Communications, Ink is a Massachusetts-based marketing, advertising, graphic design and digital agency with big enthusiasm for successful client outcomes. Since 1996, our award-winning agency has been delivering communication strategies and marketing materials to start ups, educational organizations and schools, non-profits, financial and travel services, retail, healthcare and biotech companies of all sizes.
Communications, Ink provides a full-array of marketing services including branding, web design, logo and collateral development as well as market research, social media content generation and analytics.
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What’s in a Name? Renaming with Impact and Efficiency
One of the most important brand elements is a name. It’s seen, it’s said and it must be remembered. Over the years, we have had the privilege of helping many wonderful organizations ideate a new name and translate that into a new logo and brand. Here are some examples of our work:
Some names are made up:
Some are based on a location:
Some are literal:
Some are aspirational:
Some are creative:
And some just need an update:
But they are all unique to each organization, easy to say, read and remember. Given the importance of a renaming, it can take time and be unsettling for some as they might find it to be an emotional and difficult decision to let go of an existing name.
We have created this list to help you through the process:
1. Build an effective advisory group. Consider a group of no more than 8 people who represent a variety of your audiences. Make sure they have the bandwidth to be available for meetings and reviews.
2. Don’t be impulsive. Avoid the temptation to throw out new names. Brainstorming new ideas rarely generates a winner. You might wind up with a cliched option that is no better than what you have already.
3. Be strategic. We always recommend conducting a Deep Dive and generating a brand strategy that will help you unlock your core messages, competitive advantages, audiences and tone. If that isn’t a possibility, we like to use an onlyness exercise to tease out what makes your organization so special. This becomes the spring board for the ideation.
4. Do your homework. Review your mission and values as well as your marketing materials. Then do the same thing for your peer organizations to determine themes.
5. Generate LOTS of ideas! Just remember that no idea is a bad one but a step towards the final one. We find it takes dozens, even hundreds of ideas to find a winner. These names can be real words, words with a different spelling, nostalgic words, made up names, foreign words or a combo of names put together in a new way.
6. Find a name that is original. In the early stages, we like to do a quick google search to see if there is an active URL with the same name. Better yet, we suggest running some of the name options by an attorney to do a quick legal search. It’s no fun to settle on a name only to find it’s already taken.
7. Don’t hit the “easy” button. Finding a winner is hard. There are many name generators that promise to do the hard work for you. They rarely work.
8. Testing, 1-2-3. Your group might like a name and think they’re done. But now is the time to share it with others who haven’t been part of the process to see what they think. Best of all it gives you the opportunity to say and write the possible name. Is it confusing? Hard to spell? This is also a time to consider how it translates into another language or is shared with non-English speakers.
9. Sometimes you come right back to where you are. Yup, it is true. Sometimes you go through this entire exercise only to realize the name you have already is the best one. That’s ok. You can still update it with a new logo, font, tagline and color palette.
10. Share it with the world.
It’s now time to integrate your new name into your brand by designing a new logo and sharing it out across all your marketing channels to all of your audiences.
We hope this helps and we would love to hear your ideas around renaming!
P.S. Not sure if you’re ready for a renaming? Our guide on rebranding might help! Click here to read more >
Communications, Ink is a women owned, Massachusetts-based marketing, advertising, graphic design and digital agency with big enthusiasm for successful client outcomes. When you are ready to take a deep dive please contact us.
