When names optimize for just one thing

What happens when you focus on one aspect of the name at the expense of others? Amazon Marketplace shows us.

When we have a long list of things to do, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So we ask ourselves, what’s most important to us RIGHT NOW?

That’s a great way to tackle a tough home-cleaning project. But similar to only tidying the living room at the expense of doing a kitchen deep clean, things are gonna start to stink. (Do we like this metaphor?)

Side note: April’s class focus is the Art of Naming—learn tons and tons of ways to come up with creative naming ideas. Join me in class!

Where it can go wrong

My criteria for a successful name (1. It does the job it was designed to do 2. It respects its audiences and 3. It’s free of major baggage) requires that all three elements get green lights (or three white lights, if we prefer a powerlifting metaphor, which I do).

Too much focus on a functional goal can lead to names that are, very often, ugly. The easiest way to illustrate this point is to show you names that only do the job of getting a brand onto Amazon Marketplace.

The Amazon Marketplace-ization of product brand names

To sell on Amazon, "Brands must have a pending or registered and active text-based or image-based trademark."

If you are only interested in selling a product on Amazon Marketplace, and not in developing a brand that you can nurture and grow over time, then you might start your naming exploration with a single goal: Find a name that you can trademark.

I check thousands of names, and sometimes tens of thousands of names, every year for matches in trademark databases; I know how impossible it can feel to land ones that sound nice, and say something you'd like them to say.

So rather than go through the pain of developing creative criteria for your brand’s name, you go the more efficient route: What kinds of names are very unlikely to be already claimed as trademarks?

The answer: Really awkward ones.

My favorite Amazon Marketplace names

Random letter combos

The fastest way to create a name for Amazon Marketplace is to press your keyboard, hard, with a couple parts of your hand and at the same time.

• CSQDFBHD (I bought these pants but I couldn’t possibly tell someone else the brand’s name by remembering it.)

• KITBRHOME (I could generously guess that this is meant to mean kitchen, bedroom, home.)

It seems like it’s in a language, but it’s not one I can pinpoint

• Pmsanzay (They seem to specialize in hooks and chains, which I wouldn’t have guessed from the name. But I wouldn’t have guessed ANYTHING from the name.)

• Sthmeyue (Bless you!)

Coin a familiar word, but not in a way that adds to my understanding

Yougfin (While this was probably chosen as a random enough combination of word parts to clear trademark and search hurdles, it looks like a misspelling of Youngfin. Not that I know what a Youngfin is.)  

Saygoer (It almost cues a saying like “So it goes” or “Say it ain’t so” but it doesn’t quite do either. I don’t hate this one, because it’s nice enough to say, while not saying anything.)

Evoke a style of name, without the substance

STACEGEELE (You could be maybe believe this was a designer’s name?)

ZEBAEXF (I see “bae” in there so my guess it’s meant to cue you, indirectly, to the category of women’s clothes.)

LOONBELIRO (I won’t link this one because it’s primarily sex toys of questionable quality, but it’s a fabulously abstract name with a little bit of flair to it.)

Does it matter?

I don't fault brands that run with the first name that will get them a trademark and into a marketplace where they can finally start selling. And I don't know much about the typical product and sales strategy of a lot of these brands; many seem to be selling on price rather than brand building anyway.

But I wonder how those names might hold some of them back. What if they wanted to expand into new channels? How would these names land on, say, supermarket shelves? In boutiques? As a DTC brand name trying to build relationships with consumers?

They're not prioritizing their audience's needs, in the sense that they usually don't say anything at all to their audiences. Many of them are so hard to pronounce you'd never be able to recommend them to a friend.

And while they might be free of trademark baggage (I wonder how many manage to just put in an application, show their registration is pending, and start selling until their application is rejected...), they are unlikely to have done much other due diligence: linguistic checks, desktop searches, etc. And the result is names that few of us have relationships with beyond a single transaction.

Learn more about this, and other ways to set your next naming project up for success, at an upcoming Naming for Everyone class!

Happy naming!

Caitlin

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