Turn your guesswork into highly focused and effective brand strategy.
Our naming process dives deep and reveals the work your name or tagline needs to accomplish
Your business name, tagline, and product names need to do work for your brand. They need to communicate your values, story, and brand personality while retaining versatility. They need to differentiate and promote what is unique and valuable about your organization.
Murmur has worked on many naming projects since we were established in 2007, and we’ve found that successful naming requires a strong framework for name evaluation and as well as an intuitive process to build consensus among stakeholders. Without these things even the best names will end up in the discard pile. When you work with Murmur on naming you will be provided with a clear path towards evaluation, consensus, and selection.
At Murmur we’ve named numerous businesses as well as products, services, sub-brands, and even software. We’ve developed taglines and tagline systems. We’ve named food products from dips and olive oil to wine and plant-based drinks.
In our first workshop, we work with you and your stakeholders to understand your target audience and to define specific criteria for evaluating names.
Next, we will generate naming options for you to evaluate in a workshop setting. This workshop is not about choosing a name as much as it is about getting stakeholders’ reactions to a wide variety of names.
After the second workshop, we will work on refining a curated list of all the best names. We will also run names through trademark infringement software to get a sense of risk.
We will present a number of thoroughly vetted names that meet your established goals and criteria along with the reasonings behind each name.
Portal Tea (formerly Tea Chai Té) was ready to evolve into more than a tea shop chain. They wanted to grow their tea sales nationally and needed to shift their brand focus to extol the unique virtues of their custom teas.
When Portal Tea described their tea to us they said each unique flavor had the ability to “transport you.” Through our workshop discovery process, we dug deeper into this idea. We explored a number of different directions and executions, but ultimately landed on the name “Portal Tea.” This simple but unique name captured the essence of what they were looking to achieve. It evokes the experience of entering another world.
Part of Compris’ branding work included the naming of 15 different wines. From our workshops, we developed a naming convention that showcased the team’s love of music while telling the story of each unique wine. To ensure the names felt authentic, we scanned music and artists handpicked by the client. We pulled interesting descriptive lyrics and distilled them into two to three word names that conveyed a feeling, emotion, aesthetic, or taste that tied one of their wines. The final name choices were the perfect reflection of the winery: sophisticated but approachable – with a touch of whimsy.
Via Clinic is a psychiatry clinic that specializes in addiction. Founder, Dr. Joseph Andrew wanted a name that respected the discreet nature of his practice while also inspiring his patients to make positive change. Many other businesses in this category had names that included triggering words like “addiction,” “recovery,” or “treatment.”
In our naming process, we focused on words that were metaphorical and less direct. We researched Latin words and settled on “Via.”
Via is defined as a “traveling through (a place) en route to a destination.” We felt this was an apt metaphor for the journey that his patients undertake in seeking recovery.
The “B&B” in B&B Print Source’s name had lost its meaning. Originally it referred to the last name of the founders of the company, but they had sold the company long ago. B&B Print Source wanted to keep their name, but needed a new tagline.
After going through our naming workshops and discovery process, we learned that B&B’s commitment to quality was paramount.
We landed on “Be Impressed” as their tagline for numerous reasons. We felt this was the perfect way to capture the customer experience while adding to the meaning of “B&B.” In fact, we created a series of taglines that begin with “Be” and used them throughout the website that we built for them. We used “Be Assured”, “Be Excited,” “Be Delighted,” and many others to continue the theme. Now when someone asks them what “B&B” stands for, they have quite a few options to choose from.