to come up with a name from scratch…
Consider Google which is loosely based on Googol- a word that connotes a mind-bogglingly large number. As mentioned above, fresh names are blank canvases for you to paint any identity you want. Facebook is a new word made of two familiar words, each of which are common eand simple concepts. It’s like an address book and a yearbook, with the faces of all your friends! Brand names like Acura and Lexus are totally made-up names that seem futuristic and exciting, and competitors can’t try to mimic those names without sounding like a cheap imitation (Hey buddy, want a Macura? Howabout a Blexus?).
Don’t go to far, though. Funky names like GCQO0oD, Ili1iy or Sssczzsh are hard to remember or spell, and more importantly, they are too vague for users to pin feelings on.
In the end, we had to incubate our own ideas and come up with a pearl of our own. We’ll get into that story soon…
Many of you have been wondering what has happened to Moodifi recently. There was a compatibility issue that prevented it from running in iOS4. And unfortunately our programmer has moved on to bigger and better things.
Moodifi
