CHAPTER 5

How to Be an Idea Machine

Brainstorming names is a blast when you use my proven tools and techniques. These methods are highly effective, and you will be surprised and excited by how many fresh ideas you’ll generate in record time!

Why What You’re Doing Now Isn’t Working

Innovation doesn’t happen in a conference room. Yet this is where the majority of brainstorming meetings take place. Naked walls, fluorescent lighting, and traces of the prior group’s notes scrawled on the whiteboard is hardly the environment for a hotbed of creative stimulation.

For companies that insist on following a process, I can’t think of anything less process based. Brainstorming names in a group results in a mad free-for-all, where extroverts throw ideas at the wall to see what sticks and introverts may hesitate to say anything at all. Everyone (but you) sucks up to the boss. No one has an objective filter with which to evaluate a name. If a name does get chosen, it was likely selected because it was the one that was met with the least resistance. It’s not the most awesome name for the brand. It’s mediocre at best. Or worse, it’s an amalgamated clusterf*ck because no one could agree on a single name, so the group contrived one by forcing two or three names together. The only person who is happy is your trademark attorney, who exclaims, “It looks like we can get clearance on Hiveacore!”

Gathering friends over a bottle of wine (or two) is equally unproductive. Innovative ideas don’t materialize out of thin air. Nor do they come from games of Drunken Scrabble, Ouija boards, or Magic 8 Balls.

The Right Way to Brainstorm

What is the ideal number of participants for brainstorming names? One. You. What is the optimal place? In front of your computer. The single most powerful brainstorming tool is the internet. Online you will find everything you need to come up with awesome name ideas.

When you brainstorm online, you’ll find yourself clicking on unexpected links and going down all kinds of rabbit holes. You never know where your next idea will come from.

As my extremely imaginative mother says, “The creative process is an idea orgy, where you can jump into bed with any enticing idea that comes along.”

Let the Fun Begin!

Before you get started, it helps to have the SMILE & SCRATCH test handy so you can quickly evaluate the strength of your ideas. Here are three other tips to help you maximize your creativity.

1. Open Your Mind

While you look up words, phrases, and images associated with what you’re trying to name, let your mind become a playground. Bounce things around. Turn things over. Put the unexpected together. Visualize. Fly overhead. Look at it from another angle. Take the lid off. Be fearless. There is no one there to shoot your ideas down, so go for it!

2. Write Down Every Idea

Jot down all your name ideas, even those that don’t feel exactly right. One of them may later lead you to a real zinger. When you create your list of names, divide them into categories: “Spot On,” “Maybe,” and “Sparks.” Sparks can often be turned into fire.

3. Have Your Creative Brief Handy

Before you dive in, make sure you have completed a creative brief (as shown in the previous chapter). This background information and naming strategy is your ingredients list. You may find it helps to print your brief for the warm-up exercise below.

Brain Thaw

To demonstrate my brainstorming process, we’ll use the Zenyo creative brief from the previous chapter.

The Warm-Up—Choose 12 Starter Words

Before you start using my brainstorming resources, write down at least a dozen words related to your brand or brand experiences. This word-association exercise is not meant to be a list of names, just lighter fluid for your search for the perfect name. (You should be able to get a lot of starter words from your creative brief.) Here are 12 from the Zenyo brief:

cold	social	teens
cool	sweet	treat
eat	tart	yo
skinny	tasty	yum

You’ll want to use all your starter words when you do these brainstorming exercises, but for this chapter, I will show you just one, as that’s all you need to “get it.” The first word, cold, is an excellent one to explore because it alludes to the product description of “refreshingly cold,” as well as the great outdoors in winter and the cold treat that is frozen yogurt on hot summer days.

Mine the Online Goldmine

There are countless places to get name ideas and inspiration online. Each one here will yield different results, as will the additional brainstorming sources at the end of the chapter. (I didn’t need them for this particular assignment, but I often use them on other projects.)

Open the Thesaurus Treasure Chest

Begin your online brainstorming on a thesaurus website, where you can find a jackpot of synonyms and associated word sparks. My go-to is Thesaurus.com. Here are a few of the dozens of words I found for cold:

arctic	goose bumps	shivery
bitter	nippy	snowy
chill	polar	wintry

Let’s take a closer look at the results:

arctic—Arctic Circle could be interesting.

bitter—This would make an edgy name with a double meaning because one of the two flavors is tart, and rebellious teens could be bitter.

chill—A little dated, even for Utah.

goose bumps—I love the name Goosebumps. It’s unexpected and makes a nod to the excitement of young love.

nippy—Could work.

polar—The word on its own is dull, but

polarize could work because it has the double meaning of two flavors being polarizing.

shivery—No, but there could be something with

shiver, which, like

goose bumps, makes a nod to teen love.

snowy—Snow Angel could be fun, but it would be better for a snow cone shop.

wintry—A weird word, but

winter is a concept worth exploring.

While the some of these words aren’t ideal as names, they definitely spur more ideas. For instance, “snowy” makes me think of building snowmen, which brings me to my next go-to brainstorming tool.

Supercharge Your Imagination with Images

A picture says a thousand words. Many of those words can inspire awesome names, which is why I do image searches to fuel my creativity. Next stop: images.google.com.

Inspired by snowy, I search for “snow fun.” I see photos of kids building snowmen, having snowball fights, making snow angels, and flying down snowbanks on saucers.

Next, I type, “winter sports” and get an array of photos of people having fun on skis, snowboards, inner tubes, sleds, toboggans, mountain bikes, and snowmobiles. I also see photos of a naked guy sitting on a slide at a snow-blanketed playground, two golden retrievers humping in the snow, and what appears to be a member of the Swedish Bikini Team gliding down a bunny slope in a skimpy bathing suit. Note: If you are in cubicle or at a café and don’t have Google SafeSearch turned on, be warned you may be exposed to these kind of racy images, which can unexpectedly appear in the most seemingly harmless searches.

Professionally compiled stock photo websites such as Shutterstock.com are fantastic places to see conceptual ideas related to your name. A search for the word cold brings up countless images, many of which generate more ideas. A few pictures show people who have colds, so I refine my search (on Shutterstock it’s under the More tab) to exclude the keywords sick and Kleenex. Searching stock image sites is also a fantastic brainstorming method to find metaphorical names related to a concept. For instance, I spot a few photos of icy thermometers, and my gears start turning. The name 30 Below would work because there are fewer than 30 calories in an ounce of frozen yogurt.

The photos of the skiers and snowboarders are the catalyst for my next idea …

Comb through Glossaries of Terms

Every sport has its own lingo, and the lingo can be a deep source of ideas. Search for “glossaries,” “lingo,” “vernacular,” “jargon,” “dictionaries,” “thesaurus,” “terms,” “words,” or “slang,” for the sport you’re interested in, and crack the code. My “winter sports” image search has inspired me to look up glossaries of lingo for skiing and snowboarding, two popular activities in Salt Lake City, where the flagship location will be.

I google “snowboarding lingo” and hit the jackpot when I discover the blog Shreddin’ the Gnar 101. Here’s some of the slang I found on the blog, which cleverly offers a “crash course.”

shreddin’ the gnar—riding the terrain. (A really cool way to say, “We’re going snowboarding.”)

chatter—when the board shakes because of the rough terrain and when you’re riding on an edge.

yard sale—a fall where your equipment scatters.

taco—a kind of fall where your body folds over a rail or box, creating a taco shape.

As I learn the terms, the one that jumps out at me is chatter. This is a rich word because it has so many layers of meaning. To snowboarders, it’s lingo for a shaky board, but customers don’t need to know that to appreciate the other meanings. Chatter implies cold (chattering teeth) and teens chattering with one another, which taps into the frozen yogurt store’s desire to be the new place for teens to socialize (chatter) with one another.

While many of the terms in glossaries will be cursed by being known only by insiders, you will usually find gems that work regardless of whether someone knows the insider definition.

Dictionaries Have More Than Just Definitions

You might be wondering why I would go to a dictionary website, since “everyone knows what cold means.” Dictionaries are deep wells of ideas. The one I like best is The Free Dictionary (thefreedictionary.com), which provides much more than definitions. It’s also a thesaurus and a source of phrases and idioms. The word cold has a long list of results and name ideas. Since there are 2,710 words for that entry, we’ll look only at the most fruitful and fun highlights of what I found. Some of the definitions and phrases would make interesting names. Others aren’t so hot.

Definitions of Cold

Sexually unresponsive

Lacking emotion; objective (cold logic)

Marked by or sustaining a loss of body heat (cold hands and feet)

So intense as to be almost uncontrollable (cold fury)

A common viral infection in which the mucous membrane of the nose and throat become infected

Dead

Phrases with Cold

common cold	cold fury	cold as hell
Cold War	cold sore	in cold blood
cold shoulder	cold feet

Cold War would be a great name for a cold medicine but not a frozen yogurt brand. I like Cold Fury, but the others, not so much. I know there are better names to be found. I’m just getting warmed up.

Go Googlestorming

In addition to image searching, there are a myriad of other ways to use Google for brainstorming, or as I call it, “googlestorming.”

Continuing to explore the word cold, I type, “coldest places on earth” into the search field. The first result looks promising: “Some of the insanely cold places where people actually live.” I begin reading about bone-chilling places I have never heard of, can’t pronounce, and will never be on my bucket list. (One of the best things about brainstorming online is learning about so many different things I would otherwise not know.)

First on the list is Verkhoyansk, Russia, which is 1,500 miles south of the North Pole and where “1,434 people live …, carving out a living in the deep Siberian wilderness.”

The word Siberian jumps out at me. Siberia. Metaphorically, Utah is like Siberia in that it’s at a great distance culturally. It’s just the type of self-deprecating name that teens would love. “Mom, I’m going to Siberia with my friends, but I’ll be home in time for dinner.” Cool.

Reading further, I learn about Yakutsk, Russia. You may know it from the board game Risk. It is known as the coldest city in the world. Reading further, I learn that “the world’s coldest temperature outside of Antarctica was recorded not far from Yakutsk.” I like the word Antarctica, because it’s similar to Siberia in that it seems like another world, and it could be amusing for teens. “Dad, I’m going to Antarctica, and I need the car keys.”

Movie-Title Madness

Pop culture references from movies can make for super-sticky names because they are familiar. I named a janitorial company Eat My Dust, which is also the name of a campy seventies race car flick.

My next Google search term is cold movies. I know it seems odd to look for this, but I’ve done enough googlestorming to know I’ll find something. Sure enough, Time magazine has compiled a list of Top 10 Freezing Cold Movies. (Thank you to everyone who creates this kind of content. I love you.) In the top 10, I see Nanook of the North, Dr. Zhivago, and Fargo. These are cool movies, but they are not cool names for a frozen yogurt store. On the same search, I see a freaky picture from The Shining of Jack Nicholson frozen in the snow, which I then discover is available as a snow globe on Etsy. Are we having fun yet?

Book Titles

Unlike businesses and products that can claim ownership of their names because of trademark law, you cannot trademark a book title. That makes book titles a ripe source of ideas. (Don’t try this with famous books that have been made into brands like the Harry Potter series.)

An Amazon search of books that contain the word cold brings up 36,364 results. Of course I don’t plan to go through all these, but I look at the first few pages. To speed up the skimming process, I switch the results view from “detail” to “image.” This way I just see the book covers. Many of them, such as In Cold Blood, Cold Fusion, and Cold War have turned up in my other searches. But there are some new ideas too.

Cold Comfort Farm (Cold Comfort would be a nice name.)

Biting Cold (fun—biting is a word I liked from the thesaurus search that I thought would be good paired with another word. This one works.)

Now let’s tune in to music.

Music

Song titles and band names are terrific sources of inspiration for name ideas. When tasked with coming up with fun flavor names for a chili pepper–infused brownie, I did a song search for the word burn and found the famous Elvis Presley song “Burning Love.” My mind immediately went to the catchy lyrics, which inspired an idea for a name: Hunka Hunka Burning Love.

A song search at the iTunes Store reveals these cold titles and words:

“Funky Cold Medina” (makes me laugh, but I’m not sure if teens would know this song, and a Muslim holy city might not play well in Utah)

“Cold as Ice” (nope)

“Stone Cold Bitch” (uh, no)

An even better place to find song titles is Ranker.com. There you can find songs grouped by word and sometimes theme. I just checked it and found a list of 100 songs about “being cold or freezing.” As a result of the search, I came up with a name I love: Cool It.

Fun with Puns

While most puns are corny or too long for a name, I enjoy short, lightly coined puns like Nail Fraud, which is what I came up with for a line of nail polish decals using my easy two-step process.

First, I go to my favorite rhyming dictionary, RhymeZone.com. A search for cold yields 242 words, including scold, trolled, and paroled. Since cold is one syllable, I choose a few common one-syllable words, old and gold.

Next, I go to the Phrase Thesaurus (phrases.org.uk/phrase-thesaurus), an expansive collection of catch-phrases, movie titles, and pop culture references. I search for short, familiar phrases containing the words gold and old to make puns with cold.

Gold Hearted becomes Cold Hearted. Love it. I also like Cold Rush, which I made from Gold Rush. The others would not be good names, especially Coldfinger. The word old doesn’t work as well, but Cold Mother Hubbard and Grumpy Cold Men are good for a giggle.

By now, I’ve exhausted the word cold and have come up with 15 names that pass the SMILE & SCRATCH test:

Arctic Circle	Shiver	Siberia
Bitter	30 Below	Biting Cold
Goosebumps	Chatter	Cool It
Nippy	Cold Fury	Cold Rush
Polarize	Cold Logic	Cold Hearted

Could you have brainstormed all these names by sitting in a sterile conference room staring at a whiteboard? Doubtful. What about over a few bottles of Pinot Noir? I don’t think so. And you wouldn’t have seen a random picture of two Golden Retrievers humping in the snow. Just sayin’.

Next, I will repeat this process with the 11 other starter names (eat, treat, cool, etc.), plus all of the word sparks I came up with along the way. The ideation process can take weeks, but it always yields at least a hundred name ideas. You want to have a solid list of at least a few dozen names, as sadly many will get eliminated during trademark screening. For this reason, do not fall in love with just one or two names.

The Chosen Name

I came up with the winning name while doing an image search for “eat frozen yogurt.” This led me to a lot of photos of colorful spoons in yogurt, which made me think of “Spoon Me.” It fit the brand perfectly and aced the SMILE & SCRATCH test.

Our client was enamored with Spoon Me. And despite concerns that some members of the community might be offended by the racy name, it never happened. Even grandparents were charmed because of how innocent spooning is. (At least with your clothes on.) The company was able to monetize the name and extend the brand in many ways:

T-shirts: “If you love me, Spoon Me,” and “Shut up and Spoon Me.”

Bumper sticker: “If you’re driving this close, you might as well Spoon Me.”

Booty shorts: “Let’s Spoon.”

Front door: “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Spoon.”

Utah hours: “No Spooning on Sunday.” Coming-soon sign: “Spooning Soon.”

Public service slogan: “WARNING: Spooning leads to forking.” (Just kidding. Virtuous teens may not be ready for that one.)

The company graffitied the restrooms with spoonworthy movie slogans suggested by their customers, such as “You had me at Spoon Me,” and “Yo, Adrian, let’s spoon.”

How many T-shirts would our client have sold if they had called themselves Zenyo?

10 Bonus Brainstorming Sources

These robust websites provide endless ideas and inspiration. The first one is worth exploring for the volume of ideas as much as for the entertainment value. Where else could you generate random names for Mongolian death worms?*

FantasyNameGenerators.com: More than 1,200 name generators, description generators, and guides. Dig deep.

IdiomConnection.com: Phrases and idioms neatly categorized by topic, including animals and body parts idioms.

NameBerry.com: Baby names that can be searched by meaning, such as “Names that mean strength.”

PowerThesaurus.com: Crowd-sourced associated words, ranked and neatly organized.

Synonyms.com: Words that mean the same but are different.

VisualThesaurus.com: For those who think visually, a comprehensive thesaurus and dictionary of more than 145,000 words that you can explore using an interactive map.

Visuwords.com: A graphical dictionary to view words’ meanings and associations with other words and concepts.

WordAssociations.net: An associative dictionary, an explanatory dictionary, and a picture dictionary.

Wordfind.com: Use to find words that start with the same letter. Excellent for making alliterative names.

WordGameDictionary.com: Use to find short words to help you nab an available domain name.

If you’d like a list with links to all the brainstorming sources mentioned in this chapter, just shoot me an email at [email protected].

* Mongolian death worms are allegedly gigantic worms that live deep in the Gobi Desert. Measuring three to five feet in length, they are dark red in color with spike-like projections at both ends. They are able to kill in several ways, including spitting a lethal stream of corrosive venom and electrocuting their victims from a distance. The names in the Mongolian death worm generator are based on Mongolian names but are usually not actual Mongolian words. Since Mongolian names are quite guttural, these names also work well for gigantic worms in settings outside Mongolia.