Product naming strategy

Written by this site’s curator. It’s held to the same bar as everything else here — scanned, source read, verdict recorded — but you should know who made it when you weigh that.

A naming practice that changes how a name gets chosen, not just how many get generated. The creative core is adapted from David Placek’s public descriptions of Lexicon Branding’s approach (Lenny’s Podcast, 2025): a positioning “diamond”, small teams working from different briefs, exploring a name’s potential before judging it, and testing reactions rather than asking “do you like it?”. Around that it adds a competitive language map, evidence-labelled screening, a scoring rubric, a decision memo and rename migration steps. It isn’t Lexicon’s process and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by Lexicon.

When to use it

• Naming a new product, company, fund or product line.
• Stress-testing a name you already like before launch (“is this a good name?”).
• A rebrand, including how to migrate customers and search traffic to the new name.
• Lighter runs for feature names and internal codenames.

How it was tested

Eight cases, each run with and without the skill and graded against 10–12 checks: 76 of 78 checks passed with the skill, 36 of 78 without. The checks that separated the two were structural (a positioning diamond, four or more distinct creative territories, predictions labelled as hypotheses). Several checks mirror the skill’s own template, so the score partly measures whether the template is followed. The test prompts aren’t published.

Before you install

It is not trademark clearance. It screens names and labels how much evidence stands behind each finding, and it tells you a qualified trademark review is required before you adopt a name — at any budget.