How to Find the Right Name for Your CPG Food Brand with with Alexandra Watkins
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How to name Your CPG Brand…
When it comes to naming your consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brand, you probably already have one in mind. But your customers might not love it as much as you do. It’s important to select a name that makes sense and is easy to remember.
In this episode, I’m interviewing Alexandra Watkins, renowned authority on brand names and founder of Eat My Words. Alexandra shares her thoughts on what makes a strong brand name, why you shouldn’t name your business after yourself, and the biggest mistakes people make when naming their brands.
She also gives us the details on her “SMILE and SCRATCH” naming test that breaks down all the components you need for a perfect brand name.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[01:51] Why Alexandra says you shouldn’t name your business after yourself
[03:13] Alexandra’s thoughts on what makes a strong brand name and her “SMILE and SCRATCH” naming test
[14:01] The biggest mistakes people make when naming their business
[17:07] Common brand name misconceptions and tips for website domain names
[19:23] Alexandra’s advice on changing an already established brand name
If you want to hear more about how to select a name for your consumer-packaged goods brand, be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
Podcast episode: Navigating Food Law with Lauren Handel
About Alexandra Watkins:
Chief Executive Boss Lady of Eat My Words, Alexandra Watkins is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names. Her breakthrough creativity book, Hello, My Name is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick, is considered “the brand name Bible” and was named a Top 10 Marketing Book by Inc. Magazine.
Since 2005, Alexandra and her firm have created love-at-first sight brand names for clients from Amazon to Xerox. Her own name hall of fame includes Wendy’s Baconator, the Neato robotic vacuum, Smitten ice cream, Spanish language school Gringo Lingo, frozen yogurt franchise Spoon Me, and the Church of Cupcakes.
Alexandra first got hooked on naming when Gap hired her to create names for their first line of body care products. Soon after, she broke into the business by talking her way into Landor via a Match.com date. With her fresh, unconventional naming style, Alexandra soon became a go-to resource for leading branding and naming firms around the country.
Connect with alexandra:
Visit the Eat My Words Website
Follow Eat My Words on Facebook
Connect with Alexandra on Linkedin
Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
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[00:00:02] Djenaba You are listening to the Food Means Business Podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm joined now by Djenaba Johnson-Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. Join our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. Alexandra, welcome to the Food Means Business podcast. So happy to have you.
[00:00:38] Alexandra Thank you, I'm so glad to be here.
[00:00:39] Djenaba I can't wait to jump in. But first I want to hear about you. Give us a little bit about your story and how you started your company, Eat My Words.
[00:00:46] Alexandra Okay. Well, my background is I was an advertising copywriter and I wrote a lot of ads and I wrote enough copy to circle the globe six times. And then I discovered naming, and I had no idea that naming was a profession. And this was like 15 years into my copywriting career. So I switched gears and decided to become a namer and I wanted to give my company a name. And I really liked food because not just eating it that I love consumer packaged goods. And, you know, food is fun. It's way more fun to name than technology, which living in the Bay Area I was doing a lot of. So I came up with the name Eat My Words, because we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk. And I named the Wendy's baconator. So I think that lives. I think it might not make you drunk, but I definitely think it can add some pounds. But yeah, that's how I got started. And that was 18 years ago.
[00:01:51] Djenaba Wow. So let's talk about so first, let's talk about my name. So let's talk about that.
[00:01:56] Alexandra Okay? Yeah. So Djenaba. Yeah, your name. So for those of you who don't know, Djenaba's name is spelled with a D. D-J-E-N-A-B-A. And so, you know, I always tell people, don't name your business after yourself. And one of the reasons why is a lot of people I mean, Djenaba, you're a special case because yours is you've got a silent letter and there's part of your name. So yeah, I'm sure people butcher it all the time. What are some of the ways people have said it wrong?
[00:02:31] Djenaba I guess Adejenaba is a good one. That one happens all the time. People want to pronounce the D. I've had Jenabo, Jinaba. It's been all over the place.
[00:02:41] Alexandra But yeah. So when you're starting out with a blank slate, don't give yourself any disadvantages when you're naming your company or your products.
[00:02:52] Djenaba So it's like it needs to be easy for people to remember and pronounce your name.
[00:02:58] Alexandra It should be intuitive for people to spell and pronounce. That's a really big deal. And yeah, I know I can go through my thoughts on the right and wrong way to name something when we get into some further questions.
[00:03:13] Djenaba Well, let's talk about that. So let's talk about what are the qualities that make a strong brand name.
[00:03:17] Alexandra So I have a test, the evaluation filter, it's called the smile and scratch test, and it's based on my philosophy that a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head. And smile is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name great and scratch are the seven dealbreakers. When it makes you scratch your head, scratch it off the list.
[00:03:40] Djenaba Take us through, smile and scratch, please.
[00:03:42] Alexandra So smile that s stands for Suggestive. You want the name of your company product to suggest something about a positive brand experience that people have. One name that does this, I was at the fancy food show one year, I love cake pops and I saw this company named Tickle Belly and like, it's so fun and suggestive. Like, you know, it's going to taste good and oh my God, they're so good. And I asked the guy, How did you come up with the name? And he told me his daughter came up with that. I'm like, No, no, that's not the right answer. Yes, they had a naming firm to come up with that. That's the only time I've seen a name that a kid came up with this good. Yeah. So that's suggestive. And then M is memorable. Memorable, what makes something memorable, with memorable names are based in the familiar. So anything that is already existing in our knowledge base is going to be easier for people to remember the names that aren't. So for instance. Well, like the expression eat my words. People already know that expression, so it's easier to remember. One that I love is Ben and Jerry's have great flavor names and Chunky Monkey, it's so infectious and memorable.
[00:05:02] Djenaba Right, and fun to say.
[00:05:03] Alexandra Well. I'm a big fan of lyrical names. Huge. And then the I in smile stands for imagery. And imagery is also really important for memorability because we can picture something in our heads when we hear it. We can then remember it later when we're at the store and we're trying to recall that name from our brain's dusty filing cabinet. An example is, you know, you're facing a wall of energy drinks and you're like, what was that name that Alexandra said. Well, we named an energy drink. It was a all natural energy drink targeted at women. That 4:00 hour in the afternoon where you need a pick me up, but you don't want to drink a cup of coffee. And we named it Bloom. So when I say bloom, you can picture a flower blooming in your head. Then when you're looking at the energy drink while you're like, What was that name like? Bloom, That flower, it comes to your mind. So that's an imagery name. The L stands for legs, legs is one of my favorite things about a name. I know. I'm doing a workshop for you.
[00:06:11] Djenaba Yes.
[00:06:12] Alexandra Later on, I'm going to show you guys a lot of examples of that. But quickly, a name with legs just means it lends itself to a theme. So eat my words, we have a menu of services. Our blog is called The Kitchen Sink. Our icon is a 1950s pink refrigerator. So that's what I mean by you know, legs lending itself to a theme. And then finally, the E in smile stands for emotional and we want your names to make an emotional connection. And otherwise you're just going to fade into the background and you can't afford to do that. So I think names that make emotional connections, those are the ones that make us smile. One that I love is we named a frozen yogurt franchise, Spoon Me.
[00:06:57] Djenaba And I love that name. So great.
[00:07:01] Alexandra We named a cupcakes store The Church of Cupcakes. The Church of Cupcakes has great legs. So the woman that runs it calls herself the church lady. We have her tagline that we did is worshipers welcome. And she has really fun cupcake flavor names. One that I love, it takes a minute to get it, but the vanilla cupcake is named the missionary. I'm so glad you get that.
[00:07:28] Djenaba So cute.
[00:07:30] Alexandra Yeah.
[00:07:31] Djenaba Okay, great. And let's talk about scratch.
[00:07:34] Alexandra Scratch is when to scratch it off the list because it's scratch your head, again. So the S in scratch stands for spelling challenge. And this is a big one that people violate. If your name isn't spelled exactly like it sounds, people are going to have trouble finding you and they're going to be frustrated. All the things in scratch are frustration points for customers or potential customers. Trust me, all of these are things that will haunt you if you do them. You might think, Oh, just one of these. It's okay. We're going to look sometimes. And food like tricks, right, is spelled with an X and Spanx. Okay. Some I give a pass to, but for the most part, don't spell your name a weird way. If it looks like a typo scratch not the list. Then the first C in scratch stands for copycat. This is a big one. Do not copy what another brand is doing. The best example I know of in food, really anywhere, beyond food, just in the world is Pinkberry. You guys all remember Pinkberry? Pinkberry Frozen Yogurt, that name has been ripped off so many times. So one time I just went on my computer and I typed in words in front of berry frozen yogurt. So I typed in cool berry, bliss berry, yo berry. They all were already in use as frozen yogurt store names. I have a whole slide of these. So what happens when you copy someone's name? When someone sees Bliss Berry or Yo Berry, the first thing a consumer thinks is, Oh, they ripped off Pinkberry, you know, even Red Mango. I don't know if you remember that one.
[00:09:09] Djenaba I do. I do.
[00:09:10] Alexandra Also, a rip off. It's a color and a fruit.
[00:09:14] Djenaba I never thought about it that way.
[00:09:16] Alexandra Because when I see a name, I try to think of like what was the thought process to come up with that or who approved that. But yeah, that's what that was like, Red Mango's not a great name any more then, I mean Pinkberry. Paris Hilton, I believe, was photographed eating Pinkberry with a Pinkberry shirt on or something. And that's all they needed was an influencer, back before influencers were called influencers. So, yeah, don't be a copycat. And you open yourself up to trademark infringement that way.
[00:09:43] Djenaba Absolutely.
[00:09:44] Alexandra Okay. And then the R stands for restrictive, and that happens when you outgrow your name. I'll just give an example of 1-800-Flowers. Right. Those are way more than flower.
[00:09:55] Djenaba They do.
[00:09:56] Alexandra Yeah, that's true. Diapers.com sells way more than diapers. So when you're naming your product or your company, look into your crystal ball and make sure that your name still fits you ten years down the road. It's a little hard because we don't know what we're going to be doing. But you don't want a name that's super limiting. Like a name that I love is Mary's Gone Crackers. But Mary's Gone Crackers suddenly gets into frozen confections. It's not going to work, right, by the way. But reminds me that Ben and Jerry's ice cream, they have Frozen dog. I know that when they going to eat that are in a Jerry's is really interesting. So Ben and Jerry's the name Ben and Jerry's. It's not a great name, but you know, there's two guys, we all know them by now, but they were able to move beyond it by doing fun names for the flavors. But on their website they have a flavor graveyard where you can go see all the flavor names that no longer exist. One that I loved was Economic Crunch, introduced after the stock market crash. It is not like a really appetizing name. We're having an emotional connection and we're talking about it. And that's the trick with names. You want a name that gets tweeted and repeated. So back to scratch. So it got restrictive. And then next the A in scratch is for annoying and annoying names are when people do something silly, like they spell it backwards or the name is ambiguous. It doesn't say like that lingerie brand, Thirdlove. How would you know that that was a bra company? Like, what does that even mean? And the founder said that she likes that the name is ambiguous. Nothing, as you know, nothing about your business should be ambiguous, like don't make people guess and you're not going to be there to explain the name to people. Right? They're going to be in Whole Foods looking at your product like you're not going to be you know, maybe you're going to be like doing some taste testing somewhere, but not there to explain it. Right? So you want your name, to be clear. So that's don't be annoying. And then tame, tame just means you're super descriptive and you can't afford to be tame. You got to stand out. And then the second C stands for curse of knowledge. I don't see this happening in the food industry very much. It's more of a tech problem when people are coming up with a name that is meaningful to the engineers but not to them. But curse of knowledge means it's boring, right? It can be a foreign word. Sur La Table, we all know, I'm sure all of the people listening to this know that brand. It is a fine kitchen and cooking supplies and baking supplies. I used to work upstairs from a Sur La Table and everyone called it sur la table. And it looks like if you don't know French, it looks like sur la table. Right? Right. And so think think you might know it, but in French it's notoriously bad. And now it's going to lead us right into the H in scratch, which is hard to pronounce. Back to Sur La Table. Have you ever been in a French restaurant, maybe, or a foreign restaurant? And you didn't know what I pronounce something on the menu and you didn't want to embarrass yourself by ordering it, so maybe you pointed out it or you didn't order it. And I was at a French restaurant. They had a dessert on the menu with a name no one can pronounce. It's like, why didn't they just put, you know, maybe it was a banana split? Who knows? But like, you put everyone listening, this is a really good way to think about it. If you're at a restaurant, this is not hard to pronounce. This is just emotion. We're going to emotional. Sorry to jump back to that. If you're looking at a menu and you see chicken soup and then another menu has grandma's chicken soup, which one is more appealing? It's grandma's.
[00:13:42] Djenaba Right, right, right, right. Because it's homemade. Yeah.
[00:13:45] Alexandra Yeah, right. It sounds homemade. So little things like that can totally it boosts emotion and sells because more people are going to order grandma's chicken soup than just chicken soup on its own. So that's scratch.
[00:13:59] Djenaba Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. So what are the biggest mistakes that people make when they're naming their business? You get you went through smile and scratch, but there's got to be some other ones, too.
[00:14:09] Alexandra Yeah, there's more. Okay. One is a lot of people start by looking for a domain name. And that's the last thing you should do. Don't worry about your domain. I can't tell you enough that it doesn't matter, especially in food. You have the ability to get any domain you want simply by adding a verb in front of it, like drink, enjoy, or eat.
[00:14:31] Djenaba I never thought about it that way because I'm guilty of coming up with the name and running to godaddy to see if it's available or not. So that's really interesting that you would say that.
[00:14:40] Alexandra But everybody does that, Djenaba, like every single person. I don't know why, but that's.
[00:14:47] Djenaba I think we want it to be my business name is this, so the domain name needs to be exactly that. Instead of doing what you said which was adding a verb in front of it and being more creative.
[00:14:58] Alexandra Yeah, yeah. And here's what's even more creative. And again, food. Like when you're food, you can get away with so much because food is fun, right? So you can, you can have fun. So we all know the O list, Oprah's list. And one time I was at the dentist and I was in the waiting room and I was reading O Magazine and on the O List there was a smoked turkey company. You can send someone to smoke turkey. And it was called Greenburg Smoked turkeys. Okay, and then I go in, I have my procedure. I'm all doped up on medication. And a week later, I still remember the domain name, I didn't remember Greenberg smoked turkeys. I remember the domain name. And it's gobblegobble.com.
[00:15:42] Djenaba Yes, that's great. That is great. Yes.
[00:15:45] Alexandra And then another one. So I was at that the fancy food show another time, and I love peanut butter. Peanut butter addict. You know, I'm like walking around tasting all, there's like 13 peanut butter purveyors. And I turn the corner and I see this banner above a booth and it says, ilovepeanutbutter.com. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that's so brilliant, because peanut butter is polarizing, right? People really love it or they don't like it. And the people that love it are like me, like that's my desert island food. So I talk to the people and their company is called Peanut Butter and Co, and they have the domain name peanutbutterandco.com. But if you go there, it redirects to ilovepeanutbutter.com. All the email addresses of the employees are @ilovepeanutbutter.com. Why? It's easier to remember and it's fun.
[00:16:36] Djenaba It's true. It definitely is. That's great.
[00:16:39] Alexandra Yeah. Don't start on godaddy, just come up with a great name. Just one more thing about mistakes people make, this is a really big one. If you own a domain name, a lot of people think that means you own the trademark. You don't at all. So make sure that you get your trademark research done first. I mean, I have a great food trademark attorney, Lauren. She introduced me to you.
[00:16:59] Djenaba Yeah, she was definitely she was on the podcast. Oh, definitely. We'll link it up in the show notes for sure.
[00:17:03] Alexandra Yes, absolutely. That's great. Everyone should listen to that podcast.
[00:17:07] Djenaba So let's talk about common brand name misconceptions.
[00:17:11] Alexandra Misconceptions. A common misconception is that your name needs to be, well, I would say a common misconception about names is if it's creative, it's a good name, but creative could be, you know, I could be wearing a polka dot sock and a striped sock right now. I'm not by the way. Even though yes it's creative, is it a good idea? Not really. So just because your name looks great, you know, maybe put a number in the middle of it. You know, maybe spell creative with a k r e a t i v. Yes, That's creative. Is that a good name? No. So I think that's a common misperception.
[00:17:58] Djenaba That makes sense. So we kind of touched on good domain names. Is there any other tips that you have about that? Because you mentioned adding the verb in front of the domain. Is there something else that we should be thinking about?
[00:18:08] Alexandra Yeah. There's a good domain site called namestudio.com. And you can go there, look for domain names, and there's a brainstorming function of it. And if you click on it, it will give you more ideas. And a couple times I've been there looking for domains and come up with a better name for the company. One that I was doing, this is just a fake assignment, but I was coming up with... Somehow I came up with Puppy Butler. I was coming up with, oh, Puppy Wrangler. And then I saw Puppy Butler and I'm like, That's so cute. So just I think there's a lot of brainstorming tools online. Another one for domain names. I don't want to switch screens right now, but there are definitely some brainstorming tools for domains. You can also use chat GPG. I don't know if it does domain names, but you could certainly try. But definitely the verb is the right way to go. I always when people ask for domain names, so drink Coca-Cola you know, or eat pop chips. Yeah. I would go for the verb because it's positive and it's reinforcing your brand.
[00:19:22] Djenaba Right. That makes so much sense. I guess from time to time some companies may need to change their brand name. Is there ever a point where it's too late because you've spent all this time building brand awareness around a certain name? But you know that changing it makes a lot of sense. So when should that happen?
[00:19:37] Alexandra Well, there's a couple times. One is, you know, in the case of like Beverages and More, they change their name to BevMo. And that's just because consumers already shorten it for them. But there's times when people outgrow their name. Crowd Cow is a purveyor of really fine meats and seafood, and they outgrew their name, Crowd Cow. It started out with a couple of brands wanting to buy better quality beef and they crowdsourced a cow. They realized they could buy a whole cow and then they split it up between them and then they were tech bros and other tech bros wanted to get in on it. And then suddenly they had a company. So they grew Crowd Cow into this big company. But then they didn't say anything about seafood. The name was more of a bro name, like a backyard barbeque name. It was like appealing to moms and feeding their families better. So we came up with a better name for them, which was Ranch and Reel, R-E-E-L from cattle ranch, fishing reel.
[00:20:40] Djenaba It makes sense.
[00:20:41] Alexandra And they were going to change it. And then the pandemic happened. And you know how so many businesses tanked during the pandemic. But some, like random ones, just went through the ceiling. Yep. Crowd Cow, because, remember, people were buying meat like, so their business just really shot up and took off. So yeah. So they ended up not changing that, which is too bad. I love Ranch and Reel, but that's a good example of a name change.
[00:21:04] Djenaba That's a great name. So thank you.
[00:21:05] Alexandra Thank you. Thank you. Just give me credit.
[00:21:10] Djenaba I love all the tips that you've been giving everybody, and I can't wait to have you on a workshop, which we'll talk about a little bit later, but I'd love to hear now what you are celebrating. It could be both personal or professional.
[00:21:21] Alexandra Yeah, it's funny. I knew you were going to ask me that question and I was like, I don't know what I'm going to say. And then yesterday I had something to celebrate. So I got a new client and she is affiliated with the design school at Stanford, and I lectured at the grad school many times and never at the design school. And she is friends with David Kelley, the founder of IDEO and the founder of the D School, the Design School. And she's going to give him my book and I'm just super excited.
[00:21:49] Djenaba It's exciting. Wow, That's amazing.
[00:21:52] Alexandra Yeah, I'm excited.
[00:21:53] Djenaba I thank you for sharing that. So great. So, Alexandra, tell everyone where they can find all about you and how to work with you.
[00:22:02] Alexandra You can find me and eatmywords.com just like it sounds. You can test your name on our site. There's a free name, the smell and scratch test is there. It's interactive. You'll get your results and I'll get your results too. So if you want to read anything to me, just say that you heard me on the show. Yeah, there's always special deals and I have an online course and yeah, lots of tools to help you.
[00:22:24] Djenaba That's great. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here.
[00:22:27] Alexandra My pleasure.
[00:22:29] Djenaba The Food Myth Business podcast was produced by Hudson Kitchen. It is recorded at the studio at Carney Point and mixed and edited by Wild Home Podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien de Sandys, and I'm your host, Djenaba Johnson-Jones. Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram at thehudsonkitchen and to get Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com/newsletter. Listen below and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. Until next time.