Hello My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

by Alexandra Watkins, Claire Buchignani (Narrator)

The ultimate guide to naming your product or business has been updated throughout, with twice as many resources as before, new stories (of both hits and flops), and an entirely new chapter on the power of names in the workplace.

Too many new companies and products have names that look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game (Xobni, Svbtle, Doostang). In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone - even noncreative types - can create memorable and effective brand names. No degree in linguistics is required.

The heart of the book is Watkins' proven SMILE and SCRATCH test. A great name makes you SMILE because it is evokes something about your brand; is makes an association with the familiar; uses aids memory through evocative visuals; has lends itself to a theme for extended mileage; and is moves people.

A bad name, on the other hand, makes you SCRATCH your head because it is Spelling looks like a typo; is a similar to competitors’ names; is limits future growth; is seems forced and frustrates customers; is feels flat, merely descriptive, and uninspired; suffers from the Curse of speaks only to insiders; and is Hard to confuses and distances customers.

This 50 percent - new second edition has double the number of brainstorming tools and techniques, even more secrets and strategies to nab an available domain name, and a brand-new chapter on how companies are using creative names around the office to add personality to everything from cafeterias to conference rooms and much more.

Audible Audio

Published September 12, 2019

About the author

Founder of naming firm Eat My Words, Alexandra Watkins is a recognized expert on brand names with buzz. She is frequently quoted in the press and been featured in leading business publications including The Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Entrepreneur. Alexandra is a popular speaker at MBA programs and has been a guest presenter multiple times at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, San Francisco State, USF School of Management and their alumni association. She has also entertained audiences at the Proctor & Gamble alumni association, Uncollege, In-House Agency Forum, SF City Club, and many co-working spaces.

Alexandra first got hooked on naming when Gap hired her to create cheeky names for their first line of body care products. Soon after, she broke into the business by talking her way into branding powerhouse Landor via a Match.com date. With her fresh, unconventional naming style, Alexandra soon became a go-to resource for countless branding and naming firms around the country. And Landor sent her enough business to open her own firm. Since then, she’s generated thousands of names for snacks, software, sunscreen, social networking sites, sportswear, shoes, sugar scrubs, serums, and seafood. (And that’s just the S’s!) She’s also named lots of things that make people fat and drunk including a nationally recognized bacon cheeseburger (which ironically, must remain nameless).

Prior to Eat My Words, Alexandra was an advertising copywriter, working at leading ad agencies up and down the West Coast, including five years at Ogilvy and Mather, where she helped launch Microsoft Windows and learned the language of Geek Speak. In the mid-nineties she jumped on the dot-com gravy train, and rode it until it crashed in her SOMA backyard. Alexandra took the money and ran, spending a year in Australia, New Zealand, Bali and Fiji. Upon her return, she discovered her passion for naming things and soon after started Eat My Words.