Founder of Lexicon Branding, named Sonos, Azure, Vercel and Windsurf
David Placek founded Lexicon Branding, the naming firm behind PowerBook, Pentium, BlackBerry, Swiffer, the Impossible Burger and Azure. He tells clients that nothing they do will be used more often or for longer than their name. Teams looking for comfort, he says, want the opposite of what they need. When a candidate name splits the room, he reads the polarization as a sign of strength in the word.
Lenny's Podcast 01:00 01:09 08:43 14:40 1:08:32 My First Million 01:10 47:53
Positioning
Positioning
Identify, invent, implement. A descriptive name forfeits the one advantage you can hold before launch, and a name the team is comfortable with is usually the wrong one.
Why not start with an advantage in the marketplace and you won't get an advantage if you're descriptive?
Positioning
Every letter signals before the meaning lands. V is alive, B is reliable, O is slow. Set the sounds, then name.
what are the sounds of the 26 letters of the alphabet and what do they do? How do they evoke things?
David Placek
claims the right name buys asymmetric advantage before launch, and that a descriptive name gives that advantage away.
starts one level up, with what customers would use if you did not exist, and would tell you that no name rescues positioning you have not done.
From The Naming Process
David Placek
chooses letters for the signal their sound sends before anyone reads the meaning, and treats a descriptive name as an advantage given away.
Colin McIntosh
judges a consumer brand name on whether it is spellable, shareable and memorable, connotes the product, is good for SEO and has the .com available.
