#168: Alexandra Watkins – How to invent a GREAT brand name. [Greatest Hits]

Alexandra Watkins [00:00:00]:

Everybody wants a memorable name, but what makes something memorable? What makes it memorable is if it's a name that's based in something that we already have in our existing knowledge base.

Jay Clouse [00:00:26]:

Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. This episode today is long overdue. If you're a long time listener of the show, you've creative elements for the 1st 3 years of its existence. But in the last 14 months, I've rebranded both my newsletter and my podcast to be named Creator Science. I've even gone as far as trademarking the name, Creator Science, and that's because I believe great brand names can be a force multiplier. I believe that because I've seen it. Since renaming the business to Creator Science, I have seen a night and day difference in the way that people treat me, the way they perceive my work.

Jay Clouse [00:01:11]:

It's been a huge difference maker. Now what you may not know is how I rebranded the company. First of all, I love naming things, and I actually created blog posts for the process of rebranding both my newsletter and the podcast. I will link both of those in the show notes. But part of that process was taking a critical look at my ideas for names and asking myself which ones were actually good. And for that process, I use something called the SMILE and Scratch test from a company called Eat My Words. You can visit their website at eatmywords.com. Smile and Scratch are both acronyms that provide a checklist for evaluating brand names.

Alexandra Watkins [00:01:50]:

I named it the Smile and Scratch House because it's based on my very strong belief that a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head. If it makes you scratch your head, scratch it off the list.

Jay Clouse [00:02:01]:

That voice is Alexandra Watkins, my guest today. She founded Eat My Words in 2005. She is a brand name expert, and don't worry. We will spend the majority of this episode talking through this framework. Alexandra is also the author of the best selling creativity book, Hello. My name is awesome. Her branding firm, Eat My Words, has made a name for itself by cooking up unforgettable names and working with clients from Amazon to Coca Cola, Disney, Google, and Twitter. Before starting Eat My Words, as a freelancer, Alexandra actually named Wendy's Baconator.

Alexandra Watkins [00:02:34]:

I freelance for a lot of naming firms, including, you know, Landor, Interbrand, and I took a little bit of every naming brief when I created the name may brief for my firm, Eat My

Jay Clouse [00:02:47]:

Words. So in this episode, we'll cover the smile and scratch test to help you identify good names and disqualify bad ones. We talk about how important domain names are, including whether .com is important, how to get a good .com even if your first choice is taken and whether premium domains are worth it or not. And finally, we talk a little bit about if and when you should consider a rebrand if you're not satisfied with your current name. I'd love to hear what you think about this episode. You could find me on Twitter or Instagram at jklaus. Just tag me. Let me know that you're listening, but now let's talk with Alexandra.

Jay Clouse [00:03:25]:

Alexandra, so excited to have you on the show. I am a user of the Smile and Scratch framework that you share on your website. I've referred the the naming test to so many people. And so I think the most important question to start this interview with is, do you think creator science is a good name?

Alexandra Watkins [00:03:42]:

Oh my gosh. I love the name creator science. When I was introduced to you, I was so exciting of the thought of being on your podcast before I even knew what it was about just because I love the name, and that means you're golden. Right? When somebody loves your brand before they know anything about it, that's the best.

Jay Clouse [00:04:03]:

Take me into your your mind a little bit. When you hear a name, what gets you excited about it? Like, what what about this name if you wanna use it as an example? Like, what lit you up to say that's a great name?

Alexandra Watkins [00:04:13]:

Well, you combine 2 words that I've never seen together, first of all. Creator's such a cool name, right, because it has create in it. Anne then Science is just it's kinda like you took 2 things that don't belong together and you put them together. Plus it just it just doesn't sound like every other podcast. It's just so different.

Jay Clouse [00:04:33]:

Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm so glad you said that because, like I said, I used the framework. And initially, We'll we'll talk about rebrands a little bit here because initially, I had a newsletter that was called Creative Companion. I came to not love that name. I had a podcast. This podcast is called Creative Elements, which I liked okay, but now I had 2 very similar sounding names For similar products, but it created a lot of confusion for even my audience because they would say things like creator companion or I don't know. Like, they were too similar.

Jay Clouse [00:05:03]:

And so first, I rebranded the newsletter to Creator Science, and then I still felt like The podcast shouldn't be separate either. We're gonna call it all creator science, and it was met with some mixed reviews when I asked people for their opinion up front. It's hard to get opinions on names.

Alexandra Watkins [00:05:19]:

Oh my gosh. Jay, but you violated. You violated. You shouldn't don't ask people what they think. Because when you ask people for their opinion on a name, whether you ask them face to face or you do a SurveyMonkey or you post it on social, people don't hear, what do you think of this name? What they hear is, what don't you like about this name? Right? And when you ask someone for their opinion, it's an invitation to criticize. So, look, you and your gut, you knew it was the right name. Right? You and you could run it through the Smile and Scratch test. And, like, you knew.

Alexandra Watkins [00:05:55]:

Like, that's an awesome name. And, like, yeah, just keep it for the whole brand. Put everything under the creator science umbrella. Right? You ran it through the smile and scratch chest. Check. Check. Check. All passed.

Alexandra Watkins [00:06:07]:

So yeah. But but people people suddenly, you know, consider themselves to be experts on names when they're really not. And and you'd yeah. That's just been so detrimental to so many people by asking opinions.

Jay Clouse [00:06:22]:

Okay. So where's where's the line here, though? Like, are we are we to believe that We can find and know the right name without outside thoughts or feedback on it?

Alexandra Watkins [00:06:34]:

Well, look, you can run your name through the Smile and Scratch test, and I know we're going to go through that. And just for anybody who's who it's free on on our website eatmywords.com. You'll see test a name, and that's going to run you through 12 questions asking, you know, about your name and the different attributes of it and it will help determine the strength of it. But, look, you can get a professional like myself to weigh in, but, you know, Chat GPT obviously isn't going to have an opinion. But, you can also trust your gut. But, you know, I would say going running it through the smile and scratch us is pretty safe to do, but you have to answer the questions honestly. And I see all the names that come through the task because I get an email every time someone takes it, and sometimes people aren't very honest with, is it, you know, is it easy to spell? Yes. And it's you know, where it's like missing vowels or, you know, letters altogether, like, you have to be honest with yourself when you take the test.

Jay Clouse [00:07:38]:

Okay. We'll run through that here in a moment. But you're right. I totally had a gut feeling like this is right. And I was looking for validation more than I was feedback, to be honest. I was like, I want I wanna hear if People will validate me, and I wanna hear if there's any major red flags of, like, connotations of the name that I don't understand, or Does this mean something else to a different community of people? But you're right. I totally had a gut feeling when I when I came up with it that just clicked. I was, like, This is it.

Jay Clouse [00:08:08]:

I've got it. So I don't know if that's helpful to people listening. You should just, like, wait for the gut feeling of click, but I did feel it. Okay. One one last question before we get into the Smile and Scratch framework. I wanna help people calibrate how high stakes A naming decision is. Like, if if I have a bad name, how detrimental is that to me long term? If I have a good name, how Positive is that for me long term? Is this something that's going to make or break them?

Alexandra Watkins [00:08:36]:

Well, let's look at a recent example. When when Elon Musk, rebranded Twitter to X. Right? I think that's tremendously detrimental to the name. Right? Twitter was such a strong brand. It had all of this, you know, associated words around it, you know, tweets, you know, and even things like TweetDeck. Right? I think you know, x, it doesn't have any legs to it, and we'll talk about legs in a minute. But, yeah, I think a name can make or break you. I mean, obviously, Twitter was, you know, going down in a blaze blaze of glory.

Alexandra Watkins [00:09:12]:

Isn't that their new tagline, blaze your glory or something? I I think they're going down in a yeah. They just announced that. I think Twitter's going down in a blaze of glory. But, yeah, I think that, yeah, a name can make or break you. It's certainly look. A a business is never going to fail just because the name sucks. But and then, also, if your name is bad, a great product company can overcome a lame name. Right? Like, look at eBay, for instance eBay is not a great name.

Alexandra Watkins [00:09:44]:

I don't I don't recall why it's named eBay, but but it was so revolutionary, and it still is. Right? So we use it and, like, people don't really think about the name. But when you're starting out with a clean slate, why give yourself any disadvantages?

Jay Clouse [00:09:59]:

Yeah. Okay. So I'm hearing you right. You're saying you can overcome a bad name, but a good name could be An accelerant or something really powerful for your project or your brand.

Alexandra Watkins [00:10:12]:

Oh, yeah. And a customer magnet, we worked with a we name a lot of law firms, and we we you know, law firms are traditionally named after the partners. And we worked with this woman, Leila Benajamali, and she knew using her own name would be hard for people to spell, remember, pronounce, all of it had the whole trifecta going of, like, things that you know, reasons not to name a firm after yourself. So we she worked with startups in San Francisco, and we rebranded her Bedrock. And and her tagline is, where it all begins, which I love. So, you know, after we changed her name, she said that she started attracting the type of clients that she wanted to work with. So that's what a name can do for you, too. Right? It can be a magnet for the type of customers you want to work with.

Jay Clouse [00:11:04]:

A few times already, you've you've mentioned the taglines of companies and brands that you've worked with, And that's something I haven't thought about too too much, but do you think of the tagline as an important part of the brand?

Alexandra Watkins [00:11:17]:

Yeah, absolutely. A tagline can help elevate your brand. I mean, one that I love is we named a gourmet popcorn store pop psychology, and they're so the whole theme was, you know, psychology in a fun way. So, like, you know, the sweet and salty mix was called bipolar, and the one that had different flavors in it was in the tin with different flavors was called multiple personality disorder. But their tagline was crazy for popcorn. And that became the domain name as well. So, yeah, taglines are taglines just they can really help.

Jay Clouse [00:11:53]:

I've heard you talk about this before. This is a really interesting insight, which is if you have a great name, but you can't get the digital properties, A good unique tagline can also become the domain that you pull out. Do you have a couple of other examples offhand

Alexandra Watkins [00:12:08]:

of taglines? Yes. I have some great examples of domain names. So one is for a company that Look, some people are just unwilling to change their name. And if you have a name that's kind of pedestrian or, you know, old family name, having a creative domain name or tagline can really help. So this is a company that sells smoked turkeys, and they're called Greenberg Smoked Turkeys. You know, family name, obviously. But their domain name is unforgettable, and it's gobblegobble.com.

Jay Clouse [00:12:41]:

Oh, that's good. That's good.

Alexandra Watkins [00:12:43]:

Another one is a peanut butter company and their name is Peanut Butter and Co. And I came across them at the Fancy Food Show where there was over a dozen peanut butter purveyors I am nuts. Pardon the pun. Sorry. Sorry. I'm laughing at my own joke. That's the 1st time I've ever said that one, but I'm nuts for peanut butter. But their domain name, I saw it emblazoned on a banner above their booth, and it's ilovepeanutbutter.com, which is brilliant.

Alexandra Watkins [00:13:15]:

Right? Because I saw, that day, I saw so many different peanut butter companies, and, you know, the next day, I'm, like, know, trying to recover from my food coma, and I'm like, What was that one? Oh, Ilove peanut butter.com. And what's interesting, if you go to peanutbutterandco.com and they own that domain, it redirects to Ilovepeanutbutter.com. All of the employee email addresses are Ilovepeanutbutter.com. It's just a great conversation starter.

Jay Clouse [00:13:42]:

I love that.

Alexandra Watkins [00:13:43]:

Another one that I saw one time was for a luxury condo building in San Francisco called Lumina, and they couldn't get lumina.com, so they got this super evocative domain name, which was life at lumina.com. And I just thought, wow. That really, like it sounds so it sounds so luxurious and, like, a place I wanna live. So, yeah, there's definitely ways that you can have a domain name that that actually enhances your brand.

Jay Clouse [00:14:14]:

I like that because I could probably search for lumina.com. I go to instant domain search for ideas all the time. And if it's taken, you're like, ah, shoot. I'll go on to the next one. But You're saying instead of doing the route that a lot of people and companies do now, which is to throw some, like, suffix on Lumina and call it, like, Lumina IO, you know, or that's a TLD, but instead of saying luminalief or lumina a file, Lumina. You're saying add a word as in, like, descriptor almost in front of or after the text. Life at Lumina.

Alexandra Watkins [00:14:50]:

Exactly. Exactly. And I wish more people would do that. But, yeah, the and, you know, with the TLDs, the top level domains, like, .io. You know, that one is gaining some popularity. By the way, okay, quiz quiz for you and all your listeners. What does dot I owe? What country what country does that represent? Or what area does that represent?

Jay Clouse [00:15:16]:

Oh, it is a country TLD?

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:18]:

Yeah. Well, it's it's not really a country, but it's an air it's an it's a geographical area.

Jay Clouse [00:15:25]:

Indonesia.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:26]:

Nope. Indian Ocean Territories.

Jay Clouse [00:15:29]:

Really? Mhmm. Okay.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:30]:

Do you know dotly?

Jay Clouse [00:15:33]:

No. I don't.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:34]:

It's Libya.

Jay Clouse [00:15:36]:

I did think I knew that at one point. I was like, I did look this up. So this is something that people probably don't know.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:40]:

No. They don't know.

Jay Clouse [00:15:41]:

These top level domains, These were originally 4 different countries.

Alexandra Watkins [00:15:45]:

Correct. Look. Up into Libya, I didn't even know that that was Libya's domain when I was there, which was, you know, over 10 years ago, but Libya, for instance, is a very unstable country. So you don't you don't want a domain name from a country from a country that's unstable, so or a domain extension. So, yeah, find find something different. And please, like, the, like, the worst like, the l y trend, like, you know, ending your name in l y, is so problematic, but the worst which, by the way, isn't even a .ly domain, but it's Grammarly. How is Grammarly Grammarly is a grammar checking website with a grammatically incorrect name. Like, that just chills me.

Alexandra Watkins [00:16:32]:

Kills. But I wanna I wanna give everybody a little something some food for thought as we say at Eat My Words, my naming firm. I was at TechCrunch 1 year, and I saw this sign for a company, and it was card dot I owe. Is it pronounced card? Is it pronounced card. Io? Or is it cardio? Right.

Jay Clouse [00:16:59]:

I think about this all the time. This is this is what I warn people when they're when they're looking at domain names for their brand or whatever. Sometimes having these uncommon domain extensions, also known as TLDs, it makes the name actually longer because you have to pause and audibly say, dot, and then the extension for people to know what you're saying, and that's such a hard thing to fight against. I when I had the newsletter that was originally Creative Companion, couldn't get that .com. I got a .club. So now I'm saying creative companion .club Anytime I'm trying to direct people to my website, it was terrible. It was terrible. It was a mess.

Alexandra Watkins [00:17:37]:

Yeah. And then there's still gonna be those people, like, .club.com. Like, they they don't right?

Jay Clouse [00:17:43]:

Totally. Totally. Totally. After a quick break, Alexandra and I talked through the smile in the Smile and Scratch test. So if you wanna grade your own brand name, don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now back to the show. This has been amazing already, but I really wanna run through this framework, the Smile and Scratch framework for people who aren't familiar with this.

Jay Clouse [00:18:08]:

Again, Alexander said it's on eat my words .com. Go to test a name. I share this with a lot of people. It's very generous of you to put it in text on the page even not even behind the email gate for people to see and think about. These are two halves of a test. Smile is 5 qualities of a super sticky name. Scratch is 7 deal breakers. Let's start with the 5 qualities of a super sticky name, smile.

Jay Clouse [00:18:32]:

Can we run through each of those Sure. Letters and what they mean?

Alexandra Watkins [00:18:35]:

Sure. So smile, the s in smile stands for suggestive, and that doesn't mean naughty. It means that you want your name to suggest something positive about your brand. So, you know, creator science. That's something positive. Right? Amazon is suggestive of it's a metaphorical name. It's suggestive of something very large. Metaphorical names are very suggestive.

Alexandra Watkins [00:19:01]:

The m in smile stands for memorable. Everybody wants a memorable name, but what makes something memorable? What makes it memorable is if it's a name that's based in something that we already have in our existing knowledge base. So for instance, the brand of bicycle locks, Kryptonite. We all know tonight from Superman. Right? Kryptonite repels Superman, so kryptonite locks. The metaphor being, you know, oh, it repels bike thieves. So that's that's a metaphorical name that's super memorable. The I in smile stands for imagery.

Alexandra Watkins [00:19:37]:

People remember, people can recall images and pictures much more easily than they can recall random words and letters. So if they can let's go back to Kryptonite. Right? We can all picture Kryptonite in our head. Right? So that has imagery with it. So if your name can evoke an image when people hear it, they can they're filing it in their brain's filing cabinet and then, you know, later on, even a year later, however longer later, if you're trying to recall that name from your brain's dusty filing cabinet, you can pull it out of there. The I think, have it you can you can pull it out of there. The l in smile stands for legs, and that's where your name lends itself to a theme. The name of my firm, Eat My Words, has the theme of food and beverage.

Alexandra Watkins [00:20:23]:

So, for instance, our blog is called The Kitchen Sink. We have a menu of services. Some of our packages are, you know, supermarket special. I'm introducing something called snack. So that's that's the idea with legs. So you have a name that you can really extend the mileage of. And then finally, the Ian smile stands for emotional, and your name needs to make an emotional connection with people and resonate with them, or it's going to go right over their head.

Jay Clouse [00:20:53]:

Is Is the goal to achieve all 5 of these in the name? Do I need to hit 3 out of 5, 4 out of 5? What makes it feel like I should move forward into trying to disqualify it past the smile.

Alexandra Watkins [00:21:06]:

Try to do all 5. Legs is the hardest one to do, but if you can get it, if you can get it, you're golden. So I'll give you an example. We named this woman's she's a publicist. Her name is Lynette Hoy. She was using her own name for her business. But, you know, Lynette Hoy doesn't say anything about her being a fiery publicist. So we rebranded her Fire Talker PR with the tagline hot on the press.

Alexandra Watkins [00:21:33]:

She calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. She has packages like controlled burn and fire starter. And she has a theme song, Fire, by the Ohio Players, that she cranks up every time she does a speaking engagement to get the audience on their feet, naturally not forcing people. You know, we've all been to, you know, conferences where the speaker's like, Okay, everyone, stand up. And, you know, like, we hate that. But, like, you crank up a song like Fire or my theme song, Sugar Sugar by the Archies, you know, people are naturally going to gonna naturally have energy from that. So, yeah, that's the beauty of having a name with legs.

Alexandra Watkins [00:22:16]:

And legs can extend far beyond the the verbal branding of your name, it can go into the identity. So, for instance, at Eat My Words, our icon is a pink refrigerator. I have it in my office over over there. So the pink fridge is where we store our cool books. It is the, I have a little pink, pink fridge business cards that open up. We have pink fridge mint tins. We when we send, goodie boxes to people, they have pens that look like Twizzlers. So we've really extended the whole food and beverage theme, and that's what you another thing you can do with the name with legs, you can just really extend the theme that way as well.

Jay Clouse [00:22:59]:

When it comes to legs, I had a another Understanding of it. That may also be true or I may be wrong. So you tell me if I misunderstood this. But something I see people do commonly is they'll have an identifier that might be, like, local to where they live. It might be a cadence or a time of day. For example, if somebody says That they have a brand. Let's let's take, let's take Ryan Holiday's Daily Dad brand. By putting the word daily on it, Sometimes I feel like people do this with a newsletter, something that they publish on a daily or weekly basis.

Jay Clouse [00:23:34]:

That feels like it kinda locks you in to a cadence Over time. And so that's where I thought legs might come in of saying, like, well, we don't wanna lock ourselves into weekly whatever or the The Tuesday Dispatch, because now I have to do this on Tuesdays forever, or Columbus Dispatch. Obviously, that's going to be in Columbus only. Am I thinking about that right?

Alexandra Watkins [00:23:56]:

Yeah. I think that's more of the r in Scratch for restrictive, where it locks you in.

Jay Clouse [00:24:03]:

I see. I see. Okay. Well, before we go on to the Scratch side of things, something that I'm taking from the whole Smile framework here, When I share a name or hear a name that hits these 5 qualities, you, like, see people react to it. It's not like a flat, like, okay. Like, I imagine a networking event where you hand someone your card or someone says, what do you do? And you say, I'm the creator of this thing or I'm the founder of this. If you cross these items off the list, people go, oh, Because they they're they're making an assumption about what that brand suggests. They're having this emotional reaction like you're saying.

Jay Clouse [00:24:45]:

There's a feeling of I understand just from the name or think I understand just from the name what it is you do, and I wanna talk more about it. Whereas a lot of things are just kinda like,

Alexandra Watkins [00:24:56]:

hey. Exactly. That's so true. And I do enough podcasts and talk to enough people to see that reaction. And you know it when you have it. I mean, I know because my own business name, Eat My Words, it makes people smile. That we named it GPS for dogs retriever. And when I say retriever, like, I know you're a dog dad, people smile or, we just I just worked out I help people, with monikers, which is I think theirs are different than names.

Alexandra Watkins [00:25:28]:

Monikers are they help people that already have a business name, but, it helps position them. So maybe, like, this this woman in particular is a realtor. She already has a realty company that she works for, but she wanted to position herself as a realtor. So, she's a former flight attendant. She was with United for 24 years, and she really identifies with that. That that was a huge part of her life. She still travels. She loves to talk about travel.

Alexandra Watkins [00:25:54]:

It's a great conversation starter travel. Everyone always has a place at the bin or a place they're going. So I leaned into that with her, and she's a bubbly blonde. And her moniker is the flighty realtor, and she owns it. And, like, you know at a conference when she's wearing a badge that says the flighty realtor, like, people are gonna smile, like, oh my gosh. What is that? Like, her her logo is gonna be a little, a house with wings, so, you know, people get it. But, yeah, when you have a name that, like, people have that reaction to, that's making that emotional connection. That's making them smile.

Alexandra Watkins [00:26:33]:

And a name doesn't need to make you smile in that it it makes you laugh, but it need people need to get it. Right, everybody wants to feel clued in, not clueless, and that's what a name can do for you.

Jay Clouse [00:26:49]:

And that reaction is so, Like, so much more likely to lodge into somebody's brain as memorable because, again, that's part of the framework. And being memorable makes you inherently more referable. It's more likely you're gonna come to mind when somebody's looking for someone to help with x or y or people are trying to solve a problem. Oh, let me tell you about my friend, Jay. He has this thing called creator science.

Alexandra Watkins [00:27:10]:

Yeah.

Jay Clouse [00:27:11]:

That is really some of the magic I feel is this allows me to be referable.

Alexandra Watkins [00:27:16]:

Yes. And it's really interesting you brought that up because I was just I was on a a I do a lot of lawyer podcast, and I was on 1 I'm not a lawyer, but I and I don't play 1 on TV. But law firms are traditionally named after partners like we just talked about. But, you know, they all have areas of expertise. And if you are known for your area of expertise rather than your name, you're you're more easy to refer. So there's a guy that we worked with in in Sequim up in Washington state, and he specializes in environmental law. And we named his law firm Terrain. And, you know, if there's, like, just a list of, you know, lawyers and, you know, just all last names or multiple last names, and then you see one that's just a a name of you know, a brand name, Terrain Legal, that's gonna stand out.

Alexandra Watkins [00:28:09]:

Eat my words, we do we name a lot of food and beverage, so eat my words really stands out. So if you can brand yourself with something that speaks to your specialty, that's going to make you more referable.

Jay Clouse [00:28:23]:

Yeah. A word that comes to mind a lot for me In the space where I play with creators, you know, we're we're competing for attention. That's literally, like, the game that we are playing, And I think people enter into this world, and by world, I mean, like, their social media feed, and they're quickly trying to disqualify you as someone not to pay attention into. And so your your name has to make an impact, an impression. It also helps make you seem more legitimate And trustworthy. If it if it crosses these these 5 things off, which again, let me recap. Suggestive, memorable, imagery, legs, emotional. Love it.

Jay Clouse [00:29:02]:

After one more quick break, we walked through the scratch part of the Smile and Scratch test. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Alexandra Watkins. Let's get into Scratch, the 7 deal breakers. Run us through how this acronym works.

Alexandra Watkins [00:29:21]:

Okay. The first one is super I would say this is like the most violated, but the biggest one to watch out for, a spelling challenge. If your name looks like a typo, scratch it off the list.

Jay Clouse [00:29:33]:

Let's run through all, the

Alexandra Watkins [00:29:35]:

7 of these

Jay Clouse [00:29:35]:

and then we'll go

Alexandra Watkins [00:29:36]:

one other time. Okay. I just wanna to sink in with people. Okay? The first c in scratch hands were copycat. Nobody likes a copycat. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself? So, look. If if first of all, you need to do your trademark research, make sure that your name that no one else has a is using the same name or a very similar name, you would be shocked at how many things get rejected from the trademark office for being too close to something else. If it sounds alike, it's a problem.

Alexandra Watkins [00:30:07]:

So, you want to trademark screen your name. I'm gonna give everybody a great place to go to to get your trademark worked on. It's called Indie Law, I n d I e, law. Tell them I sent you. I send them lots and lots of clients as you can imagine, and they will treat you really well. Okay. So, yeah, copycat. Don't copy another brand.

Alexandra Watkins [00:30:29]:

Be be original. It is possible. The r and scratch downs were restrictive. We talked about that, where people outgrow, you know, to you know, daily dad, uh-oh. Dad wants to go on vacation. Jen, he you know, doesn't his VA quit. He doesn't, yeah, he he doesn't have the content. So, yeah, don't lock yourself into something that you're going to outgrow.

Alexandra Watkins [00:30:49]:

I'll give you another example. HotelTonight, you know, really great name. When it came out, they were they were selling discounted hotel space when hotels, you know, had all these vacancies, that they couldn't get rid of, then they would discount them and so you could get deals on hotels that night. Well, what happened is hotels tonight, they went beyond just tonight. So you can reserve a room up to 365 days in advance. So suddenly HotelTonight outgrew their name. Now, I always thought a better name for that website that had a lot more personality would have been Get a Room, which I think plays into the original meaning of hotel tonight. Hey, let's get a room.

Alexandra Watkins [00:31:35]:

So the a in scratch stands for annoying, and no one wants to be frustrated. Right? You want your name and your brand to feel like a welcome mat, not a do not enter sign. But when you annoy people, any type of friction your name has is going to frustrate people and send potential customers away can frustrate your current customers. So, you know, having a number in your name, for instance, that's annoying for people. In it think about annoying yourself. Right? Anytime you're gonna have to spell out you know, if your company is called coast to coast and it's spelled coast numeral 2 coast, you're always going to have to spell it out. That's annoying. The t in scratch stands for tame, you can't afford a name that's tame.

Alexandra Watkins [00:32:26]:

I mean, it's like you said, Jay, people are looking for any reason they can find to discount you and dismiss you. If you have a tame name, you're just a wallflower. You can't afford to be tame, not now. You know, there's there's so many brands out there, you need to stand out in a sea of sameness. So don't be tamed. Don't be descriptive. The second c in scratch is curse of knowledge. Engineers are terribly guilty of this.

Alexandra Watkins [00:32:54]:

It's when they know or you know what something means, but nobody else does. So think of the word foreign when we're talking about curse of knowledge. Is your name foreign to people? Is your name a foreign word? Foreign words, you know, there's, an education company, and it's called Mzinga, and it's spelled m z I n g a, which is, you know, loosely based on the Swahili word for hive. I mean, who would know that? That requires way too much of an explanation. So don't make your name based on anything foreign. And then finally, the h, also a really big deal breaker, stands for hard to pronounce. We talked about card. Is it card.

Alexandra Watkins [00:33:40]:

Io or cardio? Right? So that's a name that even though you think it's easy to pronounce, it the the pronunciation can be butchered. Right? What about that beverage that everybody the water, sparkling water, LaCroix and LaCroix. How do you say that? And when Coca Cola hired us to name their competitive water to that, they said, we don't want a name like that because nobody knows how to pronounce it. So you all you want your name to be easy to pronounce and only to be able to be pronounced one way.

Jay Clouse [00:34:12]:

Oh, speaking of which, how much better of a name is Starry than Sierra Mist?

Alexandra Watkins [00:34:18]:

Oh, is that did they rename that?

Jay Clouse [00:34:20]:

Yeah. That's a rebrand.

Alexandra Watkins [00:34:21]:

I didn't know that. Yeah, Starry is really pretty.

Jay Clouse [00:34:24]:

Yeah. They took they they said, our our Sprite competitor, Sierra Mist, is not performing because it was a bad name. And now it's starry, and they put a ton of money behind it, and it's so much better.

Alexandra Watkins [00:34:34]:

Oh, I didn't even know that. I didn't even know really, Sierra Mist? I mean, it sounds refreshing. No?

Jay Clouse [00:34:41]:

I mean,

Alexandra Watkins [00:34:42]:

I think it's Starry's a it's a really pretty name. And I will say this. In almost 20 years of doing this, I have never seen the name Starry on any namer list, so that's that's impressive.

Jay Clouse [00:34:53]:

Oh, fun. Okay. Well, I I like that we talked a little bit more about, tame because I feel like this is something that I see a lot in the creator space is people getting very literal and scripted Yeah. With their names. They're like, this is this for this. You know, maybe this is, Linux for beginners. You know? And it's like, I get I get it. That's nice.

Jay Clouse [00:35:15]:

But not only is it tame, that's also restrictive. And they're introducing multiple problems with their name by doing something like that.

Alexandra Watkins [00:35:23]:

Yeah, you know, here's an example of a name that was pretty tame. It was the business growth advantage. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not super exciting, and it also sounds like a lot of other names. So what this company does is they help people create teams of virtual assistants to I mean, it's incredible. They've I have I have used some other people. I have some. They get you VAs in the Philippines for $6 an hour, which and who are amazing. And so the Business Growth Advantage didn't say a lot.

Alexandra Watkins [00:35:59]:

So it was all about helping your team crush it. Right? So I worked on coming up with a new name for them. I was really inspired by the name I wanted to call it was Skypiercer because, oh, they they wanted to use so this is, this is 1 this is also from IndiLaw. It's it's a sister company of IndiLaw's. They have a lightning bolt. Indie Law has a lightning bolt as their logo. They wanted the same lightning bolt for Business Growth Advantage, the new name. So I had Sky Piercer and then Joy Vitale, the very dynamic owner, said, No, Pierce sounds too small.

Alexandra Watkins [00:36:38]:

Like, this is much bigger. So it came up with Skybreaker. So it's Skybreaker, helping your team crush it. I mean, that's a very exciting name. Right? And it's so cool. Like, it just, like it's powerful and it's fun and it's, like, different and, like, you know, it's it's got all of the, you know, it's suggestive, it's meaning, it's memorable, it has imagery, you know, great legs with helping your team crush it, you know, breaking the sky, and makes that emotional connection. So that's that's those are the type of things that you can do when you go from having a tame name. I'll give you an education example.

Alexandra Watkins [00:37:15]:

This is because I know you work with a lot of a lot of educators listen to your podcast and a lot of people in the learning space. So we were working with a learning platform, and their name was Edio, e d I o. Now look. So many people are like, we want a short name. But it's it's much better to have a name that's longer that people can remember than a name that's short that they can't remember or that doesn't have a lot of personality. So we took Edio, and we rebranded it Head Rush. Right? Head Rush. And that passed my my task of would a kid put it on a skateboard put a sticker on their skateboard? Would they put a Edio sticker on their skateboard? No.

Alexandra Watkins [00:37:58]:

Would they put a head rush sticker on their skateboard? Absolutely. So think of your name like that. Develop your own acid test for your name where you know, what would when I I name the Wendy's Baconator and the acid test for the Baconator is, would a truck driver order it?

Jay Clouse [00:38:16]:

I love this because you can you can think about your own audience here. This is one of the problems I see with, like, people who operate solely behind their name. Fan fandom is kind of weird. Like, am I going to put your name on my skateboard? And I think something else to call out here, we're talking about names. I think the implicit understanding is this applies to brand names, company names, but it also applies to product names Within your company, within your brand. These these make the products themselves more shareable and memorable and referable.

Alexandra Watkins [00:38:52]:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We name we name tons of products. I mean, I I love naming product names more than company names just because the domain name isn't nearly as important when you're naming a product name because it's usually under the company domain name umbrella. But, yeah, no, product names, those are super important. Right now we're naming, autonomous surface drones that will be used by the military. We're naming, socks that are patent pending. I can't tell you why, but they are.

Alexandra Watkins [00:39:21]:

Yeah. So we name a lot of products, and those are yeah, we're naming a new consumer home health test kit. Yeah, they're all products. I love product names.

Jay Clouse [00:39:32]:

With the scratch side of the Smile and Scratch test, How many deal breakers is too many deal breakers?

Alexandra Watkins [00:39:37]:

All. All. Sorry. Let let me back up. One deal breaker is too many. And trust me, I do this every day. I've been doing it for almost 2 decades. Every single one of those will come back to haunt you.

Alexandra Watkins [00:39:52]:

They will.

Jay Clouse [00:39:52]:

Okay. So let's let me recap this real quick. S, spelling challenged, c, copycat, r, restrictive, a, annoying, t, tame, c, curse of knowledge, and h, hard to pronounce. Now you mentioned it just a 2nd ago that you helped name The Baconator. I knew this about you as well. And I've heard you tell a little bit of the story of that where you said they had a fantastic creative brief for you on this project. So I would love to dig into that a little bit people can't even think about, what is the creative brief I can construct for myself and my own brand to help me begin this process?

Alexandra Watkins [00:40:26]:

Okay. Well, that when I named The Baconator, it for Wendy's, it was through their, naming firm, Strategic Name Development, where I was a freelancer for them. So what you wanna include the brief is the road map because so many people, they try to come up with a name without any any strategy without anything to really test the name against. So the creative brief is where you put all the ingredients into it. You know, it's kind of like the recipe, all the ingredients, but then you have to experiment and make your creation. So some things you want to find out is or you want to ask yourself, or, you know, what's the tone and personality of your name? Let's go to strategic name development, that naming firm I work for. That's a very just kind of a descriptive name. It's not super creative where you eat my words, oh, that's really fun and playful.

Alexandra Watkins [00:41:23]:

That describes our personality. So what brand personality do you want to communicates, make sure that comes across in your name. Who's your target audience? What are the desired brand experiences that you want people to feel when they come in contact with your name, do they do you wanna feel like, oh, they they they're going to trust you? Do you want people to feel like, wow, they're really creative or, oh, they're very strategic. So think about things like that. You are going to talk about, in your brief, kind of think about some words that you might want in your name, some themes that you might want around your name. So what we're naming something right now with a sci by theme. Right? So that's a direction we're exploring. So come up with themes you might want to explore and also any words that you don't want in your name.

Alexandra Watkins [00:42:12]:

You know, look at your competitors what names are they using that you definitely don't want in your name? So those are all things to consider.

Jay Clouse [00:42:19]:

Let's say I'm listening to this And I'm running through these frameworks as you're laying them out, and maybe I don't meet the smile test or maybe I had a couple of deal breakers in the scratch test. At what point should I consider a rebrand? If I already have a name out there that I'm doing things, If I'm already operating under something, should I think about rebranding?

Alexandra Watkins [00:42:42]:

Yes. It's never too late to change your name. We recently renamed a bank that's more than a 100 years old. They were named First National Bank of Syracuse. They were not in Syracuse, New York. They were in Syracuse, Kansas, which is a tiny little town, but they were a well known regional bank with lots of locations. And the name wasn't working for them. It was old.

Alexandra Watkins [00:43:06]:

It was dated. It sounded like every other bank. And this was an award winning regional bank. They were very progressive, they were mavericks. The naming firm they originally hired wanted to name them Maverick, which I thought was a huge mistake because no one wants a bank to be a maverick with their money. If you wanna be a maverick with your money, you can invest in the stock market and have, like, a high risk tolerance, but you don't want your bank you know, a bank should be safe. So I said don't so luckily, that ran into some trademark Cheers and they couldn't use it, and then they talked to me, and I said, look. You you need a name that's a Maverick name but doesn't say Maverick in the name.

Alexandra Watkins [00:43:44]:

So we rebranded them Dream First because they were all about making dreams come true. They finance a lot of agriculture, equipment, farms and, you know, big dreams, family dreams. You know, they work with generations of families. So that name really worked for them. Rebrands are our favorite thing to do, and it's never too late to change your name because you can have your domain name redirect automatically to your new domain. You can send out in email to your current and former customers. You've got social media. There's so many opportunities for you to mention your name change.

Alexandra Watkins [00:44:22]:

But make sure that your name is good because, you know, look what's happened like with, you know, X and okay, I'll just skip the Weight Watchers one. So Weight Watchers, a couple years ago, rebranded to WW. They wanted to get rid of the baggage associated with Weight Watchers, but the problem is none of the, members wanted to call it w w. And if you think about it, Weight Watchers is 3 syllables, but w w is 4 syllables. And then when you get into the domain name, you know, it's a mile long, w w www.ww.com. Right? It's really a mouthful.

Jay Clouse [00:44:59]:

Oh my gosh.

Alexandra Watkins [00:45:00]:

So Oh my goodness. So now they're going back to using Weight Watchers.

Jay Clouse [00:45:03]:

Yeah. I will tell people listening to this, you know, I was begrudgingly, like, coveting a name change, and I was just so worn down by what I thought the process of rebranding will be like. I I have a conversation with Arvid Call on the podcast feed called, what's underneath brand building for creators? Where we talk about this, like, 6 months before the rebrand. And at the end of the day, the rebrand itself, Technically, took maybe a week worth of effort learning how to do the redirects. The the more difficult thing was Coordinating with any partners or people who are already using that your name in their materials. But it was really much less Scary and difficult than I initially thought. And I'll tell anybody who listens, the rebrand itself has been night and day impactful to how I am received as an individual, how the company is received when I talk about it. I think it's been a huge part of the momentum that I've had over the last 18 months.

Alexandra Watkins [00:46:02]:

Oh, that's awesome. And if you work with me, I give you the ultimate rebrand checklist that has every place you could possibly ever need to change your name. It's also part of my online course. So, yeah, that's just because, yeah, you can't remember all the places where your name is. But in you know, when you do change your name, it gives you, it gives you a a nice, excuse to get back in touch with with people. Right?

Jay Clouse [00:46:27]:

It's a very marketable event, and you will need more touch points than you think to tell people that this exists because people don't pay attention to things that aren't themselves, but It's doable. Yeah. And I think it's I think it's worthwhile. A lot of times when you have a name that is 2 words pulled together, Like, creator science. Those are marked as premium domains that might cost $1,000, $3,000 or something to acquire. And I I meet a lot of people who are really excited about a name. The .com is available, but it's premium priced. Do you think that investment is worth it?

Alexandra Watkins [00:47:01]:

It depends how long your business is how long are you gonna be in business? I mean, I bought eatmywords.com for $1200, you know, 18 years ago, and it's, you know, definitely paid off. You know, in the beginning, if you can't afford your domain, just add a modifier word. I mean, a lot of people don't know that Tesla, for the 1st 13 years, was teslamotors.com. Facebook was the Facebook. Dropbox was Get Dropbox. Basecamp was Basecamp HQ. Cute. So all of these companies eventually came around and bought the exact match domain name.

Alexandra Watkins [00:47:36]:

But it's not necessary. A just make sure, you know like, a couple $1,000, I think, is okay. But when you start getting into astronomical pricing, which so many of them are, just use a modifier word.

Jay Clouse [00:47:51]:

Would you advocate for teslamotors.com over tesla.co?

Alexandra Watkins [00:47:58]:

No. I like tesla.co. I think that's okay.

Jay Clouse [00:48:01]:

Yes. It's interesting because there are, like, these judgment calls kind of kind of like this, but, I also, you know, paid the premium price for creator science.com, and I think about well, one, I've never thought about that investment again. Certainly don't regret it. I think it's way more likely that I would regret not getting it years from now Yeah. If it was available to me at some point than regret getting it. So consider that if you're if you're in that position. But I agree with you. You need to have a certain level of conviction and commitment for that investment to make sense.

Alexandra Watkins [00:48:35]:

Yeah. And let me just remind people of something. So, like, this morning, before we had this call, I wanted to test my Internet speed to make sure I had a stable connection. So I went to speed test .com, and that was and I I'm like, oops. You know? I meant to go to speed test .net. So very quickly, I just changed the the search in my browser, speedtest.net there I was. Did I not use speedtest.net because I accidentally went to speedtest.com? Of course not. Same with Tesla.

Alexandra Watkins [00:49:06]:

Right? If someone was in the market for a Tesla and they went if you went to tesla.com for the 1st 13 years, you would have for a while there, you would have been greeted by this very ominous looking website that said, this site is owned by Gandhi Net. If you wanted to buy a Tesla and you were looking for a dealer, you know, how do I test drive 1? You wanted more information. Were you gonna give up? No. You just typed in your browser, Tesla car, whatever you typed in, and then you would get there, and you wouldn't have even noticed what the domain name was. In in you know, I tell people, would you have not bought a Tesla because they didn't own tesla.com? Would you, you know, not investigate further? Of course not. So think of it that way. Dig it further? Of course not. So think of it that way.

Alexandra Watkins [00:49:51]:

Really think of it from the mind of a consumer. If somebody really wants to find you, they'll find you.

Jay Clouse [00:50:03]:

I genuinely love and recommend smile and scratch test, and you can try it out for yourself for free at eat my words.com. A link to that is in the Shoutouts. Thanks to Alexander for being on the show. Thank you to Nathan Tonhunter for mixing this episode and Emily Clouse for creating our artwork. If you like this Episode, tweet at jklaus and let me know. And if you really wanna say thank you, we are so close to 400 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We're close to 200 there.

Jay Clouse [00:50:31]:

It means a lot. I see every single one of them. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next