The Unwritten Rules of Naming Your Business
Every industry has a set of unwritten branding rules, or tendencies, that become codified over time. Sometimes they can become clichés. Most industries will have only a few types of names. This happens naturally: One company finds success, and the next company mimics them because it worked for the first. The next thing you know, it’s a rule, and no one remembers why it started. This applies to everything from how businesses are run to color choice and typography to their names. But let’s look at naming for now.
The name of my company, Bullhorn, is a good example. There are general naming trends in the branding agency world that have become unwritten rules. The first is to use a modifier with the word “brand,” like this:
I chose these companies because they’re all large, successful agencies that do great work. In many ways, they’re the agencies Bullhorn aspires to be. But their names are forgettable. More than that, they’re undifferentiated. How could you remember if you liked the work from Moving, Inter, or Future? The names are too similar. While these names are unique, they don’t tell you much about the company. What they do is give historical weight. They sound established. They sound old. Choosing this sort of name puts you in the same tier as other professional service providers—hence the “law firm model” description. What these names tell consumers is that the providers will tend to be safe, traditional, and fairly expensive choices.