Compounds like Blackberry, Powerbook, and Windsurf are multipliers of association. Wind brings one cluster of images, surf brings another. 1 + 1 = 3. That's why clients who resist compounds are leaving value on the table.
David Placek
@david-placek
Naming expert who created Azure, Pentium, Blackberry—brings rigor and craft to brand naming.
Stop evaluating names. Speculate instead. Human psychology makes us ask 'what's wrong with this?' — but great naming requires suspending judgment and asking 'what could we do with this?'
When we asked consumers about a name and they said 'I don't know much about that product, but I know they're not like the other guys' — that's when we knew we had a great name. It creates a predisposition to consider.
The .com doesn't matter anymore. A URL has become an area code — nobody cares if you're in 415 or 615. Get the right name first. The .com can be solved later.
Use a decoy competitor test: Tell a friend 'Our competitor just launched and their name is [X].' Their reaction tells you exactly what that name does — not whether they like it, but what it makes them imagine.