The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick by Alexandra Watkins

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick by Alexandra Watkins https://amzn.to/3MrRlDU Named a "Top 10 Branding Book by Branding Journal," and a "Top 10 Marketing Book" by Inc. Magazine, this is the ultimate guide to naming your product or business. The completely revised second edition has been updated throughout with twice as many resources as before, new stories (of both hits and flops), and an entirely new chapter on the power of names in the workplace. Too many new companies and products have names that look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game (Xobni, Svbtle, Doostang). In this entertaining and engaging book, ace-naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone--even noncreative types--can create memorable and effective brand names. No degree in linguistics required. The heart of the book is Watkins's proven SMILE and SCRATCH Test. A great name makes you SMILE because it is Suggestive--evokes something about your brand; is Memorable--makes an association with the familiar; uses Imagery--aids memory through evocative visuals; has Legs--lends itself to a theme for extended mileage; and is Emotional--moves people. A bad name, on the other hand, makes you SCRATCH your head because it is Spelling challenged--looks like a typo; is a Copycat--similar to competitors' names; is Restrictive--limits future growth; is Annoying--seems forced and frustrates customers; is Tame--feels flat, merely descriptive, and uninspired; suffers from the Curse of Knowledge--speaks only to insiders; and is Hard to pronounce--confuses and distances customers. This 50 percent-new second edition has double the number of brainstorming tools and techniques, even more secrets and strategies to nab an available domain name, a brand-new chapter on how companies are using creative names around the office to add personality to everything from cafeterias to conference rooms, and much more.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everyone, please sit down. Please sit down. There's no one in the audience.

It's just an audio, Chris. Who are you fooling? No one. But it sounds good. Anyway, guys, be sure to, as always, share the show with your friends and relatives. You know, sharing is caring. I mean, if you have a family and do you really care about them? If you haven't shared the Chris Voss show is you got to love the guilting. And this is what

we call the guilting and shaming part of the show, or some people call it ads. So we're over there on Tik TOK. Now we're trying to get cool on Tik TOK. It's not working so far and probably never will, but we're, we're getting a smidgen of cool is that like something you can buy that's what i do when i say to the grocer or the butcher i just give me a smidgen of beef i don't know what a smidgen is i don't think anyone knows what it is but maybe that's the whole point of it anyway refer to show your family friends and relatives youtube.com for just christmas goodreads.com for just christmas where else the linkedin the big 130 000 linkedin group the newsletter on linkedin and of course

follow us on tiktok and try and help us be cool someone slightly entertaining thank you open for giving us the smile there today we have an amazing guest on the show and she's the author of an amazing book hello my name is awesome how to create brand names that stick wait i thought that was my opening line at pickup the bars alexandra walkins is on the show with us today she's gonna be talking to us about her book how she brands and some of the amazing things that she does she is the chief executive boss lady of eat my words i think that was isn't that my biography alexandra walkkins is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names. Her breakthrough creativity book, Hello, My Name is Awesome, How to Create Brand Names that Stick,

is considered the brand bible and was named a top 10 marketing book by Inc. Magazine. This is 2005. She and her firm have created love at first sight brand names for clients from amazon to xerox her own name hall of fame includes wendy's baconator oh i remember that that's now i'm hungry the neato robotic vacuum we review a ton of those in the chris faust show great brand uh and actually they're running around the house smitten ice cream which i have not eaten enough to'll have to try that. And Spanish Language School Gringo Lingo, frozen yogurt business franchise Spoon Me.

There's jokes there, and I'm going to leave them on the table. And the Church of Cupcakes, which is where I should be going every Sunday. Welcome to the show, Alexandra. How are you? Thank you. I'm good. I'm glad you've heard of the Baconator. Yeah.

Well, I'm wearing most of the Baconator probably at this point. But it was good when I used to eat that kind of food. But I definitely, I remember it. See, that's the beauty of it. I probably haven't eaten a Baconator in like, I don't know, a couple years. Hey, Chris, it has spawned. Son of Baconator is now a thing. Oh, but. Hey, Chris, it has spawned. Son of Baconator is now a thing.

Oh my God. Does it have less calories or more? Yeah, I think it has more. It's a baby. And there's also, you can get Baconator fries. Like Baconator has taken on a life of its own. I think it has its own Wikipedia page. Does it really?

I think it does. I think the Chris Voss show has its life of its own, but that's another thing. Anyway, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you on. Give us a.com where people can find you on the interwebs, please. Eatmywords.com. It always sounds like you're offending someone.

I go, what is your.com? She's like, eat my words. Oh. Well, let me tell you why we're named Eat My Words. I named us Eat My Words because we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk well i i guess that's branding yeah and you can see the pink refrigerator behind me we have a 1950s retro pink fridge and that's where we keep our cool books and yeah food is fun so there you go yeah you were showing me in the in the pre-show in the green room as we call it that you have that

whole thing filled with books now i imagine it's not turned on but it probably does books fresh no it's not it's it's been probably unplugged for a couple decades now but yeah i've had it through many many lives and iterations and it's it's had my fiesta wear in it it's traveled with me throughout the years and i don't know if you can see this but right here i have a sofa made out of stuffed animals oh yeah and that's called the marlin perkins 2000 you probably remember marlin perkins yeah i have a lot of fun toys i'm all about toys there you go so what what made you choose the pink fridge what was it about it that struck your well because my businesses eat my words it just seemed like we needed to have a pink like the 1950s retro pink i love pink and i wanted it in

my office so i i coveted it from a neighbor who belonged to him and finally warmed down and i got it but yeah it has a rich a rich history used to belong to the san francisco war memorial opera and ballerinas put their carrot sticks and celery sticks in there for ages i'm sure and now it's just home to my books there you go and it looks like it's a it's a great magnet sticker thing too yeah it's different yeah the mat that the refrigerator in the house isn't magnetic so this is the last last magnetic fridge i'm sure of it there you go now you're supposed to put the license plates on the cars not the refrigerator i just want to make sure you knew that anyway. Yeah. I always switch out my license plate, but yeah, it means that dream job. So there you go. So your book,

hello, my name is awesome, which is my pickup line at bars and clubs. And I think it's my title on Tinder, which is probably why no one sends me any messages. You came out in 2014. What got you into the business of branding and doing these other things? What's your origin story? My background is I was an advertising copywriter for a really long time. And by the way, my book did come out in 2014, but it's had a second edition since that time. So yeah, it's a little more fresh than that yeah and it's uh 2019 on the paperback no it it started in paperback although the publisher did experiment with hard hardcover for libraries because it's a popular library book too but no my background is in advertising i was a copywriter uh writing ads and every once in a while i would get thrown a bone

and get to name something and I love naming I was good at it but I had no idea it was a profession so when I discovered that I switched gears and told everyone I'm just going to name things and people said you can't do that and here I am living in my Barbie dream house so guess what. You won. You know, I like to name things too. Usually when I'm walking in public or I'm on Facebook, but usually it's four letter words that are described that I hate for something, someone doing something stupid. So that's probably not going to get paid for that. I don't think. Well, your last name is a four letter word. It is. And it's amazing how many people will use other four letter words,

especially people that know me privately. But that's another story. So it got named a top 10 branding book by branding journal. And it's in, like you mentioned, the paperback edition here shows the completed, completely revised and updated version and the audio book and Kindle, I think as well on Amazon. So you can order up there folks. So give us some tease out of what people are going to find inside the book. Well, you're going to, most people don't know how to create a brand name. They've never learned how to do that in school or they kind of copy trends from other people. And I always say your name shouldn't look like someone got drunk and played Scrabble. But I told you I was going to make you laugh, Chris. I love it. A lot of people don't know any better. So they're just kind of following what everybody else is doing. But what you'll learn in the book is how to create a memorable name that makes you stand out, that attracts attention, attracts customers, attracts. And then of course, all that turns into money, which is good. But yeah, you're going to learn how to create a name that makes people smile

instead of scratch their head. What if I create a name that the title of my company is go F yourself? And then everybody goes, who do you work for? Go F yourself. And they're like, wow, that's kind of rude. And I'm like, no, like seriously, that's the name of the company well i think depending who your audience is i wouldn't say rude works really well but naughty can work okay and one of our most notorious names is a nail salon in san francisco in the castro which is the san franc Francisco's most historic gay neighborhood, and it is named Handjob. It's a nail salon. I love it.

Wow. I think there was a store I saw one time that was called Glory Hole. I think it was in England. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's too much for me. And same with a blowout bar named Blowjob. That's like... Is there one of those?

Really? Probably. Yeah. No, we named... Yeah. My favorite name ever for a blow dry bar, there's a lot of things we've named multiples of and it was a blow dry bar and the client wanted a name that was whimsical yet sophisticated. Okay.

Impossible to do, but I did it. And the name I came up with was chateau blow blow so it's like a sophisticated blow job or something yeah from someone who's french i don't know what all this means well of course but we'll leave it to people's imagination so you know why being unique and having that stick out thing like you know sometimes i see businesses they do things that stick out. Like there's, there's a donut place.

What is it? Voodoo donut. Yeah. Yeah. Voodoo donut. And not only they make crazy fricking donuts, you, you remember the name?

Like I can't remember most of the donut places name, but I still remember. I've never even been there. And I remember. I haven't either, but I'll tell you voodoo donut. I'm so glad you brought that up. That's a great example of a name who,

and there's always a line around the block. And that is a name that the name, the name is the soul of that business. Like people love that name. That's what, that's what started getting people to come to them. And of course they have all their crazy, crazy.

I'm sure they started the first bacon donut. I know they have some crazy flavor combinations but yeah name a name can make or break your business like one that i the church of cupcakes you mentioned like that that's a name where not only does the name attract people you know they've used a lot of wordplay around the church. So, for instance, their tagline is, Worshippers Welcome. And now, I want you to think about this one. Their vanilla cupcake is named The Missionary. The Missionary.

The Missionary. Like boring, vanilla. Boring, plain. It has a sexual connotation connotation oh okay i didn't yeah she calls herself the church lady so you can have a lot of fun with the name and i think people miss that opportunity so much they don't really they don't you know they spend more time making a decision about what they're going to have for dinner than what they're going to call their company. Yeah. And, and, you know, a name does make a difference. One of my companies, I started back in the day, we, we were starting a mortgage company back then everybody had locked

down all the names for mortgage companies and banking. And so we were just having the worst time trying to find a name that had to been taken. This is before the internet. And so finally I came up with the one, I mean, it was just crazy how many names were taken. And so finally I came up with the name Ace Mortgage and I'm like a flying ace. Cause I used to build a little planes, model planes when I was a kid and study World War II. I'm a flying ace, Ace Mortgage. And a couple of my friends were like, you know, Chris,

you live in the state of Utah where Mormons don't gamble. And it's kind of a negative connotation. I'm like, nah, we'll put a flying a symbol on it and it'll be fine. And screw it. We'll just do it. We did it for 30 days.

All I did was hear crap about that name. And are you gambling with my mortgage no no really yeah and you well utah is a really weird place no i know that no i i have many clients in utah spoon me spoon me frozen yogurt is in utah and they wanted a name that was kind of edgy and they thought that it would attract a lot of attention for being edgy and but what happened is the older mormon really liked the name because spooning spoon if with your clothes on spooning can be quite innocent but you have to be careful because spooning leads to forking as we all know i what what is this i'm a i'm a 50 but no uh utah that surprises me though about ace like i

mean ace hardware ace bandages and see that's what i thought too but you know this was 40 years ago or well 30 years ago and there there was a little bit more different 30 years ago you wouldn't have been able to get away with spoon me i would have been yeah no you're right you're right you're right plus the other thing is is if you utah is a dry state so they don't sell a lot of booze here and boost is involved with the mormons but sugar is oh my god i know so sugar and prescription pills so crack cocaine is sugar here where crack cocaine is crack cocaine other places so you could probably put anything on you probably put a naked joseph smith on the front of a, of a thing.

And as long as there's sugar in that shot, like we, we have like, we have like stores in Utah that you can go to. There's these little photo mat, like shops that will pour you any variation of soft drink that you want. Like you want to mix Mountain Dew and yeah. And then rot your gut out with all that crap.

They have that lines around the block. Well, one of my favorite names is a Utah soda place, and it's Soda-licious. That's one of the brands I'm talking about. They're everywhere. It's usually a huge line. And, you know, I mean, if you go to a bar and try and get a drink, good luck.

But, you know, if you go to Soda-licious, you can get whatever you want. And so after 30 days of just hearing crap about the name and people giving me a bad time i went and said what's a good name and i thought of boardwalk because we're in the mortgage business and monopoly i found no one hadn't gotten park place mortgage wow nice and that was the perfect name to take and have for the company. And so we changed it to Park Place Mortgage and then it gave that level of prestige and, you know, the element, you know, cause everyone's always after port, we couldn't get boardwalk, but everyone

was always after a park place. And that, that ended up being a great name for about 13 years. I love it. That is really good. Yeah. That's a, that's why names are important. Yeah. Well, that's a good name because it's memorable and it's memorable because it's based on something familiar. We all know Park Place from Play Monopoly. Yeah. Yeah. So it worked out good for us in that way. What are some other things that we can tease out about you that are inside your book that you help people with? Well, one thing I teach people is how, how well i give you an acronym in the book

it's my 12 point name evaluation test it's called the smile and scratch test based on my philosophy a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head smile you're gonna walk through the whole thing it's an acronym for the five qualities that make a name great it's suggestive so it suggests something about your brand, like Park Place. Great. It suggests like an elevated everything, right? If the M stands for memorable, again, back to Park Place. That's a fantastic name, by the way.

The I, we're just going to use Park Place as an example here for sure. Sure, yeah. Run with it. The I stands for imagery. Again, like we can picture that Park place card in our head right we can picture and this helps so much because you know mortgage names mortgage company names are pretty forgettable for the most part but but anything you can do to give somebody something that helps them remember it later is is your goal dance so that's where imagery really works because people remember pictures

and images much more easily than they remember words or random letters. And then the L stands for legs. And that's when your name lends itself to a theme as Park Place does. Yeah. I'm sure, I don't know how much Milton Bradley let you get away with, or if you, maybe you were flying under the radar then because it was before the internet, but now you might not be able you get away with, or maybe you were flying under the radar then because it was before the internet, but now you might not be able to get away with that. Legs with Eat My Words, the name of my firm. So we have a menu of services. Our blog is called The Kitchen Sink. So we have a lot of fun with our name. And then the E stands for emotional. In Smile, you want your name to make an emotional connection.

It's really important that your name resonates with people because you can't afford to be shy. You have to really stand out. There you go. You know, you actually have a thing on your website that I'm looking at here where people can go test a name according to your metrics and stuff. Yep, they can run their name through the SMILE and Scratch test and it will walk you through it. It will tell you what you're doing right, what you could do better. And at the end, it gives you all the results and I'll get an email. If you want any further advice from me,

just tell me you heard me on Chris's show and I'll, I'll, I'll give you my, my professional opinion as well. There you go. I just put in the Chris Voss show and it said, what a dumb name. What the hell is that guy? So, well, he's probably right. Well, Chris,

you've already made a name for yourself and this is the, you already have, right? Most of it was, most of those serial killings in 70. The, what was the other thing I was going to ask you about? What do you think about what's going on with AI?

Because you do branding, you do copywriting and, and other things. What, what do you I was going to ask you about? What do you think about what's going on with AI? Because you do branding, you do copywriting, and other things. What do you see is going on? This chat GPT is really hot. Of course, now that we're plugging this, we can put on the AI podcast with Chris Voss. Yeah, I have this conversation daily with people. So chat GPT, it can be helpful. For me, it can be helpful. For me, it can be helpful. So yesterday I was trying to come up with a literative word, positive words that started with L to go with the word lesson.

I was naming an AI. It seems like lately all I'm doing is naming AI products. And I'm telling you, if the founders of AI companies with a lot of money are coming to me to name their products, and even those that don't have a lot of money are coming to me to name their product and even those that don't have a lot of money are coming to me that's just telling you that ai is not there yet for names so you know i'm in fact i i have if anybody wants to see like the difference of names that ai comes up with versus names that a professional namer such as myself comes up with i i have some really good examples for a kids travel company and just you know i came up with like I have some really good examples for a kids travel company. And just, you know, I came up with like tripopotamus, you know, like hippopotamus. And like AI isn't going to come up with that. AI isn't going to come up with this like a family travel game. I came up with fee-fi-fo

fam and fee-fi-fo fun. AI isn't going to do that. That's true do that. So AI is good for things that are metaphors. I was naming a gym equipment company in Switzerland and I come up with metaphors for things that are strong. So it's good for things like that, but just asking it to come up with names, you got to really know how to work it and how to prompt it yeah we we tried that we just recently launched the ai podcast with chris foss at at ai chris foss.com uh shameless plug because we have no shame and we couldn't you know part of it was just getting everything it seems like it seems like they bought like every possible variation of every possible name on on GoDaddy for AI stuff and so we're just kind of going through it going oh my god how hard is this going to be and it's it's interesting but you know AI couldn't

come up with anything that we could use that was it was available on GoDaddy and sometimes that uniqueness is kind of what you need because it almost seems like that's kind of the way it is when you're trying to name a business nowadays. Like all the simple juicy stuff is taken, right? All done. Yeah, all done. All those one word name, don't even think about trying to get a one word name for anything. You have to be able to make up a word. So for instance, a word that I made up, it's for a growler. Growlers are like beer, where you put beer in a container, drive home with, drink it when you get home, draft beer. And I named it chuggernaut. And chuggernaut, right? A twist on juggernaut with chug. So if you can combine two things together where you still when you hear it you know

what it is you know how to spell it but yeah i think that right now is kind of the way to go i would say the trend is just invent a new word but it has got to sound like a word it can't just it can't be cogent tiva or schedulicity you know like a real mouthful or something that doesn't sound natural. Like look at Groupon. Groupon is a beautiful coin word. It's group plus coupon or Pinterest, pin your interest. Yeah. What do you think about when cars do like some of the car names are kind of stupid and they do like a play where they just kind of change a letter. Like instead of an S, they'll use a Z or something something what do you think about stuff like that is that i think that's late i think changing a letter is lazy or adding a couple letters on the end you know learnia you know for a learning company sounds like it sounds like an injury

i know but i think that when cars so the best car names i believe were the car the muscle car names right or the you know names like stingray right like names of animals right those have all been done you know jaguar one we were naming an electric car brand not too long ago and one of the names i came up with that was rejected by the company past trademarking but it was rejected by the company but it was kilowatt and i thought like that was just a really fun name kilowatt there is a kill in there but yeah i like it that's okay i mean tesla was a great name i mean but i mean i'm sure that you know it's it's it's interesting but these names are you know just like we talked about the Baconator.

I still remember what that is, even though I try and avoid it nowadays or bacon in general of my old age. But these are the names that really resonate. And so you work with clients to help them find names. I noticed one of the clients you work with is a company we've worked with to do reviews on their, on their vacuums. In fact, we have some here at the house, Neato. Yes. I named, I named Neato the company. Wow. do reviews on their on their vacuums in fact we have some here at the house neato yes i named i named neato the company wow neato robotic vacuum and you know what's funny is i've always looked at that name and i'm like who really came up with that name that's a great name neato thank you

thank you i love that name that was one of the first projects i ever i ever got to eat my words and yeah the guy then he wanted a version, the Neato Bandito. I'm like, don't do that. But, yeah, Neato, you know, like Neato, it's kind of one of those words you don't hear very often. But, yeah, that was, and it was neat. Like, they needed, so the Neato Robotics is a great name because Nito is kind of fun and playful, but robotics gives it gravitas and helps justify, you know, pain. You know, at the time when it first came out, it was $400.

So that's a nice balance, you know, not too playful, not too serious, a little bit of both. So those are the style of names that I love. There you go. There you go. It looks like you even had a review from near ale he's been on the show with oh yeah yeah i've been on your show i know near he oh near blurb my book what yeah he wrote did he blurb it during the show no your point your

brand is in a relentless fight for attention this mustread book shows how to prepare for battle and win with the strongest name possible. Yeah. What do you think about when companies do stuff that seems to make their name less long and meme-ish? Federal Express recently cut themselves down, it's been a while, to FedEx because I think everyone's calling them that. The United Postal Service, my understanding is changing the name to what everyone calls them damn it no i'm just kidding that might be a good that might be a good business game i don't know i think for the most part it's good like fed federal express became fedex because that's what everybody was calling it. Same way, beverages and more became BevMo. That's what people were calling it. Here's two times it didn't work. VRBO, which is vacation rental by owner,

now goes, they just started calling it VRBO. Then people were calling it VRBO. And what does VRBO even mean? I hate that name. I hate that name too. I totally hate that name. I don't even know what it is. I still don't know what it is is it's a home trading website and like one that i used to i used to do home trading

back in the day and i use home exchange like the perfect name so exactly what it is you know didn't offend anyone nobody struggled with how to pronounce it what is it another one that didn't work with shortening was Weight Watchers changed their name to WW but WW is longer than weight it may be shorter when you look at it but when you say it out loud WW is longer and their domain name www.ww like it's really a mouthful so it sounds like a wrestling thing I would be like a wrestling thing. I would be like, is wrestling now over there, Weight Watchers? You have to wrestle for your food? That's one way to burn calories.

People still call it Weight Watchers. I think that was a bonehead move. I think it's probably pretty regrettable. Maybe they should have went with fat people come here. Isn't there an exercise thing't there a isn't there a weight what isn't there a exercise thing for i don't know i'm trying to think of one but yeah what's in a name is really important and i like how you you say also what's important is the is how many syllables are on it how long it is yeah although it's better to have a long name that's memorable than a short name that's forgettable. So people are obsessed with creating something short. But for instance, there is a company, it's a billion dollar brand. It's called Rent the Runway. And it's where women can rent gowns, couture, fashion, you know rent it one time return it you know for not a lot of money but if they had called and rent the runway is super evocative it's exciting

for women but if they had just shortened that to rtr rtr says nothing about the experience run the runway it might be long but it's same with we buy ugly houses i mean i don't know if i would have ever presented that name but it served them well yeah i mean it's yeah i guess if you knock on the door and you're like hey we want to buy your house we buy ugly houses what well you know it's funny you said that because that reminds me of those books the four dummies series like yeah we thought i was a dummy i have enough trouble like overcoming being a blonde you know like all the baggage that comes with that but who wants to label themselves as a dummy you know you're standing there the cash register

showing the book and the gal's looking at the bookstore barnes and noble she's looking at you going you are dummy huh but no it's hugely popular And I think a lot of people are like, well, they feel that the dummy thing kind of gives them that base foundational knowledge that, you know, and maybe, and talks maybe in a more simplistic way that, you know, sometimes you read stuff and it's so complex, you know, like algebra, calculus, and you're like, I don't know this, whatever. But now you can just have chat GPT explain things to you. Explain this like I'm a fifth grader and then it will tell you algebra like you're a fifth grader. That's, I, you know, I'm still not going to do that because I hate math. I mean, I like basic. I never use math in my adult life.

Yeah. I just use, I just use basic. I just learned, I just use basic math in my adult life yeah i just use i just use basic i just learned i just use basic math in my real life i put the money in the bank account and the money goes out plus and minus we know that equals zero at all times pretty much welcome to life folks so what else have we talked about about different services you provide well i want to talk to talk a little bit about what, well, we can talk about services. Anybody can work with me. I will find a way, if you need a name, we will find a way to work together. I promise you that. Because I'm the boss. I'm the boss lady. I make the rules. But what I was going to tell everybody is, can I just talk about some mistakes

people make? Please do. Okay. Let's go through scratch really quick. So scratch is when to scratch it off the list because it will make people scratch their head. And all of these are important. So you can't be like, well, I just have one of these. Nope. Nope. Trust me. I've been doing this almost 20 years. You don't want to have any of these. If your name is spelling challenge. So if your name looks like a typo, that's an easy one. Looks like a typo. Like you talked about car brands that just change a letter. Yeah, don't do that. And also car brands have a lot of money, so maybe they could get away with it.

But for the most part, if you're starting out with a blank slate and you get to name, come up with a name, don't give yourself any disadvantages. So like your name is really easy for people to spell Chris Moss, but a lot of people have names that are hard for people. So if you think about your brand name and any issues you have with your own personal name, why would you want to give yourself any of that pain? And you don't have to, because unlike, you know, your parents chose your name for you, but you get to choose your own brand name. So you don't want to be a copycat. That's the first C in scratch. You don't want to, you know, you don't want to sound like everybody else when you can be yourself. So then you don't want to open yourself up to trademark

infringement. The R in scratch stands for restrictive and that's where you get locked in. So 24 hour fitness is now not open 24 hours everywhere. So they've kind of, their name is now restricted. One 800 flowers sells way more than flowers. Dollar tree, dollar 25. So,

or the 99 cents dollar tree, I think is okay. 99 cents store. Yeah. They have stuff in there for four 99. Yeah. You're like, Hey, I feel ripped off.

What's going on here? Yeah. So when you're naming your company or your product or brand, look in your crystal ball and make sure that you're not going to outgrow your name or try to project into the future. That was actually the original name of the show, Skinny Man with a Mic. And I definitely outgrew that. you literally outgrew it yeah i did actually in your words not mine it was it was the baconators i got fat shamed one time i was speaking at no i was accused of fat shaming i was speaking at stanford at the grad school

and someone in the i was saying how we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk. And someone tweeted that I was fat shaming. And like, seriously, like that was just kind of something funny. I say, there's probably somebody accusing me of that too. And I'm like,

I, I am one. How can I, if there's any shaming itself from emulation or whatever, setting myself on fire. So that, that a and scratch sounds for annoying, annoying names are anytime your name frustrates people.

So if it's spelled backwards, if it's missing some letters, those that's, you know, if it has a number in it that anytime people are going to get a bounce back to their email, if your name is ambiguous your name's nothing about your company should be ambiguous especially your name the t stands for

tame and that just means that your name is really descriptive and flat and why why would you want a tame flat name when you could be excited and then the oh okay example of a tame name network solutions right the domain registrar combines two of the most boring names in the english language into one super tame name it does it really does you're like network and solutions like what the hell that's about as bland as vanilla vanilla even has more personality it does it does and then the second c and scratch stands for the curse of knowledge and that's where something's foreign to people either it's a foreign word or maybe it's meaningful to the engineers at your company but nobody else knows what it means so you want to make sure that your

target audience you don't need to you know do a survey monkey but you want to make sure that your target audience, you don't need to do a survey monkey, but you want to make sure people understand whatever name you're coming up with. So don't do, there's a company called Mzinga, it's spelled M-Z-I-N-G-A. And Mzinga is a word that's loosely based on the Swahili word for hive. But like, you're not going to, how would anybody know that? And you're not going to be there to explain it to people. So remember that about your name too.

You're not always going to be there. And then finally the H in scratch stands for hard to pronounce. And you don't want a name that's difficult for people to pronounce. I mean, imagine being in a restaurant, we've all been in a French restaurant, whatever language you butcher. I have been there and nobody wants to... Here's the thing. No one wants to embarrass themselves pronouncing something wrong. But what's worse is when, let's say you pronounce somebody's name wrong. They don't want

to, and you do it in front of them, they don't want to correct you because they don't want to embarrass you, especially if it's somebody like, let's say, you know, the CEO of a company pronounce your name, Chris, your name is never going to be pronounced wrong. But people call me Alexandria. They put the I in the name that I don't have an I in my name. And like, I don't want to like, there's my neighbor has been calling me Alexandria for five years and I'm just, you know. Yeah. And you never correct them?

You just let her on? Never corrected them. I did that with a friend one time. Her name was Stephanie and she, and, and she, I think she uses an E in the Stephanie and Steph part. And I kept putting an A, Stephanie, instead of Stephanie. And I felt bad. And for years she let me do it and just ignored it because she knew I was stupid. No, but see, then you felt bad.

She felt bad. You felt bad. I still feel bad about it. I never told her. I just corrected it. But I was like, I'm an idiot. These are really important because they make all the difference. And then I think part of it is, too, is you've got to have a name so that if I tell you to go to my website, you can spell that name.

You know, like sometimes I've looked at names for companies we've started, and there's just certain words that you're like, yeah, most people don't want to spell that. I mean, if you've seen Gen Z lately, most of them aren't going to college. So they're not going to be able to spell those those names and you've got it and they've got to be able to remember it like you say in in the thing there they've got to be able to remember it so they can type it into the dot com so yeah yeah so you want your name to be spelled exactly like it sounds and you're if you can't get an exact match domain name just add a modifier word you know a lot of people don't know for the first 13 years they were in business, Tesla wasn't at tesla.com. They were at teslamotors.com

and Facebook until 2005 was the Facebook square, square up, you know, slideshare is still slideshare.net. So don't underestimate the value of having a different, of adding another word or doing something really fun. Like one of my favorites is just having a domain name that's not even your, doesn't have your business name in it. So one that I love is a smoked turkey company. It's called Greenberg Smoked Turkey. It's not a great name.

Greenberg could be spelled two different ways, but their domain name is unforgettable and it's gobble gobble.com. That's freaking brilliant. Wait, that was the name I was going to go with for the show. Fat guy, all those bacon eaters, you know,

you know, one of the names that I really hate out in the marketplace. And I can't even remember. I was trying to type it in here and pull it up on the thing. It's, it's Rado can. Oh my God. See, you don't even remember.

And you're in the business of names. No, Rado con. Rado. They have a whole commercial. They have a commercial making fun of their name with people trying to pronounce it yeah and it's even more stupid it's just like no i i looked it up it's like the japanese word for something like people don't know that

rakutan i think yeah yeah but like why why i i can never yeah the domain was available i mean i don't i don't know yeah it's like i and we still can't remember what it is we know how stupid it is and that's how we remember it like i just think of it as like that dumb company that named themselves really bad or i'm sorry to interrupt you no good one another one like that is trabago and people think it's a good name because I've heard it a thousand, but more than a thousand times, 10,000 times. And it's because it's been drilled in our head because it bought all the advertising. But Tribago, I dissected it and I figured out it's trip plus vacation plus go.

They must have just like made this amalgamation Tribago. It's not a great name, right? Like it's just so. I just, I even misspelled it when i put in the computer i was pulling it up and i put an a in it so trabago as well so yeah that's one thing i've learned it's the other thing i've learned you know we used to if we couldn't get a dot com back in the day we would buy the dot net and then it would drive me mentally insane because everyone would call me and go,

hey man, we went to your website and it's a different company. You're like, did you do the .NET part? And it's just, finally I just gave up. I'm like, if it's not a.COM, screw it. Yeah. We try really hard to get the.COM. And my preference is always, you can't get the.COM at a modifier where before you get the.net, but.net is fine. I wish the.biz had taken off. I just thought that was a fun one, B-I-Z. B-I-Z, yeah. Yeah.

It's kind of an exciting business name. Of course, you can buy it for the thing and use it. But, yeah, there's a lot of great examples we've talked about that make things work. In fact, while we were talking, you gave me an idea of a funny name for a podcast and i was like hey maybe i should rename the chris voss show fat guy with a mic and it turns out there's somebody else already has that going on yeah somebody grabbed that fat guy with

a mic so i'll sue him now clearly you had it before me what else do we want to tease out on your book and it's and different things that you help companies? On my book, I have a really fun chapter called Corporate Creativity. And you will learn some of the conference room names of companies that you know and love. Etsy has some of my favorite conference room names. One of my, they're all, some of their meeting rooms are musician food mashups. So for instance, Fleetwood Mac and Cheese or Sushi and the Banshees or Oreo Speedwagon or Nine Inch Snails.

Oreo Speedwagon. Aren't those good? No, I'm all good. And then, yeah, I think Groupon has some really irreverent ones. Like this used to be a forest. Really long. They have really long

conference room names but you'll find out really fun job titles that people have and oh and ones that they don't have there's one guy's like a master of disaster and the the title that no one has this title but i thought it would be hilarious if the CEO of McDonald's was Lord of the fries. That's pretty good. Or the secret. It's good, right? People like to have fun. People like to have fun.

Yeah. The, uh, that's, that's awesome, man. That is awesome. Yeah.

This one guy, I was doing a workshop recently and this guy on the call was, he is the father of cause marketing so marketing that does good so when he said that i said you're the cause father and like he made he made little cards he's the cause father and he's showing you know it says i'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse and so he has a lot of fun with that. So yeah, you can have, names are so much fun. People miss so many opportunities. And I'll just tell you one that I love

is there was a woman, she was a publicist. Her name is Lynette Hoy. And her name's not super memorable. It said nothing about her fiery personality. So we rebranded her Fire Talker PR with the tagline hot on the press because she's relentless. And she calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. She has packages like controlled burn and fire

starter. And she has a theme song. And when you have a fun name, you can have a theme song that works with that. So her theme song is fire by the Ohio players. And anytime she's doing a speaking engagement, she cranks that up. My theme song is sugar, sugar by the Archies. The runner up for me was the candy man. Candy man. There you go. Or a pink fridge gal. I don't know. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on Alexandra and fun to make your acquaintance. And now I know who came up with Nino. It's a Nino name. Thank you.

Thank you. There you go. So give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on your interwebs and any parting thoughts you want. Go to eatmywords.com. You can test a name for free there. There's a free mini masterclass. You can take my course there.

Hook up with me on LinkedIn at Alexandra Watkins. And I always have specials. Right now I'm having a half price, I'm almost always having a half price special on something. So yeah, I recommend if you want to work, if you want to work together, you will work directly with me. You're going to not work with ChatGPT

or one of my sous chefs. You will work directly with me. There you go. Well, that sounds like an awesome deal. Thank you very much for coming on the show we really appreciate it my pleasure thanks for having me chris there you go and thanks for tuning into my audience order up her book wherever fine books are sold hello my name is awesome how to create brand names that stick and you can find that wherever fine books are sold stay with those alleyway bookstores though you might need a tetanus shot after you go into them.

Refer to show your family, friends, and relatives. If not, don't make me come to your house. No, I'm just kidding. There's not going to be violence involved. But I might, like, I don't know, drink your milk and eat some of your potato chips and then leave. Ha ha! And I'll drink it from the carton. So you better refer your family, friends, and show.

We're resorting to violence now? What the hell? I woke up and friends to the show. We're resorting to violence now? What the hell? I woke up and chose violence this morning. YouTube.com for it says Christmas. LinkedIn.com for it says Christmas. What's the other? YouTube. Goodreads.com for it says Christmas.

TikTok. And TikTok. The TikTok Christmas. There's another joke that started getting crammed in there. Maybe that could be like a business name or something. Drinking milk from the carton or something. I don't know. Whatever.

I don't know. There. I don't know. There's a joke there somewhere. Anyway, we'll figure it out in the meantime, but check in for the next show. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.