Ok so I've come up with a half dozen brand names for a product that I'm developed, and I want to find a method to pick the best one. Of course I can ask friends and family, but beyond that are there any ways to run it by many people quickly and cheaply? Any ideas are really welcomed!
If it's for a product, I say start with the name that most clearly communicates what it is that the product helps with / problem it solves. Think "Can Opener". That's the kind of name you want for your brand or product to start. Even the big brands started out more specific... McDondald's was "McDonald's Hamburgers" for a very long time before removing the Hamburgers. Apple was "Apple Computers Inc" a long time as well.<p>When you are small you have to be more specific because you have a lower number of impressions ( chances to talk to your potential customers ) and you need to make sure you are sending the right message. The big brands can afford to put their message in more places, so they can be more abstract. Small brands don't have that luxury.
Make sure there are no live trademarks associated with the name. Also, go for a natural sounding made up name and avoid combining common dictionary words, it's more defensible that way. Use the wordoid tool for this purpose.
I guess what I'm wondering is if I follow those suggestions and I end up with maybe 3 candidates, how do I select between the 3? The obvious answer is to ask friends and family and then ask facebook friends. Beyond that though, was wondering if there might be another way of picking a winner.<p>Also:
1. Thanks for your comments people - genuinely appreciated
2. Wordoid is awesome! Never seen it before, but its a lot of fun! Will certainly play around with it
3. Yeah, I'm ruling out anything that doesn't have a free .com domain name (twitter handle gets bonus marks!)
Write it down. Does it look nice?<p>Is it easy to type?<p>Is the spelling obvious?<p>Is it easy to pronounce?<p>Does it explain something?<p>Does it sound similar to something else? If so, is this a good thing?
Besides the obvious (lignuist's post is good)<p>One thing my friend did with naming his service was to ask his friends about the names. Two weeks later he called them back up and asked: What was the name of the service I asked you to name? He overwhelmingly got 1 answer that they could remember.
I used Amazon Mechanical Turk to run a multiple choice survey. That got me several hundred opinions in a day or so. (Make sure you have the domain reserved first, just in case.)
It is fairly easy, even if you haven't done it before.