It’s not a typo – French Connection United Kingdom more than tripled sales when they adopted the FCUK name and brand. It makes sense – your company and product name represent the single most used (and most compact) marketing you’ll do.

That said, I find it hugely amusing (and not a bit sad) when companies spend bizarrely large sums of money hiring naming consulting firms. Now, this isn’t an attack on such firms – I believe they can provide legitimate value in cross-checking names for unfortunate meanings (Chevy NoVa, anyone?), breaking engineering log-jams, and otherwise injecting common sense into the naming process. My concern is when naming departs from the plane of the common.

What do I mean, plane of the common? I’m talking about what every elementary school teacher says to their students: KISS, or Keep It Simple, Stupid. Few really successful products or brands are called “Mega-transnational UberConglomerated” – they’re “International Business Machines”, or “Amazon.com” – highly descriptive (and short) or highly allusive (big river of commerce).

I see this stupidity all the time in software. For example, which is a more memorable (and descriptive) name for a sound and movie player on your computer: the VivoActive PowerPlayer or Microsoft Windows Media Player?

So ask yourself: what does my product do? How do people refer to what it does? How will people remember me? Then find the closest, most concise and still copyrightable term, and own it. Life will be better, or my name isn’t Mega-transnational UberConglomerated.

 
[ps: Please buy my book. http://buynow.stupidmarketing.com -- and tell your friends!]