Opinion
Placek: Owning an exact .com domain no longer matters
“It is, at this point, it doesn't really matter at all. The .com or URL address has become an area code, and whether you're in four one five or six one five, it doesn't really matter to people.”
Insight
Placek: Brand naming requires choosing uncomfortable, bold names over comfortable ones
“Part of why clients don't like
The bolder names, the more imaginative names that we present is they are looking for comfort, and that's the opposite that what you want to do. And part of our job here is to help people to give the confidence that going bolder a…”
Insight
Placek: Focusing on positioning and mission statements fails to create iconic names
“Our conversations always start with, talk to us about how you behave now and how you want to behave in the future. As opposed to, tell me about your positioning. Tell me about your values. Tell me about your mission. That's really kind of old thinking. It's ve…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Placek: Microsoft initially called the name 'Azure' a dumb idea
“The reaction wasn't good. You know, one of the clients said, that's just a dumb idea.”
Insight
Placek: Large brainstorming groups do not work for creating brand names
“We don't use large brainstorming. Sessions. I did when I first started the company. I used freelancers. I used brains, bards, brainstorming groups. And along the way through some analysis, we really discovered that that was not really working for us, that actu…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lexicon designers generate the best brand names using fake project briefs
“And so when people are working on what they know is not the real assignment, they are now free to make all kinds of mistakes. And so most of our names have come out of the second or third team”
Insight
Placek: Testing names for concept fit inevitably produces descriptive names
“If you're asking people, is this fit to concept? You are inevitably always going to get a descriptive name.”
Insight
Placek: Generating 200 brand names is not enough; generate 1,000 to 1,500
“200 names is not enough, right? Get, get to a 1015 hundred names and directions. Don't evaluate them. Just generate names and directions and ideas and then have a meeting and don't evaluate, but speculate.”
Insight
Placek: Internal polarization indicates a brand name is strong
“We look for polarization. We look for attention in a team about arguing about these things. Because we think that polarization is a sign of strength in the word”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Placek: Andy Grove chose Pentium over ProChip due to team polarization
“When we went to, you know, an executive committee to present Pentium, and by the way, internally, one of the names that makes sense here, Descriptive Bunch of Engineers Prochip. Hey, it's professional, it's premium and it's chipped, so it should be pro-chip, r…”
Insight
Placek: Clients almost never recognize the right brand name immediately
“Most clients, and I can understand this, right? They come to a naming project absolutely believing with full confidence that they're going to know it when they see it, and the truth is it almost never happens.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Placek: Microsoft originally requested an Azure name starting or ending in 'cloud'
“They came to us to develop a name that started or ended with cloud. Made sense to them because it was a cloud service. And our reaction was, if you do that, ah, you're gonna be in an ocean of other cloud this, cloud that.”
Insight
Placek: Descriptive brand names fail to create cumulative market advantage
“You won't get an advantage if you're descriptive. If you are cloud pro and there's 10 other cloud services, you're not gonna stand out in the marketplace. You won't have the ability to create that necessarily that cumulative advantage in the marketplace.”
Insight
Placek: Compound brand names act as associative multipliers for companies
“We know from the research we've invested in that compounds Like PowerBook or Facebook are multipliers of associations because there's wind and there's circles around that, you know, and then there's surf images around that. So one plus one equals three, right?”
Insight
Placek: The letter 'V' is the most alive and vibrant English sound
“V from our research that we've done is the most alive and vibrant sound in the English alphabet. And that's whether you were born in Rome or in, you know Sausalito, California.”
Insight
Placek: The sound of the letter 'B' evokes reliability in branding
“B the sound of the letter B is, is one of the most reliable sounds in the English alphabet. That was one of our rationales, by the way, for Blackberry, right?”
Insight
Placek: Complicated brand names are a liability due to processing fluency
“When you think about how the brain processes information we're told by a number of cognitive science that our brains are a little bit on the lazy side. We don't like complex things. And so we really strive to make all of our solutions relatively easy for, so f…”
Insight
Placek: Force synchronicity by pulling brand naming concepts from unrelated domains
“I'd go back to think about, forget about the word, think about behavior and experience. And then the second thing from just a creative help. I'm a big believer in synchronicity. And we try to sort of force synchronicity here, and I'll give you a couple example…”
Opinion
Placek: Entertainment industry names are mundane, but DreamWorks is exceptional
“I think it's a wonderful name, and it is somewhat of a, somewhat ironic that the entertainment industry in general has pretty mundane names, right? So you have all these talented people, and yet when you look at the names of production studios, movie houses Yo…”
Insight
Placek: Brand names outlast design, messaging, and product iterations
“Your brand name, whether it's product name or company name, nothing's gonna be used more often or for longer Then that name. Design will change. Messing will change. Products will change, right? But that name is there.”
