The Art and Science of Product Naming

When fragrance brand Snif was cooking up the name for its latest scent, which smelled of pancakes hot off the griddle — maple syrup, melted butter and “sugared musk,” — it went off instinct.

Taylor Merkel, Snif’s chief brand and creative officer landed on “Hot Cakes,” because it had “a direct connection for people of what they’re going to smell,” she said, which can be difficult to translate online. Plus, there was a double meaning — “selling like hot cakes,” making it a perfect fit for a brand whose names, like its Vow Factor candle and Midnight Grind laundry scent booster, are often rooted in puns. It resonated with shoppers, too: The fragrance drove 10 million organic social media impressions within a month of its launch date in March.

But product names don’t always come as intuitively. Many can start as a list of hundreds of names, Merkel said, and the brand sometimes asks for community input. For its tart cherry scent — now named Tart Deco — Snif shared a moodboard on social media and sent customers an email survey to determine a name.

Product naming is a delicate process; a balance of research and human touch, complicated by the propagation of AI, a name must often go through multiple rounds of review. It’s more difficult sto stand out today, with countless brands churning out endless products. To that point, teams need to ensure their name of choice hasn’t already been trademarked in their category.

“A huge part of naming is being practical. It has to be available to use,” said Annie Kreighbaum, co-founder of skincare brand Soft Services and former vice president of brand development for Glossier, where she played an instrumental role in naming products like Boy Brow grooming pomade and Cloud Paint blush.

“The unfortunate thing is, beauty is such a crowded category now, it can be really hard to find a name that isn’t a made up word, defines the product, is fun to say and easy to spell,” she said.

In fashion, where many products tend to be named after women, standing out is also challenging. “If you name your dress the Elizabeth, you’re going to have a lot of hits on a lot of different dresses,” said Marcelo Gaia, founder of womenswear label Mirror Palais.

To get it right, marketers need to think about what makes their product truly distinct and be strategic about building out topical word banks that address the different unique qualities they’re hoping to get across to consumers.

Naming Building Blocks

Whether picking a brand name for a new company, or naming upcoming launches for a well-established label, getting a clear picture of a brand’s identity is the first step.

For Ariella Gogol, a writer and brand strategist who has worked on product and programme names for the likes of Ilia Beauty, Sephora and fashion label Frame, it starts with the founder’s perspective. As an outsider coming in, she spends lots of time asking questions, like who the brand’s muse or target customer is, and taking in existing brand materials to develop — or even help build — a clear picture of its identity.

For Frame, she began to piece together the beliefs and traits of the brand, as if it were human, taking into account the brand’s European sensibility, inspired by its Swedish co-founder Erik Torstensson, but with a laidback Californian touch.

“Their clothes tend to be form fitting and flattering. So converting that to a human trait becomes a sensual woman who feels good in her body, who is embodied, who is very present,” said Gogol. “It’s someone who has then moved to LA and loves the sunshine and the ease and freedom and creativity. There’s a picture that starts emerging, and you start colouring in who this person is.”

This understanding of the different layers of meaning a brand is looking to communicate makes it easier to then name a product, like Frame’s Borrowed jean — a genderless take on the boyfriend jean — which is meant to convey the sensuality and ease of the brand.

External research is another key component to building out a word bank of options that communicate the spirit of the label or of a product. Nell Diamond, founder of bedding and clothing brand Hill House Home, for example, delved into books from Homer’s “Odyssey” to Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit” to come up with print names for fabrics.

Word banks can also be grouped according to a brand’s most important attributes. Copywriter and content strategist Sandra Sou, who has named products for wellness line Sakara, Victoria Beckham Beauty and bodycare brand Billie, among others, favours this approach with her clients. Beyond product benefits, word buckets can include cultural signifiers (like Victoria Beckham’s personal brand, which led to the beauty line’s Posh lipstick) and even “good mouth feel,” like Billie’s Floof dry shampoo, Sou said.

Some names manage to communicate several attributes at once. When Kreighbaum named Cloud Paint at Glossier, she captured connotations of how easy the product was to apply, the blush’s slightly sheer look inspired by gouache paint and even the photos of pink sunsets the brand was known for posting from its office on social media at the time.

Naming in Plain Sight

Occasionally, naming comes down to recognising what is right in front of you.

For Hill House Home, the brand’s bestselling Nap Dress came from a term its founder had already been using to describe “the clothes that I wore when I came home from work, that I could fall asleep in at any time,” said Diamond. “I’ve always thought of myself as a very frail Victorian woman who can faint at any time and needs to rest and can’t really be in the sun. It’s sort of making fun of myself.”

Selling that comfortable feeling — a cross between a daytime dress and a nightgown — to her customers became such a viral success that it completely changed the trajectory of Diamond’s business. What originally began as a bedding brand is now 86 percent fashion, two thirds of which comes from the Nap Dresses themselves.

“It shows the power of virality and colloquialism and speech,” she said.

But conveying a deeper meaning without being “too on the nose” is crucial to get shoppers curious about the product and “spark some thought,” said Gogol. At Hill House Home, for instance, the team will shy away from pairing a more modest, old-fashioned dress with a name that is also very traditional.

Looking to existing consumer behaviour can also be a strategic source for naming inspiration. When Mirror Palais’s Gaia posted a photo of a not-yet-released brown silk slip on Instagram in 2020, he captioned it “Hershey’s Kiss.” While not the official name of the product, shoppers began searching for the phrase on its website, prompting Gaia to select it as the name for the dress’s colourway to strengthen SEO.

Next-Gen Naming

In a crowded market, it has become increasingly challenging to come up with standout monikers. After crafting a list of potential names for a given item, brands need to ensure they have not already been trademarked in their category.

For descriptive titles like “creamy eyeshadow,” for instance, trademarking can be a challenge. Hill House Home’s Nap Dress was initially designated as descriptive, and it took the brand over a year and a half to trademark it after proving that it was a truly distinctive name by providing Instagram posts, Tweets and articles about the brand.

AI throws another question mark into the mix. While many product namers use it for research, or even as a sounding board for ideas, said Sou, it can’t replace human touch.

“If you’re using it as a resource to unlock options, totally do it,” said Kreighbaum. “But if you’re gonna have AI outright name your product, and you’re not going to edit, the whole industry is going to have the same name. That’s just what AI does.”

To stand out, the human at the helm needs to stay close to the core story the brand is trying to tell.

“It all goes back to being clear on who you are as a brand,” said Gogol. “Not every name needs to be loud, it just has to be in line with your brand, with your voice, with what your product is actually doing.”