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When Buzzword run Naming Workshops for clients, we often throw the opening statement to floor. Does it really matter what you’re called? Aren’t you still who you are? Won’t you still do what you do? Does anyone really care? Or as Shakespeare famously put it, wouldn’t “a rose by any other name smell as sweet?”

The correct answer is that when it comes to naming products, services or companies that, no, it definitely wouldn’t. Your name is the single most important element of your brand strategy, so it’s vital to get it right. The most powerful names underpin brand position and create a lasting connection.

So our Naming Workshops begin by helping the client’s internal naming team to articulate everything about their brand, where it’s been, where it’s going and its position within the competitive landscape. From there we’ll help them hone their brand position, because the more refined the position, the more nuanced the new name will be.

Our goal is to create names which liberate companies, products and services from their traditional industry values and allow them to breathe. Blending in is never considered to be an option.

Naming new companies or renaming existing ones is typically the most challenging because the stakes are higher. Products and services come and go but when the entire identity of a company is being determined, its very existence could be on the line.

The first priority is to determine who, within your company will be part of your internal naming team. Too many and the process will break down, with too many irrelevant ideas and opinions which will result in a lowest common denominator name, which inspires no-one. The optimal number is three.

In the final stages of the workshop, we help our clients understand how to handle internal politics diplomatically, to make sure that everyone in the company feels that they have made a contribution to the naming process.

The next step is to present the potential new name to company employees logically, making a strong business and positioning case for it. The final step is often the most difficult. Once the case for the name has been made, the naming team must act with complete and utter confidence and declare unequivocally that this is the new company name, cutting off all debate… after all they’re even ahead of Shakespeare on this one.