How to name a product
Hello,
Not sure if this is the right place but I have a question.
So the issue is how to name a product and there are 2 ways that I see people do:
- Brand name (something invented)
- Service Name Description (something that describes what the service is about)
For example:
AWS = Amazon web services - it pretty clear what it is about just with the name, would be service name description.
Microsoft Azure = Brand name, it's not clear what Azure means for me, but they made a good brand building and I know what it does because they have big impact due to marketing.
Not sure if this question makes sense, in my head it does, but what is the best approach to go with?
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I think the fact that you see many successful companies with both types of names means that both approaches work fine.
Nowadays almost all good names which are normal english words are taken. If we are talking about domain names (something that is highly coupled with your brand name) with dot com your best bet is to come up with 2 or 3 small words that reflect what your product is about, but you can get more lucky with .io or other top level domains. For example my website saasinspire.com is informational website focused on saas landing page inspiration. Try out describing your product in few separate words and generate random pairs of these words. You will certainly get 1 or 2 good looking word pairs and maybe domain name of that word pair will be available. Even Post Malone got his stage name like this https://www.insider.com/how-did-post-malone-get-his-name-jimmy-fallon-video-2018-10
I think if a product gets popular enough even descriptive names take on their own identity and become brand names. For example: "Linked In" is a descriptive product name right? But nowadays everyone just sees is as a unique word or brand and doesn't pay much attention to what the words mean. Your example of AWS also applies, I know what it stands for, but the actual meaning of it doesn't really register in my brain anymore, I just know it as AWS. Also brand names like GitHub, FedEx, and even ThinkPad which was literally just a computer version of a pad of paper for your thoughts.
One of the reasons the luxury car makers do not brand their cars (X5, RL, 300E, etc..) is that they want people to love their company brand, not a specific model.
Due to the cost and effort required to brand something, begin with just branding your company. You can always change that later like Google to Alphabet. If launching more than one product use a service description for each product. That way you only have to focus on promoting one name.
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.