What’s in a word? How a name change revitalized a stagnant product

As you work on developing your own products and advancing your company, pay close attention to how you’re naming (or not naming) things.”

Doug Phares, managing director, Silverwind Enterprises

I find it fascinating that people will often come up with a great idea or product, put all of this time, effort and consideration into making it the absolute best that it can be … and then watch it fail because they never gave it a good name. And I don’t mean they thought about it and chose a bad name. In my experience, people simply don’t name things, or they give them an easy, thoughtless label that doesn’t create any sense of identity or purpose.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past. When my children were younger, they adopted a cat, and my wife and I generously (perhaps foolishly) let them name it whatever they wanted. They chose Pud. Why? I could not imagine, but I share this to illustrate the importance of getting out in front of naming something rather than leaving it to chance.

Early in my career, I took over managing a media company. They established a smart program of pre-booking an interesting collection of fixed and unique spots that had to be reserved on a long-term basis. The very wise concept was to lock in recurring revenue so you could start each month with a solid base in exchange for a discount for the customer.

When I arrived, they were only half reserved, and the sales team groaned if you asked. Digging into the program, I was handed the log that tracked it — the “Base Revenue Worksheet.”

This was the name given to it by the accountant who set it up, and the sales team just took that exact page out as support material. I mean no disrespect to accountants, but if you’re a retailer and someone comes to talk to you about this great, game-changing product that they should definitely buy right now, how excited will you be when that product is called the Base Revenue Program?

Understandably, the company struggled to keep the spots filled. When I had control, we burned the worksheet, rebranded it and moved some of the styling around so that sales would see it as a brand-new product with a catchier name like Sales Success Features. Suddenly, the Sisyphean task of selling it became much easier, and spots started selling out consistently, just by changing the name …

The topic of naming came up for me recently while sitting around the table with my family. My daughter talked about her coffee with oat milk and how great it was. I said that I didn’t understand — words mean things, and mammals produce milk, whereas vegetables and fruits can be made into juice. To me, she was more accurately putting oat juice in her coffee.

My daughter disagreed, so I sought support from my very educated family members. However, I was summarily thrown under the bus, saying that the meaning of the word “milk” was sufficiently malleable to encompass byproducts of oats or almonds.

For the record, I still disagree.

Nevertheless, this did get me thinking about how much a single word can matter. My personal feelings aside, we can all acknowledge that adding oat juice to your coffee would be unthinkable, but adding oat milk to your drink feels natural and easy. The manufacturers certainly could have tried to market oat juice, but because they put in the time to think of a clever name, Starbucks now has a new way to increase the price of your already overpriced morning beverage.

As you look at your own business and product/service offerings, how well have you done at creating thoughtful, compelling labels? One company I work with was contemplating a live training series, but nobody seemed inclined to give it a name beyond “Live Training Series.” When I insisted, despite pushback, that it did, in fact, need a name, they took some time to consider how they wanted to position this offering.

This was during the height of the pandemic, and the name they came back with was perfect — Thrive. Because at that moment, nothing sounded more compelling than the idea of not just surviving, but thriving.

The series was a great success and spawned more conferences and live training events. Was this wholly due to the name? Certainly not — a lot of intelligent, talented people put hours of work into making a great product that did exactly what it promised to do. But the name gave the program an identity, a life, a purpose.

So, as you work on developing your own products and advancing your company, pay close attention to how you’re naming (or not naming) things. Regardless of the specifics of your business, words matter because nobody has ever wanted to put almond juice in their coffee.

Doug Phares is the former CEO of the Sandusky News Group. He currently serves as managing director of Silverwind Enterprises, which owns and provides management services to small businesses. He can be reached at doug@silverwind.biz.