Is it fair to say that, just very occasionally, a naming creative brief that comes our way is…well… not a very good brief? It may lack objectives, insight, awareness of where branding starts and stops and other disciplines take over, or understanding that the design brief and naming brief are not the same thing. (Or it might just be that it’s a ‘bit tricky’ and we don’t like it much of course).
Is gently and supportively guiding the ‘re-focus’ of a naming creative brief good consultancy or a representation of our own preferences and naming prejudices?
Let’s steer away from the ‘where have all the brief-writing skills gone to?’ debate (the answer is often that people don’t create time to sit down and think before writing a brief – too much content to create and too many immediate deadlines to meet, apparently). Instead, let’s leap to the crux of the matter as regards our old friend the naming creative brief.
Naming is both a technical and creative exercise and a damn good creative brief will cover criteria and parameters for both these things. There is a huge hairy heap of questions that need to be explored to help shape the creative work to follow. These range from business strategy to brand strategy and positioning, from the marketing plan to customer profiles (the low hanging fruit and the harder to pick target). We need to interrogate the technical criteria for the name (trade mark, domain, languages, cultures), the naming strategy (name type(s), any architecture and portfolio considerations) and the creative strategy (creative routes, linguistic cues, personality, tone of voice, any no go areas).
People are sometimes surprised that a 30 minute Zoom call might not nail the full spectrum of issues a decent naming creative brief should address. I wonder what does constitute fair time for the one element of the mix that you would hope never to have to change and without which the rest of the brand party does not kick off its shoes and start to throw some shapes? Throw in the cost of upsetting a third party should trade mark requirements and process not be watertight and frankly, it’s a bit of a miracle that there remain collections of letters that are prepared to put themselves forwards.
So the discussion points of a brief are many. But which are the über-critical answers without which a brand namer should not start work? My ‘generic naming brief’ has a cornucopia of 25-30 questions, which become trimmed and tailored obviously to the client and sector. Without discussion (or an agreed rejection of their relevance) around them in some form, I’m not wholly comfortable banging out the creative.
Still, the spotlight must be shone (as per the consultant’s rule book). And it’s good discipline to squeeze the flab on the old comfort zone occasionally, so I offer here my top 6 that I think provide must have answers for any naming creative brief. Without these in play it’s hard to see a confident start point for a namer:
Who is/are the naming decision maker(s) and shall we do this briefing call when they are free?
What exactly does this product/service do and why? (yes really – it’s often overlooked. A good namer will happily ask and ask again until it’s clear)
Describe the problem – are we sure it needs a new name and not a positioning review or comms plan?
Why should your competition and/or category be alarmed?
Without referring to the words that are your stated/intended brand values, can you describe the personality of your brand?
What are your plans for investment in the name?
Naming friends, brief me. Some banging naming questions had to miss the cut here. Does your naming creative brief start its journey elsewhere?
