In the early days of starting a business, the most important thing is to name your products. A good name can open the market faster and at lower cost, make people remember, and eventually become a strong brand.
I believe that every entrepreneur has this experience. At first, he always thought that he would come up with a perfect name for his product, so he racked his brains in the whole process and exhausted what he had learned all his life.
But the reality is often: deadline is coming, and the hundreds of names I think of have not reached the most perfect one I expected. I always feel that something may be missing, but I don't know what is wrong. In the end, I have no choice but to choose a hard one.
Not all teams can have moments like "Zhihu" when they feel extremely firm and "that's it".
Naming has tortured us for a long time. From the beginning, everyone wanted to find a perfect name, and the process of achieving this goal was painful.
At first, we all focused on asking and answering. Around these two words, we have come up with more than 100 decent names, such as asking things, asking questions, asking loudly and so on. The idea is to encourage behavior. If you have any questions, just say hello. However, all these names are a bit neither too painful nor too exciting. Of course, we also engaged in some formalism, trying to set a deadline and then forcing all the names to be graded and sorted, but failed.
And then one day.
September 13, after 6 pm, looking for food in Sanlitun. A text message from Sean, the cheerleader of Zhihu Team, jumped into my mobile phone: "What if it is around the word' know'?" A few minutes later, his second message jumped in: "Zhihu. com？ After the name hovered in my mind for several hours, I sent you a short message with only two words "Zhihu" on it.
That's how Zhihu got here.
Our team also went through all the above processes when choosing a name. A name has been suppressed for a long time, which is very painful. We have consulted a lot of relevant materials, but they are scattered and unsystematic.
The biggest feeling after choosing a name is: from a business point of view, there must be no so-called perfect name, and a good name must be the most suitable for your own direction.
I wrote this article to sort out my thoughts in the whole naming process, make it a reference for naming methods, and provide more dimensional ideas and standards for naming.
Next, I will analyze the nature of names from top to bottom to talk about how to choose names. The article is a bit long, and there may be logical loopholes in the content. I will slowly supplement and improve it later.
First, the meaning of the existence of the name
"In some people's vocabulary, design is equivalent to decoration, equivalent to interior decoration, and equivalent to the material of sofas and curtains. But for me, design means something completely different. Design is the soul of all "artificial objects". It expresses the meaning of the existence of this object through layers of external appearances. か-Steve Jobs
In the whole process, I have been thinking about: what is the meaning of the existence of names, why everyone should have names, why everything should have names, and what are their names. Thinking from these angles, we can find more possibilities:
Tell others through different media (language, words, images) so that others can identify with their own cognition.
The existence of a name can only be told to others through the media. After telling others, others will automatically associate their names with the things behind their names.
Give a chestnut: Introduce yourself in public (through language): My name is Radish Superman, and I am an entrepreneur. Nice to meet you. So in the listener's cognition, there is an instinctive connection: radish superman = his cognition (image cognition: good-looking. Language cognition: Strong speaking ability. What you told him: Entrepreneurs have potential and motivation, and they will ask him for a WeChat in the future.
So in the next period of time, he will associate the name with something in his cognition and make some subjective judgments. The more he knows about the object represented by this name, the more related things will be. The name is the sum of all the related cognition in his mind, and it can also be said that the name is a signal to arouse his brain cognition.
Awaken at some point.
After the first cognitive association of a name, the name may not always exist in his mind until some of his demands are aroused, and he will look for how to solve them. If there is something related to solving the appeal in the place associated with this name, then the name will be resurrected.
Take a chestnut as an example: If a friend of yours is a designer, when you need to design something, you will naturally think of this friend, then recall his name and search for him. His name comes back to life when you need design support, because his name contains the attributes of design in your cognition.
Second, what is a good name?
It is much easier to push backwards according to the existing meaning and business rules. I summarize two points:
It is easy to remember, and it can keep a long memory.
Most people have the experience of memorizing English words. You will find it painful to learn by rote, but there are two kinds of words that are easy to remember.
1, itself is very simple, the number of letters is very small, such as: you, fine, ash, this kind of word can be remembered basically as long as you read it once. Therefore, many brands are named in this way. Try to use fewer words, such as "Mo Mo", "Zhuan", "QQ" and "YY", and only use 1 word.
2, can be associated with other cognitive creation, there are many ways to create associations, such as pregnancy, pregnancy, you associate "jump on a man", just remember. Or you know the word bug, the prefix of de stands for reduction, and you can remember the word debug without memorizing it.
Therefore, many brands have created many associations in their names, which is convenient for memory, especially the use of specific images. For example, "QQ" is afraid that you can't even remember a Q, so it uses penguins as associations. When you see penguins now, your first reaction may not be animals, but "QQ". "Where to go" is related to camels, and "Ctrip" is related to dolphins. Many times you can remember his name through a specific image, which is why many brands are either animals or plants.
Besides a basic image, slogon, advertisements and other promotional materials are often used to create more convenient and memorable associations for this name.
The value behind this name is obvious.
Just remembering the name doesn't mean anything to a product. As the meaning of the existence of a name says, a name must be resurrected at a certain time to be valuable.
For example, if you want to buy clothes or small things and are not so sensitive to buying fakes or after-sales, you may go to Taobao. When you want to buy something immediately and care about its quality, you may go to JD.COM, which is also an e-commerce platform, but their needs are different.
Of course, it is not enough to create the value behind the name. All marketing activities of an enterprise are actually aimed at strengthening the value and positioning behind the name. However, if the name can't convey or cover up the value it conveys, there will be great problems.
If "JD. COM was called "Magic Department Store" at first, which means that it needs to pay more marketing costs to change others' cognition of "magic" and make "magic" a reliable and professional synonym. Obviously, this is basically impossible. Don't try to change others' views on what has been done.
Why do I say there is no perfect name, because the perfect name must have both differentiated value (recognition) and functional value, but the fact is that all names balance differentiated value and functional value.
Too much emphasis on differentiated value will inevitably weaken functional value, and vice versa. Please remember this sentence first, and I will expand it a little later. People's cognition is limited, and the number of words in a name is limited. Simple things are often the most complicated. As for how to balance them, we need to think about designing a name from scratch and find this balance.
Third, design a name.
Design a name like a product, not a fantasy. The whole design process can be divided into four steps:
1, deeply analyze users and industries, and determine brand positioning.
2. The war between functional value and differentiated value.
3, quantitative change to qualitative change
Step 4 re-check
In-depth analysis of users and industries to determine brand positioning.
Zhihu v "Papman" divides products into four grades, which I think is in place:
Core product, what is the essence of your product?
What are the unique selling points of physical products and products themselves?
What are the services for expanding products and extending products?
Psychological products, what is your product in users' psychological cognition?
Psychological products are brands, products meet needs, brands meet desires, and names are literal expressions of brands. In other words, you must clearly understand what the brand positioning is before you think about the name.
Determine brand positioning
Brand positioning is three strands of rope, and when the three strands of rope are twisted together, it will come out. So which three strands of rope are they?
The first rope: What other consumers' desires in the industry are not satisfied?
The second rope: Are the competitors satisfied?
The third rope: how can we be satisfied?
What we need to know is that desire may be an unsatisfied pain point in the actual products in the industry, or it may be an unsatisfied pain point in psychology, depending on the industry and products.
Desire is a scene: it is the consumer's expectation and fantasy for your product, and imagine what will happen after he owns your product.
take for example
The first rope: sending flowers is a social behavior. If you want to find the pain point in the physical products of flowers and solve the problems of styles and types, then you will go astray. Sending flowers is to close the psychological distance between two people, and flowers carry emotions.
"Fauvism" saw the boredom and formality in the process of sending flowers, so it created a story for each bunch of flowers, allowing you to make better use of this bunch of flowers to reflect your taste and high social value (pretending).
"Roseonly" sees the pursuit and commitment of devotion to love between lovers during their passionate love, so when you buy flowers, you must register the ID numbers of both parties and tell the people who buy flowers that you have made up your mind. If you want to give "Roseonly" in your life, you can only give it to this person.
For the "pixel apartment", what I see is the indifference of the roommate relationship in the shared apartment. When I got home, I shut myself in my room, like a stranger under the same roof. But in fact, everyone doesn't want this, and many times it's just because of embarrassment.
The second rope: be sure to understand how competitors do it, especially the giants are also in your industry.
The third rope: "Fauvism" is a creation story, and "Roseonly" is a creation ceremony. Stories and ceremonies have become part of their products and can be done.
"Pixel apartment" is made in four steps, so I won't go into details. Simply put:
1, tenant classification, so that more suitable people with the same attributes can live together.
2. Create an environment. We have put a lot of thought into the construction of public areas to make tenants more willing to live in public areas.
3. Tenants break the ice, and we will introduce them as middlemen to break the embarrassment.
4, tenant APP, let tenants interact online.
5, offline activities, let tenants really play and become friends.
The brand we want to build is a scene where tenants associate with "pixel apartment", which is a social life scene where people play games, watch movies and cook happily together. Everything is done around increasing the possibility of realizing this scenario, which is also something we can do. As soon as the three strands of rope are twisted, the brand positioning comes out, and the direction of the product is also there, which is one step closer to the name.
The battle between functional value and differentiated value
I want to explain the degree of identification first: identification = differentiated value embodiment, so what is the difference between differentiated value embodiment and functional value embodiment?
For example, "Enjoy" is a high-end group purchase, and "Meituan" is an ordinary group purchase. Obviously, from the name, "Meituan" is a group buyer (functional value embodiment) and clearly knows what it is. And "enjoy" you don't know just by looking at the name, but what kind of feeling does it convey to you? A slightly reluctant feeling, I think it can be called the embodiment of differentiated value. Compared with other group purchases, it is recognizable and embodies the value of differentiation.
As for how to balance, in fact, it is necessary to analyze the specific industries, but basically three laws can be summarized.
1. When the market knowledge is in the early stage (there are few competitors and the audience's cognition is unclear), what you do (functional value embodiment) is more important than differentiated value embodiment. When the market develops to the stage of full competition, the difference between you and others (differential value embodiment) is more important than functional value embodiment.
The previous example has explained that everyone's cognition of group buying is scarce in the early stage, and the quality and intensity of group buying in the later stage become scarce. When the scarcity of this industry is what the name should reflect, this scarcity is also the place where the three strands are tied.
2. The higher the frequency of product use or purchase, the more important it is to reflect differentiated value, and the lower the frequency of product use or purchase, the more important it is to reflect functional value.
For high-frequency products, the higher the differentiation value, the users will choose you because you are different, and will not feel that everything is the same and become disloyal. For low-frequency products, it is more important to let users know what you do and what advantages you have.
3. More importantly, it depends on the differentiated value of communication products, and more importantly, it depends on the functional value of sales products, not communication.
No one wants to spread something that can't show its superiority without coercion, so it is more important to reflect the differentiated value for products that rely on communication, but not so important for traditional sales products that don't rely on communication.
Quantitative change to qualitative change
The previous question is not clear enough to give a name. In previous projects, many methods were tried, including crowdsourcing, to mobilize all influential people to make suggestions for names. Facts have proved that it is basically useless to give names to people who don't understand the brand positioning and non-professionals. In the process, I invented an efficient method, which may kill my friend. It is very efficient and easy to open your mind, which is much more effective than simple brainstorming.
The first step: after determining the brand positioning, call a meeting of all the small partners involved in the naming action to ensure that they have a deep understanding of the brand positioning. This step is very important and is the basis of the follow-up work.
Step 2: Think of 50 names first, and the time is limited to 1 day. The next day, we will discuss the hundreds of names you have come up with, and then spread, evaluate and screen your ideas.
Step 3: Repeat step 2 until the decision-maker thinks "this is it" and a suitable name comes out.
In this process, everyone's potential can be stimulated, and all the friends will keep thinking in their minds whether they are eating or going to the toilet.
Of course, this is actually extremely painful and may be scolded by your friends. As a boss, the only thing you can do is to buy more things to replenish your brain. Believe me, I can really change from quantitative change to qualitative change in the end.
Review again
There are really too many dimensions to evaluate a name. In the case that the preparatory work is not fully prepared and the thinking is not thorough, the evaluation is often impossible, and it is likely to be overturned because of some serious injuries. The following are some aspects that I think must be investigated.
Registration (registration)
If you don't think about the future of the brand at first, then this article is of little value to you. But after all, legal compliance is the most important thing in the system. Names that cannot be registered have no commercial value. No one can protect you, and there is no exclusivity. There is no brand premium when it grows bigger. Probably making wedding clothes for others.
To confirm whether you can register, you usually go to the inquiry system of the Trademark Office first. However, there will be various terms in the examination of trademarks. For example, there are many commonly used terms that cannot be used, which will be divided into dozens of categories according to different industries. Each kind of situation is different. Generally, considering the efficiency and success rate, we will find a professional company to deal with this matter.
Of course, generally such companies will help you inquire and give you a lot of advice. You can make good use of it. It's free anyway. Finally, when you register, you should spend some money on them, because it will kill you.
Search (SEO/ASO)
Now I will search for people's basic habits first and get to know them as the first step. Luo Pang said that he regretted calling it "logical thinking" instead of "logical thinking". I think that although it increases the cognitive cost of users, "logical thinking" really makes him better searched. It's hard to say which is good or bad.
With a good name, go to search channels where users may appear and see what will appear. Really, don't joke about Xiaomi's "double-headed" again.
In the same search, users will enter words, and try to avoid words that have to be turned over many pages to find.
Time period (life cycle)
Some words and usages may be popular at that time, but they are easily out of date. If you don't want your name to go out of date so soon, try to avoid popular words. Check to see if names will become obsolete.
Spread (spread)
It must be the basic principle not to be vague and tongue-tied. Of course, communication is more about whether the differentiated value you provide is worth spreading. The premise of communication is that I tell you what I know and you don't know. You know I'm great. I'm here to show my superiority, that's all.
tractility
Know that this name will appear in all your future VI designs, promotional materials and websites, and fully evaluate the possible visual presentation of each name.
At that time, when we called "pixel apartment", we fully considered this point to some extent, because for an industry that relies on product design itself and is limited by cost, design differentiation is very important to us. Therefore, the design element of "pixel style" is adopted. Pixel style can be realized in the design of the whole house and the design of APP. It also includes that the heads of our company's small partners are all pixel heads, which is the positioning and proposition of our overall market crowd. Lifestyle is also very suitable.
Scene association (scene)
I don't agree to let many people think of names together, but I think this place can really find a large number of users to investigate.
In short, it is important to know that your name was given to someone who knows nothing about you and your products: what emotions he felt and what he thought.
Of course, the closer to what you want to convey, the better. If there is a certain distance between the final research and what you want to convey, you can also try to visualize it before conducting the research. Maybe your message will be completely different.
We began to wonder whether English is called "pxroom" or "pixelroom". Finally, we found that "PX" was reminiscent of "PX" chemical project, so we gave up "pxroom".
Speaking of which, I actually thought about giving up the name "Pixel Apartment" two months after it was built. I always feel that there are imperfections and I deliberately pursue perfection. In fact, this is a big taboo for starting a business. The vacillating way of doing things and the mentality of firm determination without making a decision will bring great hidden dangers and problems to the subsequent entrepreneurial process.
The name is very important for a product, but it is not that important.
A good name is really to form an overall synergy and reduce marketing costs. But this is actually only a part of the whole system, and the name is only the first battle against the user's mind. There are still many hard battles to be fought, including giving the meaning behind the name, creating more associations that will help users know us, and so on. The name is only the first step in the long March.
Of course, the birth process of the full name is more conducive to the overall planning and clear direction of the company and products in the early stage, which is of great significance to the long-term development of the startup company. I think any startup company and team should experience all this deeply. Looking at the leopard in the tube, the name is a small link in business behavior, and the constant balance and choice in this process is actually the charm of business. Every entrepreneur is painful and happy.
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