18 Sensibilities to Avoid Massive Cool Product Name Fails

We have some popular articles on the Brainzooming website about how to imagine a whole array of cool product names. All those articles relate to the early stages of the product naming process. We've done a few things, but not as many, on the decision process for picking the creative and strategic options from all the cool product names you end up imagining.

But yesterday, Emma forwarded a link to one of those maddening slideshow posts on 31 Product Naming Fails.

Clicking through all the slides made me realize: for all the imagination you want to have among the people coming up with cool product names, what you MUST have is an eclectic and perhaps slightly shady set of characters reviewing the potential cool product names to prevent a massive product name fail.

18 Sensibilities to Avoid Massive Cool Product Name Fails

Having personally reviewed each of these incredibly terrible product names, I now share with you the 18 sensibilities you must have on your team to avoid a cool product name fail.
You need individuals who:

Possess a good understanding of interpersonal and solo sexual acts, plus a fascination with all the related jargon of both.
Have insight into fringe communities and what they love, embrace, and abhor.
Love horror – both in movies and IRL.
Understand (and/or will track down) all the ways that words in one language won’t work in other languages.
Have a basic clue about life and no appetite for group think or apparently unstoppable momentum for stupid ideas.
Can go six (or even nine) deep on synonyms describing varied sexual activities.
Fully understand all the mechanisms and terminology of what is popularly known as Number 2.
Are diligent at saying all product names aloud before voting yea or nay.
Understand that there are multiple ways to voice a g, a c, or a k.
Have big enough investments in the brand’s success that they won’t let incredibly funny names that no one seems to get make it out of the room alive.
Put the scat in scatological.
Are willing to tell the boss that the family name should never be placed on a building, box, or label. Or uttered aloud. EVER.
Are automatically suspicious of any abbreviation, acronym, or contraction.
Possesses clairvoyant powers and can predict when a currently okay word or sound will fall flat within a decade.
Have a working knowledge of all global genocides, along with the associated moral issues, slang, and sensitivities related to each one.
Know every nickname and euphemism for genitals, what they produce, and all the activities one (or more) can do with them.
Are savvy enough to flip everything upside down and say words backwards to look for sinister alternative meanings and shapes.
Abhor being too true or too literal in describing a product, what it does, and how it looks.

Of course, it's possible that you don’t need eighteen people on your cool product name review team, if you have the right people in your organization. Heck, if you hire right, one person may be all you need! And that's all I've got to say about that. ;) – Mike Brown