Key Points
- A clear creative brief is key to naming success—it defines what the name must do and who it’s for.
- Most businesses need a brief; only rare cases can skip it.
- AI can spark great names, but humans still pick the winners.
- A good name needs more than creativity—it needs strategy and context.
The Truth About Naming Projects
Why a Creative Brief Isn’t Just Fluff—and When You Can (Sometimes) Skip It
After 40 years in the business, I’ve learned this: the creative brief is everything. Sure, some folks brush it off as consultant jargon. But after thousands of naming projects—across industries, budgets, and brand personalities—I can confidently say this: knowing when you need a brief (and when you don’t) can make or break the outcome.
When You Don’t Need a Full-Blown Brief
Let’s start with the rare exceptions. If you’re running a well-loved local restaurant or a trusted auto shop, you probably know your customer base like the back of your hand. Maybe you’re adding services, opening a second location, or tweaking your offerings—and you have a solid gut sense of where you’re headed.
In cases like these, a seasoned naming consultant can extract what they need in a quick conversation. A formal brief might be overkill. But make no mistake—this level of clarity is the exception, not the rule. Most businesses are not operating with perfect market visibility and zero competition.
The Naming Sweet Spot: Clear Strategy, Not Bureaucracy
Every effective naming brief should answer a few fundamental questions.
First, what do you want the name to actually do? It may seem obvious, but this step is often overlooked. Are you trying to sound more premium, more approachable, or more innovative? Clarifying this upfront sets the direction for everything that follows.
Next, who is the name speaking to? This goes beyond basic demographics—you need to understand your audience’s mindset. Are they risk-averse or adventurous? Do they enjoy clever wordplay or prefer something straightforward? Will they embrace something bold or shy away from anything too out-of-the-box?
Then, what truly sets you apart? While every business believes it’s unique, the key is identifying a differentiator you can genuinely own and sustain in the market. This becomes the foundation of your brand story and helps ensure your name isn’t just different—but meaningfully so.
Finally, where will people encounter this name? Consider all touchpoints—will it live primarily on a website, be printed on the side of a truck, or need to be shouted across a noisy trade show floor? A name that looks great in a logo might fall flat when spoken aloud. Thinking practically about how the name functions in the real world is essential.
The Non-Negotiable Questions Every Brief Should Answer
What’s This Name Actually Supposed to Do?
Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people skip this step. Are you trying to sound more premium? More approachable? More innovative? Nail this down first.
Who’s Going to Hear This Name?
Not just demographics—get into psychology. Are your customers risk-averse? Do they appreciate clever wordplay or prefer straightforward names? Will they embrace something edgy or run screaming from anything too creative?
What Makes You Different?
Every business owner thinks they’re unique, but what can you actually own in the marketplace? What’s your sustainable differentiator that you can hang your hat on for years to come?
Where Will People Encounter This Name?
Think practically. Will it mainly live on a website? On the side of trucks? Shouted across a noisy trade show floor? A name that looks great in a logo might be a nightmare to say over the phone.
The AI Revolution—With a Grain of Salt
Here’s what’s changed dramatically in the past year: AI has gotten remarkably good at naming. But here’s the caveat—it still needs human judgment.
Old-school AI felt like panning for gold in a gravel pit. Today’s large language models? They’re closer to mining actual diamonds. But those diamonds are rough. A seasoned naming consultant knows how to recognize the raw potential—and polish it into something unforgettable.
AI can generate ideas. Only experience can tell you which ones are worth pursuing.
Most People Need More Help Than They Think
Most teams need more help than they realize. I often work with brilliant people, engineers, founders, specialists, who simply haven’t spent much time thinking about modern branding.
They’re not yet familiar with how to turn employees into brand ambassadors, why chasing influencers isn’t always necessary, or how to make social media work without a massive advertising budget. This isn’t a criticism; it’s just the reality of today’s branding landscape. And it’s exactly why the creative brief matters. It’s not just about choosing a name; it’s about crafting one that fits seamlessly into your broader brand story.
Beyond the Name: Making It Actually Work
The truth? A great name is just the beginning. Without the right positioning, tagline, or story, even the flashiest name will fall flat. It’s like owning a Ferrari with no gas—it looks incredible, but it’s going nowhere.
Bottom Line: Don’t Skip the Strategy
Whether you’re doing it yourself, crowdsourcing ideas, or hiring a professional—don’t skip the thinking. Even a half-hour of focused discussion about your goals can steer your project in a radically better direction.
A creative brief isn’t busywork. It’s the compass that points your brand in the right direction. And in most cases, your name is your first—and most lasting—impression.
Make it count.
Let us run with your project
Ready to go?
Together, we will get you across the finish line.
Transcription
Mike Carr (00:05):
Welcome back to naming in the A IH. Last week I talked about using AI to create a name. This week I wanted to talk about really probably the most important element of creating a great brand name. Whether you do it yourself, whether you use a naming contest, whether you hire an agency, regardless of the approach, there’s one sort of first step that’s just critical. And a lot of people have poo-pooed. They’ve really talked about you don’t need this, right? And maybe you don’t. And it’s the creative brief, right? And the creative brief has gotten a bad rap over the years as an excuse consultants use to come in and spend a lot of time interviewing everybody and doing all this legwork and coming up with this long, lengthy document that may or may not be needed. And while it creates some buzz and some excitement and some energy and gets everybody sort of on the same page heading forward, some people argue, well, you really don’t need to do that.
(01:05):
So here’s what I believe is true. Having done this for 40 years and worked on thousands of these projects, is sometimes you don’t need a creative brief. And sometimes you need a short creative brief, and sometimes that exhaustive effort is well worth it. So lots to talk about when you don’t need it. And I would say this is the minority of the times, but it is something that I think you should consider if you have a very niche product and you don’t have to worry too much about competition. So let’s say you’re just in a local geography. It could be a restaurant, it could be automotive service, some type of small business. You know your customers well, and you’re maybe changing your company name because you want to provide some new services that are related to what you currently do, but you really feel like you’re well established and your reputation’s there, and you’ve got a pretty good idea on what you want that name to do.
(01:55):
And you certainly know who you want to target, and you’re really in touch with the pulse of the marketplace. I’m not sure you need a creative brief. I mean, we’ve worked with folks before in that situation, in five, 10 minutes, we can probably suss out all that we need to really help them move forward and develop some names for them that resonate exceptionally well. Now let’s go to the next step where you need to create a brief and maybe it’s not super long and involved. And that really depends, not so much on the business you’re in, not so much on the geographic scope, not so much even whether it’s B2C or B2B. It depends on your budget. How much money do you have to spend? I think it depends upon the sophistication of your marketing, your brand building effort and where you are on that journey, and certainly the competitive landscape that you’re wrestling with.
(02:43):
And I’ll be real honest with you here, and I think that’s part of the value that an old guy has been doing this for a while, can bring to the table. A lot of our clients really aren’t that sophisticated. They’re not brand experts. They’ve done well. They might come from an engineering tech background and be extremely sharp analytically, but they’re not marketing types. Or they may be seat of your pants. Entrepreneurs that have succeeded for years or decades in building a strong brand, whether it’s local, regional, national, even global. But they really haven’t ever really leaned into, well, how do you build a brand? What are all the ways today that you need to stay in touch with your customers? How can you propagate your message out to the world? How do you use your own employees as influencers versus going out and paying for well-known social influencers?
(03:36):
Why you really don’t need to advertise anymore at all or in a very constrained way, almost regardless of what industry you’re in. So if you’re not very sophisticated, then we help you through that process. And I think the basics of the brief are really important. So what are those basics? What do you want the name to do? I mean, really, what do you want the name to do? Who are you targeting? Describe your target as best you can. How conservative are they? How will they react to an edgy name? Are they willing to consider something that’s sort of innovative? And out of the box? What are their hot buttons? Who are your competitors? And how do you differentiate from your competitors? What is something that you do better or that people perceive you do better than anyone else or that you want to hang your hat on in the future that you think is a sustainable key differentiator that you can really claim and that you can really own?
(04:30):
And then how will you use the name, right? Think about the different venues it is going to appear in signage or on vehicles. If you have a fleet of vehicles or on your website or on a trade show booth, is it going to largely be spoken? Okay, well, how does it sound? Is it easy to pronounce? Those are all things that can be covered in a fairly basic brief, but they’re just super important when you come up with a name, whether you’re doing it again yourself, whether you’re prompting ai, you need to answer those questions and then provide those prompts and those answers to ai if you’re going to use AI to help you come up with a name. And our take on that, as I discussed last week, is AI can be a great creative aid. It is certainly not a replacement for the human input and taking what AI comes up with and polishing it the way I like to think of AI recently, and it’s changed a lot in the last six months.
(05:23):
So the deep reasoning models are really good. If you do it right, it’s like you can find a diamond in the rough. Before you couldn’t do that before. It would just give you a bunch of odd looking stones that didn’t really glisten. They really didn’t glitter. They weren’t very bright. It didn’t make any difference how much you polish that name hit she and never was going to rise beyond a common quartz stone you might find in a rear bed. Well, the new deep reasoning models, they can give you diamonds in the rough. They can give you names that you’re still going to have to polish. You may have to tweak. You may use that name as a springboard to a different name, but you would never have gotten there without AI being involved. But once you polish it, once you put your brand magic around it, now that might be a tagline, that might be a logo, that might be copy, that might be a story which AI can help you with. It really comes alive, and AI is good enough now to do that, but probably not to suss out and tell you which one of those names really is that true diamond. I think that’s where the human expertise still comes in.
Ashley Elliott (06:23):
So at the end of the day, a creative brief really is only as useful as it is clear and succinct for many smaller teams, really even or sophisticated clients that already nailed the basics of the brief. Keeping it simple is not just preferred. It’s smart to do. Focus on what the name needs to do, who it’s for, how it’ll show up, how it’ll look. That’s often more than enough to get great results. But if you do need to dig a little deeper tune in next week as we dive into a more unpacked detailed creative brief that dives into brand personality, naming systems tone strategy, the whole picture. See you next week.
