The sweetest sound in any language
Build Mode™ Issue 05.2024
Thanks for being a part of the fourth issue of Build Mode! We have an ambitious group of professionals working in real estate, architecture, engineering, construction, marketing, design, and development. Welcome all!
Today’s issue is all about naming, whether it’s a property brand for a place, or your professional services company, or your service offering. Whatever it is, naming requires a deliberate process to get to an effective result. The common misconception is that anyone can do it.
Jot a few words down.
Open a thesaurus.
Eureka moment.
Land the name!
But that’s rarely the case, especially in a modern age when hundreds of thousands of companies have registered literally MILLIONS of trademarked brand names.
Any name you come up with needs to be property vetted.
Without the proper vetting, an environmental consulting business might end up sharing the same name as an oil distribution company (whoops!).
Without further ado, let’s get into it.
What makes a good name?
A good name is more than just creative. It needs to strike a balance between being creative, strategic, and technical. (that’s according to Rob Meyerson, author of the book Brand Naming, and I agree).
Good brand names are creative, strategy, and technical
Strategic
Much like its counterpart of brand strategy, a brand name must be unique in the market, different from other industry players. It needs to be distinctive in how it helps position the brand. If you follow naming trends, you’re taking a big risk… more on that below.
Creative
Now from a creative standpoint, it needs to be memorable, sound good, and look good. Yeah, even before it becomes a logo, it needs to look good.
For a recent naming project I led, we were down to two names on the shortlist:
Topograph and Interridge, both were favored by the project team almost equally.
Both names had really great meaning connected to the value propositions of the community, adaptability to exist beyond the development, and distinctiveness in the market. They also sounded good. They were both quite memorable, and yet, as a team, we just couldn’t get over the fact that these two R’s in the middle of Interridge just looked weird. For that reason, we took it out of contention, which made it easier for us to select the name that fit all our criteria: Topograph. (did you catch the case study?)
Technical
And finally, it needs to be technical, meaning it needs to be legally available without trademark infringement, linguistically viable without major conflict in other languages, plus easy to spell and pronounce.
The combination of these three major criteria are what make up a good name.
Just creative and strategic, without technical, it will invite a cease and desist letter
Just strategic and technical, without creative, it’ll feel bland and forgettable
Just technical and creative, without strategic, it won’t be able to grow with you
Types of names
There are lots of different ways to categorize names – founders’ names, coined words, historical references, compound words, Latin origins, acronyms, portmanteaus, and more – but the way I see it, you can put all of these into three major groupings, ranging from descriptive to suggestive to abstract.
Descriptive
Descriptive names clearly convey information about the brand. For example, Joe’s Northeast Plumbing Service is a descriptive name.These are less creative but most informational. These names usually include founders’ names or initials, the location of the business, or a descriptor of the service or product offering. The more descriptive the name, the less adaptable it becomes to evolving partners, geographic market areas, or service offering.
Suggestive
Suggestive names can offer a subtle clue as to what distinguishes the brand. As a consumer brand example, you’ve got Away, a brand that sells luggage with a name suggestive of travel. Or, Grubhub, a digital platform to get some ‘grub’ (slang for food, but you knew that). Sometimes, what makes these names more descriptive is when they’re paired with a modifier that establishes some sense of information.
Abstract
And finally, abstract names convey an intangible quality without any practical description of what the brand is or what the brand does. Many popular brands choose this category for its adaptability and memorability. For example:
Starbucks has nothing to do with the first mate in the novel Moby Dick
Apple has nothing to do with the fruit
Everlane has nothing to do with infinite roads
Avalon (the property brand) has nothing to do with the mythical island it’s named after
These names dismiss being descriptive in favor of being creative and memorable (and trademark-able)
For those familiar with the real estate and architecture scene in the Boston area, here’s a sampling of how some names would shake out within each category.
Why choosing the right name matters
Because it needs to be adaptable
If you’re a professional services firm, looking at ownership transitions, or expanded service offerings, and you’ve got a name in the descriptive category, you’ve got to be really strategic. Does the firm name change with a new partner? Does it rebrand? Will it lead to loss of brand recall and brand equity? If so, all of a sudden your name has become a business problem. It’s a safer bet for the long-term growth of a firm to adopt a name that empowers everyone within it. It has to be strategic to adapt to the firm’s growth. And it has to be creative to stand out and be memorable. Firms need to think far into the future when considering a name, even if they’re just getting started.
Because it needs to be available
In the worst case scenario, the wrong name will cost you money, or worse, your reputation. Take this example…
Adding -ify or -ly had been a popular trend in naming. It seemed to be an easy way to turn any word into a coined name.
Bitly, the URL shortener
Optimizely, the digital marketing platform
Insightly, the CRM tool
Tattly, the temporary tattoo brand
Spotify, the digital music service
Shopify, the e-commerce platform
Propify, a property technology company... or rather, two property technology companies
Propify is a property management software built for single family rental homes. It was also, at one point, a technology company that built an API to allow for the integration of multiple property management systems.
Different companies. Similar products. Same name. That’s a problem!
Both entered the market around the same time too, around 2020. But with Propify filing a trademark for the name in 2022, the integration tool had to back out of the name they had been using for years and made the switch to Propexo. One can assume using ‘Prop-’ in the name retained some of their brand equity, but the change of the suffix still didn’t do much to differentiate the brand in the proptech space.
This is a lesson in ensuring your name is distinct by avoiding trends, doing your due diligence, and seeking uncommon language to stand out.
Because it needs to be creative
Names are a vessel for a brand. They carry meaning with them. Consider how some brands carry certain perceptions based on the industry they exist in.
Especially in residential communities, consider how descriptive names like these carry a certain perception.
Chestnut Village
Glen Meadow Farms
Oak Hill Apartments
Colonial Village
Without even knowing them (I actually just made these up), you probably have an idea in your head on what these places might look like.
Compare those to more suggestive and abstract names like the ones below, which carry emotive and visual opportunities for their brand identities:
Rivermark
Ink Block
Avenir
The Brynx
When naming a property brand, not only are you looking for a name that is creative and memorable, but you’ll also want to consider how the perception of your name fits within (or stands out from) the context.
What you can do next:
If your organization is going through transition and thinking about your name, your offerings, consider embarking on a strategy and naming process with me. It’s a comprehensive process and there won’t be any eureka moments when you’ll just know you’ve landed on ‘the one.’ We’ll work through naming criteria, a long list, a short list, and due diligence to ensure we get to a great name.
If you’re a developer or know a developer who thinks a building address is a ‘brand,’ steer your ship in the right direction! and get started with branding and naming. Hopefully from the insights shared above, you see the importance of naming in the context of real estate.
If you’re embarking on a naming process on your own or with another partner, keep an open mind. The name is just one part of the brand. It will be surrounded by context. It can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t say everything you need to convey about your brand within the name. It’s just one piece of an entire brand system.
Naming is a challenging yet exciting part of branding.
It’s an imaginative leap into the unknown, an incredible moment in a brand’s journey to envision what might become before it fully exists.
That’s all for the May issue of Build Mode!
Thanks again for being here.
If you have any ideas to share, or questions to ask, reach out. I’m open to hearing your thoughts and making this most useful message in your inbox this week. If you think this might help a friend, feel free to forward it to them and encourage them to join us.
Wishing you a wonderful month of May and hope to talk soon!
Best.
Kenny Isidoro
See my latest on Instagram, LinkedIn, or feel free to book a call.
Work zone
Some other things I’ve been up to this past monthDesigning:
I’ve just wrapped up a project with Cambridge Community Housing, the scattered site portfolio owned by HRI and managed by Wingate Companies. It’s a timeless brand identity that captures the energetic spirit of the community with the professional rigor of the team’s operations. Can’t wait to share the case study soon!
Collaborating:
As a multidisciplinary practitioner, I’ve been stacking skills on skills over the past several years, but there’s a limit to what I can do. That’s why I’m excited to be collaborating with interior architects, render studios, and signage manufacturers on some current projects and partnerships.
Losing:
I’m coaching my two oldest kids’ soccer teams this spring, 6th grade girls and 4th grade boys, and both teams have suffered losses the last couple of weeks. I love winning, but I hate losing even more, so I’m motivated to get to work each week with young athletes and strive for progress.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
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