In today's episode of Tiny Marketing, I, Sarah Noel Block, dive deep into the art of naming brands with the incredibly talented Alexandra Watkins, the mastermind behind names you know and love, like the Wendy's Baconator!
Biggest Takeaways
Smile and Scratch Framework: Alexandra Watkins provides a clear and effective methodology for naming brands through her "Smile and Scratch" framework. SMILE stands for Suggestive, Memorable, Imagery, Legs, and Emotional—qualities that make a name attractive and sticky. SCRATCH represents the pitfalls to avoid, ensuring the name doesn’t confuse or alienate potential customers.
Importance of Memorable Names: A great brand name should leverage existing knowledge or concepts to be memorable. For instance, using metaphors like "Kryptonite" for a bike lock plays on familiar themes (Superman’s weakness) to enhance recall and association.
Strategic Repulsion: Effective naming isn’t just about attracting the right audience but also about repelling the wrong one. This ensures that the business aligns more closely with its ideal customer base, enhancing satisfaction and efficiency.
Emotional Connection: Names should make a strong emotional connection with the audience. This connection can transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience, fostering loyalty and positive associations with the brand.
Future-proofing Your Brand Name: It’s crucial to choose a name that doesn’t limit your business's growth. A name should be broad enough to encompass potential future expansions and not lock you into a narrow niche, preventing costly rebrands down the line.
Meet Alexandra
Alexandra Watkins is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. If you have ever eaten a Wendy’s Baconator, you have literally eaten the words. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first sight brand names for countless companies including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google.
This membership is for B2B service founders struggling to market their businesses sustainably. We will help you build and maintain a lean marketing engine that helps you build authority and visibility with your dream clients, making it easy to increase your pipeline without burning out. Build your lean marketing engine and the systems to make it so damn easy for you to keep it up without a team or big budget. Apply for the Club.
In today's episode of Tiny Marketing, I, Sarah Noel Block, dive deep into the art of naming brands with the incredibly talented Alexandra Watkins, the mastermind behind names you know and love, like the Wendy's Baconator!
Biggest Takeaways
Smile and Scratch Framework: Alexandra Watkins provides a clear and effective methodology for naming brands through her "Smile and Scratch" framework. SMILE stands for Suggestive, Memorable, Imagery, Legs, and Emotional—qualities that make a name attractive and sticky. SCRATCH represents the pitfalls to avoid, ensuring the name doesn’t confuse or alienate potential customers.
Importance of Memorable Names: A great brand name should leverage existing knowledge or concepts to be memorable. For instance, using metaphors like "Kryptonite" for a bike lock plays on familiar themes (Superman’s weakness) to enhance recall and association.
Strategic Repulsion: Effective naming isn’t just about attracting the right audience but also about repelling the wrong one. This ensures that the business aligns more closely with its ideal customer base, enhancing satisfaction and efficiency.
Emotional Connection: Names should make a strong emotional connection with the audience. This connection can transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience, fostering loyalty and positive associations with the brand.
Future-proofing Your Brand Name: It’s crucial to choose a name that doesn’t limit your business's growth. A name should be broad enough to encompass potential future expansions and not lock you into a narrow niche, preventing costly rebrands down the line.
Meet Alexandra
Alexandra Watkins is a leading and outspoken authority on brand names with buzz. If you have ever eaten a Wendy’s Baconator, you have literally eaten the words. For nearly 20 years, she and her naming firm, Eat My Words, have created love-at-first sight brand names for countless companies including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Disney, Twitter, and Google.
This membership is for B2B service founders struggling to market their businesses sustainably. We will help you build and maintain a lean marketing engine that helps you build authority and visibility with your dream clients, making it easy to increase your pipeline without burning out. Build your lean marketing engine and the systems to make it so damn easy for you to keep it up without a team or big budget. Apply for the Club.
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Speaker 1:
Do you struggle to come up with brand names, offer names, podcast names, all the names. So do I. That's why everything is called Tiny Marketing. Today I am talking to Alexandra Watkins, the owner of Eat my Words, where she comes up with brilliant names for companies, offers theme songs, absolutely everything. She is actually the woman behind the name Baconator. She has done some of the most amazing naming of brands that you have heard regularly, so stay tuned as she teaches us her smile and scratch framework for identifying perfect names for your brand. I'm Sarah Noel Block, and this is Tiny Marketing. All right, we're on air officially. It's so good to have you. Could you introduce yourself to the audience for anybody who doesn't know who you are and how amazing you are?
Speaker 2:
Sure, my name is Alexandra Watkins and I am the I guess you could call me the big cheese. I'm the chief executive boss, lady, but most recently the big cheese of a naming firm called Eat my Words, and we specialize in naming uh, naming things right names and taglines. Um, we started out naming things that make people fat and drunk, which is why we're named eat my words, and we still do a lot of, I wondered. Yeah, that's the story. So, yeah, my claim to fame is that I named the wendy's baconator yes, that is actually how you were introduced to me.
Speaker 1:
I need you, I need. It was Joey, and he said I need to introduce you to the lady who named the Baconator. You will not forget it. I'm like I must meet this human.
Speaker 2:
Oh, thank you. Yeah, joey is so good at introductions. Yeah, that usually is a hook for people.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I was like I'm intrigued. I'm intrigued for sure. So we talked, maybe two months ago at this point, and I just the stickiness, the stickiness of a name.
Speaker 2:
The stickiness of a name. I had no idea the science behind it, and you have such a great framework for it, based on my philosophy, that a name should make you smile instead of scratch your head. Smile is an acronym for the five qualities that make a name awesome. Or I guess you could say sticky yeah, sticky, sticky would be. Sticky could be a good acronym, although Y is a really tough letter. And then scratch is an acronym for when to scratch it off the list because it makes people scratch their head. So do you want me to go through this?
Speaker 1:
Yes, please. I was telling you before I hit record that I was talking to my friend who is always whining because he doesn't like the names that the company picks for his products. So I introduced him to you and he was like, oh my gosh, this smile framework helped me rethink what it should be. So what does that stand for?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, the smile and scratch test is great because it gives you an objective kind of filter to run your name through so you can tell if something is good or bad. So SMILE stands for the S stands for suggestive, and you want your name to suggest something positive about your brand, or you know something about what your brand is or does. So an example of that would be well, the name of my firm, eat my Words, suggests that we have something to do with words and something to do with food or tiny marketing. Right, that's suggested as well. So that is the S, and then the M in SMILES stands for memorable, and this is really important, and I think memorable probably is the.
Speaker 2:
When it comes to stickiness, memorable is probably the most important letter. So what makes something memorable? Well, it is if there's been studies done on this, and what it comes down to is if something already exists in our knowledge base. It makes it easier for us to remember versus random words or letters that are unfamiliar. So an example of this is the bike lot company, kryptonite. Well, kryptonite is familiar to all of us from Superman, and we know that Kryptonite repels Superman. Therefore, kryptonite this is a metaphorical name repels bike thieves, so that's a super memorable, super sticky name and metaphors really are, so that's why you can see something like that. And then there's a similar shape U-lock, bike lock, and it's called a bus A-B-U-S or Abus, and like there's nothing in our brain to help us latch onto that, although I did come up with a mnemonic for it, which is, if your bike gets stolen, you might need to take a bus.
Speaker 1:
If your bike gets stolen, you might need to take a bus. There you go. Yeah, your book has so many great examples of what's working and what's not, and you name names you name names.
Speaker 2:
I'm not afraid to name names. That is so true. I like to say I'm the Kathy Griffin of brand names, because I'm not afraid to call them out. But the thing is, this is the thing I have never once in the 19 years I've had my business and I've always been outspoken. I have never once said something bad about a name and had somebody come back to me, and the reason why is they already know that their name sucks. And we're going to go through some of those. But I'll finish with the good stuff first. So that was memorable.
Speaker 2:
So the I in SMILE stands for imagery, and when people hear your name or see your name, they can picture something in their head. It's going to make it easier for them to remember it later on down the road. So because a lot of times people don't need what you're selling in the moment, right, they might need it later on. So I'll give you an example. This is what I call a moniker, and a moniker is when a lot of people use their own first or last name as their business name and you don't really get anything out of your name. When you do that, you're missing a huge opportunity to make your brand super memorable, because most people's names aren't memorable. That's why we wear name tags. That's why people always forget names.
Speaker 2:
So no, we all do. We all all do, and I don't know why. That what is? Um, but with a moniker. That's where you are already using your own name. Maybe you work for, for a firm, maybe you work for a real estate firm and you're an agent and you can't name the firm because your firm already has a name, remax, for instance. I'm not sure that's not a good name, by the way, that's a weird name. See, she names names. So I know I do. I do. So a name, for instance, a moniker. I'll give you two. This is a real estate agent that does work for Remax and she's a bubbly blonde, she is a former flight attendant and she's very self-deprecating and her whole life was her career career traveling the world for Pan Am, and it's still meaning, very meaningful to her.
Speaker 2:
So I said let's lean into that for your moniker. So, because she's a bubbly blonde and self-deprecating, I branded her the flighty realtor. Her name is Diana Walsh and her logo is a a little like a house with wings that's tilted and it's super memorable, right, it has great imagery. When you hear the flighty realtor, like, all kinds of things come to mind. Another one is for an attorney, and attorneys primarily use their first and last name and a lot of times they're just trying to be professional.
Speaker 2:
We have named a number of law firms at Eat my Words, but in this instance, this woman and we didn't come up with her name, but I discovered it one day I'm like this is a great name. I talk about her all the time. That's a sign of a great name when someone like me is talking about it. Yeah, that's true. So her name is Lauren Vasquez. You know, not super memorable, she's a cannabis attorney. That is memorable. But it doesn't help us remember her name, excuse me. By the way, there are a lot of cannabis attorneys. I know four, four cannabis trademark attorneys, trademark attorneys. So she made her moniker, have a lot of imagery and it's the fired up attorney.
Speaker 1:
Did you write about her in the book? That sounds familiar.
Speaker 2:
No, I did not. Maybe we just talked about her. No, I know what you're thinking of, though, and we're going to talk about that next for legs.
Speaker 2:
That's what we're thinking of, though, and we're going to talk about that next, for legs. Okay, so, yeah, so that's imagery Super important. So the next one that you're thinking of the example of is for legs, and legs means that your name lends itself to a theme, so you can extend it through wordplay. This is probably the hardest thing to do, except for me. I'm really good at it so you want your name to lend itself to Wordplay, so you can extend the brand, and I'm going to give you the example that I believe you're thinking of, because this is everyone's favorite one in the book, and this was a publicist, and her name is Lynette, hoy You're right, that is her.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so her name, lynette Hoy, said nothing about her being a fiery publicist, so we branded her Fire Talker PR. We gave her the tagline hot on the press. She calls herself the fire chief. She works in the firehouse. She has packages for her services like Firestarter and Controlled Burn. She calls her webinar Ignite your Visibility and she has a theme song, which is Fire by the.
Speaker 1:
Ohio Players. Yes, oh my gosh, can we just touch on that for a second? When you mentioned theme songs, I didn't even know that that existed as part of branding at all. Can you just explain what a theme song is?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, well, I made it up right, because I don't even know how it started. But I was like, yeah, everyone needs a theme song and if you have a name with legs, you can have one. So when you have a theme song for instance, my theme song is Sugar, sugar by the Archies and you can then you can. I'm smiling because I just came up with a bunch of theme songs for people, but you can then play your. If you're doing a webinar, for instance, you can play your theme song at the beginning of it and it kind of gets the audience pumped up. We could have played it at the beginning of this podcast. So it's just a fun way, because you know how many times have you been to an event and the speaker is trying to get people, you know, motivated and you know stand on your feet, turn to your neighbor and it's like super cringe, right. But if you come in and you're just like pumping up your theme song, then people are naturally going to be jazzed right.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I recently went to this giant food and beverage trade show called Expo West and I gave an award to the top 10 names of the show and for each of those names I came up with a theme song for the Instagram reel I made. So like one of them is a gosh. There's so many fun ones. One was a wellness company that makes drink mixes that are vitamin-based drink mixes and they're based in science and their name is Routine and they're based in science and their name is Routine and they're rooted in science and it's part of the daily routine. So normally I'm not a fan of spelling your name wrong, but this is just so clever and it makes sense. So it's Routine, spelled R-O-O-T-I-N-E, so for their theme song I gave them. She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby.
Speaker 1:
Because it's rooted in science.
Speaker 2:
It's rooted in science. Yeah, so that, yeah, I had so much fun doing those reels because there was a theme song for everyone.
Speaker 1:
That is so much fun. I am jealous of your job.
Speaker 2:
That sounds like you get to do so much creative work like workshopping yeah, or like another one is a new whipped cream named whipnotic, like hypnotic, and so that one I did whip it by Devo. I'm kind of dating myself here, but there's some of these songs are pretty classic. Yeah, yeah, so, uh, that was that and then so that's L, and then the E in smile stands for emotional, and you want your name to make a strong emotional connection with people, otherwise it's going to go right over their head. And a great emotional connection you can make is making someone smile, because when you make someone smile, it releases all of these positive neurotransmitters like serotonin, into your brain. Right, and that makes us feel good.
Speaker 1:
Serotonin is my gamer tag with my kids. Oh really, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:
Serotonin. I love it. I can see it on your sash. It's a sticky name. Yeah, that's really good Serotonin. I really like it. We had a client once named Anna. I was trying to play around with her name and I came up with Anaconda.
Speaker 1:
Anaconda Don't want none of them. She got buns hon.
Speaker 2:
Excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm getting over a cold, okay, excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm getting over a cold, okay. So name with a lot of emotional name, that makes a strong emotional connection. This is another one from the trade show I just went to and it's a refrigerated cookie dough, gourmet refrigerated cookie dough, and it's named dopamine and it's spelled like dough right, dopamine. That's cute and it's super dope. Speaking of dopamine the positive neurotransmitters and I got to tell you there was 3,000 boosts at that show. I hit them all up and dopamine was by far the best name and everybody loves that name.
Speaker 2:
So when you have a name like that, when you can make somebody smile and love your name before they've even like I love that name before I even knew what it was. I just turned the corner I saw that name on a neon sign and I'm like I love this name and I figured out something to do with cookie dough. But if you can have somebody love your name, that means they love your brand before they even know or have tried your product. You are golden.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you know. A little side note on tiny marketing. I found out from one of my clients that behind the scenes they just they don't call me by my name. They just say let's give this one to tiny. My clients are always talking about my name. How much they love that name.
Speaker 2:
It's a great name. I love the name Tiny Marketing it's really, really good.
Speaker 1:
I wish I had someone like you and I was trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2:
No, you did no, you did great figure it out.
Speaker 1:
No, you did, no, you did great. When I read your book, I did, I like, I compared like my name to all of you, to your smile and scratch test and I was like, yes.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. Now tiny marketing passes with flying colors, for sure.
Speaker 1:
So what the scratch?
Speaker 2:
test. So, what is the scratch test? The scratch is the flip side of smile and that is like I said. It makes someone scratch their head, scratch it off the list, and you have to be really honest with yourself when you're asking yourself these questions. By the way, the smile and scratch test is on our website at eatmywordscom. Just click on test a name and you can run any name through the test. It's interactive yeah, and it asks the questions and along the way, it will give you feedback so you'll learn you'll learn.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to put that in the show notes too. I have it linked right there.
Speaker 2:
Thank, you perfect. So the S in Scratch stands for spelling challenge and, like I said, normally, like routine, I give a pass to because it's so clever. But normally if something's spelling challenge, the reason they do it people do it is they're trying to get an available domain name. Like there's a cookie store here named Crumble and it's missing the E on the end.
Speaker 1:
It's big in.
Speaker 2:
Illinois too, right, yeah, like I'd like to buy a vowel please. So, yeah, don't do that. I mean the best thing to do, like. I'm sure, like trademark wise, they could have gotten the name crumble spelled the right way, and I think they just spelled it the wrong way so they could get a misspelled domain name. But who cares? I mean, when it comes to like Google and search engine optimization, it would actually be better if their name had the word like bakery or cookie.
Speaker 1:
I'm not sure if it's a bakery or cookie. Yeah, like SEO-wise.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it would be better if their name just was like crumblecookiescom, crumbledbakerycom. That would actually be better spelled the right way instead of it being spelled the wrong way. Yeah, just not a fan of those misspelling, because anytime your name is spelled wrong, you're always going to have to spell it for people. And whenever you have to help people with your day, whether you're helping them spell it or pronounce it or understand what it means, you're essentially apologizing for it, and that devalues your brand.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm in a coaching group and in the circle chat we're always talking about that, like, do you have to spell it out when you're explaining your name? Then don't name it that, because it's a lot of branding and marketing agencies are in this coaching group, so that's what we're chatting about. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good that that people are aware of that. So the first thing, in scratch sense for copycat nobody likes the copycat. Why be somebody else when you can be yourself, right? So, and when people see a copycat name, they kind of roll their eyes and like yeah.
Speaker 2:
Oh, they copied, you know they like.
Speaker 1:
oh, they copied so-and-so Like the iPhone adding I in front of anything, oh my God, we have a restaurant called iChef here, like, what do you even make? What is your food?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Totally, totally. I have an online course and in the course I have a whole lesson on. I have a lesson on all of these, all of the letters and smiling, scratch, and yeah, this in copycat. I have a whole slide of all these I names and all these names with Vonna VA, you know.
Speaker 1:
Carvana.
Speaker 2:
Girlvana, kevonna, like stop with the Vonna. But people kind of work in a vacuum or they just figure like, oh, I'll be like them, but like it's just, it's lazy, it's totally lazy.
Speaker 1:
Are they playing off Nirvana? It must be right.
Speaker 2:
I know, yeah, they're playing off Nirvana. That didn't even occur to me until we were talking about it right now.
Speaker 2:
That's so interesting. Okay, so that's copycat. And then the R stands for restrictive and that's where your name locks yourself in and it prevents future growth. So one is right now is the, you know, the dollar 99 cent store, right? So there's things that are, you know, $1.99, $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, and I read the other day that Dollar Tree. So Dollar Tree went up to $1.25 but it was just like a 20%, 25% increase across the store, right, which is insane when you think about it. But people kept paying it and and now they're going to have things that are like $1.50, $1.75. So they kind of outgrew their name as well. 1-800-flowers sells way more than flowers. Diaperscom sells way more than diapers. So you have to look in your crystal ball when you're naming your brand and think about what can I possibly have in the future? And you want to make sure that your name is a wide enough umbrella so you don't outgrow your brand.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a really good point. Think if Amazon had, because Amazon was originally just book distribution.
Speaker 2:
I think about that all the time. What if it was called Book Barn?
Speaker 1:
They wouldn't have been able to grow to the level they are today.
Speaker 2:
Exactly. I think that is the very best example.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm dating myself, because that's how I got my books back in college was when Amazon was just a bookstore.
Speaker 2:
I know God, it was so long ago, right? Okay, so the A in Scratch stands for annoying, and annoying is when you get cute with your name. For instance, you spell it backwards or you have a letter in the middle of it, and I saw one of these the other day. It's when you have a, not a letter, when you have a number in the middle of your name. So let's say your name is Coast to Coast with a numeral 2.
Speaker 2:
You're always going to have to spell it out for people and that it's going to frustrate people when they email you. You know they try to email you at Coast to Coast with T-O, or they try to find your website and they're not finding it. That makes them frustrated. You want your name to be frustration free, friction free. That makes them frustrated. You want your name to be frustration-free, friction-free. You just want it to be easy and I got to tell you, after having eat my words for almost 20 years, that is the most frustration-free name. It's so easy. It's easy to spell, pronounce. It's like no one ever trips up on it and there's something really nice about having a name like that on it and there's something really nice about having a name like that. And if you think about your own first and last name, most people have a name that's challenging in some way for people to spell, pronounce, remember, like we talked about. So why would you want to give your brand any of those same disadvantages?
Speaker 1:
And when you're starting out with a blank slate, don't give yourself any disadvantages that is valid and I never thought my name was challenging to say, but I've been on about a bajillion podcasts where they pronounce my middle name, noel, so apparently it is.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, how frustrating and it's so weird because you're clearly a woman. Yeah, I'm like, hmm, no, didn't realize. How does no, how is no like no coward spelled?
Speaker 1:
Let me Google it. I see noels N-O-L-E. Not the way my name is spelled, but I did learn, not that recently, that the spelling of my middle name is the masculine version of the spelling.
Speaker 2:
Okay, oh, really. Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think my parents just didn't realize that Parents.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So the T in Scratch stands for tame, and tame means that your name just fades into the background and you cannot afford to have your name be a wallflower, your name. Look at some of these names I've given you Dopamine, hypnotic. Those names scream notice me, I'm fun, I'm bold, I have personality and they make you smile.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, you want your name to be. Look, I know a lot of people are afraid, oh, but I'm business to business, that's okay. You can still have a name Like look at tiny marketing, tiny marketing. It says so much. Right, the word tiny, it's funny. Tiny is a tiny word but it communicates so much.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and it's B2B. B2b does not have to be boring.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah, so don't be boring. Okay, and the second C in scratch stands for the curse of knowledge, and that means you know what your name means. Maybe the engineers at your company know what it means, but nobody else does, and you kind of forget that because you're so used to it. You forget nobody else outside of your people know what the name means. So an example of this is something, a foreign phrase, right, when I look at the kitchen store Sur La Table and it looks like it's Sur La Table, and why wouldn't people pronounce it Table? It looks like the one in the table. Right, it's in store too, and there's another. Well, we're going to talk about the next one. Next, I want to get to H, which is hard to pronounce, and this one is. It's a crafting company and it's spelled C, so H is hard to pronounce, right?
Speaker 1:
Cricut and it's called. It's spelled c, so h is hard to pronounce. Right cry, cut and it's c-r-i-c-g.
Speaker 2:
So for the longest I never pronounced that correctly. Yeah, well, I pronounced it cry cut for years and then I was working with the queen of cry cut and she told me it was pronounced cricket. I'm like what it's not. And then I looked it up and they have this new logo. That's this cute little like cricket with antennas and there's antennas on the screen, but you know what?
Speaker 2:
You can't rely on your logo or colors or capitalization to help people pronounce your name. Your name needs to be able to appear in black and white as a proper noun in the Wall Street Journal and more often or not, people are going to be reading your name in print. So if somebody was seeing C-R-I-C-U-T it looks like Cricut and if I wanted to get into crafting and one of my girlfriends was saying, oh, I really like Cricut and another one was saying, oh, I really love cricket, I would have no idea it was the exact same thing. So you only want your name to be pronounced one way, because when it's pronounced two ways it dilutes your brand.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it was again my coaching group, the Circle Group. They were thinking about rebranding and they came up with this name, based off of Latin roots and combined things. And I was like girl, I don't even know what that's supposed to say. Don't do that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, latin, yeah, the curse of Latin. I mean Latin, it's, it's a. It's a dead language and my mother would kill me for saying this because so many word roots are based in Latin. But, yeah, people try to get all creative that way. But look, just because something's creative doesn't mean it's good.
Speaker 1:
And it's super heady. Right, you can spell your name. People shouldn't have to. It's super heady too. People just shouldn't have to think that hard to figure out what that means.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, exactly, sarah. People want to feel clued in, not clueless, right? Everyone wants to be in on it, like we named a GPS for dogs Retriever. That's cute and it takes a second, but people love that. They're like oh, like they get it. Oh, like a golden retriever, people want to get it. Yeah, people want to get it right. Because you feel smart, like dopamine, you get it.
Speaker 1:
Everybody wants to feel smart. That's such a good point that it makes people feel clued in on like an inside joke. The way you name specifically.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, and that's why we love clever names right.
Speaker 2:
God, I wish I could tell you something we're naming right. I can't, I can't. I'm sworn to secrecy on all this stuff.
Speaker 1:
No no.
Speaker 2:
I have to be careful, I know, but clever is. It really pays to be clever? Because people, it's one of those things that, like people want to people love, like people love feeling, like you said, like they're an insider, right Part of the gang, right, right, and so that's Smile and Scratch. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:
Right, and so that's Smile and Scratch. Yeah, okay, before we wrap up, I just want to touch on the domain thing that you mentioned earlier, because a friend that I recommended you to had said like that was the thing that resonated with me the most, because I felt like I had to find a name that had an available domain name. So let's touch on that for a sec.
Speaker 2:
Oh gosh, yeah, no good, I'm glad you brought that up. So yeah, finding an available domain name is not as hard as people think it is. So first of all, do not start your name search on GoDaddy or on a domain name registrar. That's the worst place to go. Start by coming up with a cool name and then find a domain name and add a modifier word, like I said with Crumble they could be bakery or cookies, other examples. So modifiers, just adding that extra word. Like I said, it helps with SEO. So if we weren't eatmywordscom, we could be eatmywords naming eatmywords, brand names. Hello, eatmywords. You can also add the prefix in front Some other. Yeah, I had a client the other day getting really hung up on oh, the domain is $10,000. I'm like it's a design firm. I said just add the word creative or studio after it.
Speaker 1:
You're golden, you're done. Did that save them $10,000?
Speaker 2:
Right, nobody expects anyone to have an exact match domain name anymore. There's some really creative ways around it, too. To talk about being clever, we were naming a popcorn store. It too. To talk about being clever, we were naming a popcorn store a gourmet popcorn store and we named it Pop Psychology, and the domain name wasn't available, so we used the tagline, which was crazy for popcorn. That's cute.
Speaker 1:
Right and Pop Psychology. That's so clever You're so good at this.
Speaker 2:
Thank you, I love clever names. Then, another one that I love is it's a mail order turkey company and the company doesn't have a great name it's Greenberg Smoked Turkeys, and you know Greenberg could be spelled two different ways, but their domain name is unforgettable.
Speaker 1:
And it's gobblegobblebble Perfect. That's really cute. After I read your book, I grabbed hello tiny marketing, because tiny marketing was the film.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, and you can have fun with your email address too. I mean don't, yeah, just there's so many like with legs, you know, that's where you can really branch out and have fun with your name. Like our, our info at email is hungry at eat my work.
Speaker 1:
I got an email from that, my favorite podcast. Their email is thecurator at boxofodditiescom.
Speaker 2:
That's fun. I got to tell you one more name with legs. This is a new one. This guy's a podcaster. His name is Jason Sircone, and he read my book and he decided he wanted to do a new podcast and he would read my book and then name it. First he named his company Bomb Track Media after a song that he really liked called Bomb Track. Then he named his podcast my favorite podcast name ever, which is let's Blow this Up Nice, Because that just sounds exciting, right? And he calls his studio the Bomb Shelter and he calls his audience the bomb squad.
Speaker 1:
Oh my gosh, so very on brand for you. Exactly what you teach. Now I need to touch on just one last thing, and I know you're sick, so just make it as fast as humanly possible. But in your book you talked about naming your packages and having it align by using I don't know you describe it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so naming your packages so like BombTrack, he has TNT Dynamite. Firestarter Control Burn, not Firestarter. Firetalker Control Burn Firestarter. We at Eat my Words have package names like Supermarket Special, the Whole Enchilada, and the Whole Enchilada is like that's the big one, right?
Speaker 1:
That's when we're working with Big Perfect, and that aligns too, because that's how people talk.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, supermarket Special is when we're working with consumer package goods clients, right, and it's special because they do their own trademark screen so they get discounted pricing versus somebody that's not doing that. We have a package called Fun Size and that's for smaller clients, so we really play off the name and then in fun size set and fun size. The thing about fun size it's it's smaller clients, right, it's a smaller price and you're gonna get fun names. That's all about the clever names and the reason that I'll do those for last and you're working directly with me is because I get to have fun and do clever names I love, love that, I love that.
Speaker 1:
So it's a theme You're looking for, a theme for your packages that aligns with your name.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, look for the theme, and that's why, if your name has legs and lends itself to a theme, you can just blow that out.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Okay. So I'm going to reiterate real quick you need your name to pass the smile and scratch test. Your domain does not have to be an exact name match. You should have a theme song that you can play with webinars, workshops or walk on music when you're doing a speaking engagement. And the last one is you should have a theme with your packages.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, theme's really important and for anybody stuck on a theme or for a theme, my online course has a lot of examples of themes, my book has some as well and, of course, if you hire me, we're going to do all the theme stuff for you. But, yeah, it's a lot of fun to have a theme you can just. I'll just really quickly say another favorite was a long time ago. We named an energy drink for women.
Speaker 2:
And it was named Bloom and it was all natural. It was all natural beverage that helped perk up women in the afternoon you know that diet coke 4 pm time but this let them caffeinate naturally, and so it's called Bloom. And then the Just it was right around when Red Bull was really popular was coming out and we named the Just Add Vodka version a Sonic Bloom Nice.
Speaker 1:
Oh my gosh, okay, you're so good at this, and how can people work with you?
Speaker 2:
Oh, reach out to me, alexandra, at eatmywordscom, or just go to eatmywordscom, and if you, yeah, just click on services or contact. Just contact me directly, book a meeting through the site, whatever works. Follow me on Instagram at eatmywordsnames and if you go on Instagram, you can see that one of my pin posts is the top 10 winners of the food and beverage trade show and, yeah, it's a really fun. It's a one minute video and you can see them all.
Speaker 1:
Oh, and then we can catch the theme songs that you picked, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah, the theme songs are below. Yeah, there's a theme song, the theme song with that I couldn't believe. I'll let you all surprise yourself with the theme. Go on my reels if you want to see the really good theme song.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'm going to do that. All of your links are going to be in the show notes, including the naming quiz, which I am going to take as soon as we're done recording this.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I encourage everyone to take the free name test.
Speaker 1:
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:
Thanks, Sarah.
Speaker 1:
Sarah Tonin. Yeah, sarah Tonin, I hope you enjoyed my episode with Alexandra Watkins. She is absolutely freaking brilliant when it comes to naming, and make sure to take the naming quiz and use the smile and scratch test when you are identifying what your next brand name should be. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like, subscribe and share it with a friend. And before you go, I want to tell you about a brand new offer that I am currently putting together a waitlist for. So if you are a B2B service founder who is stuck in a marketing role and doing client work and all the other things, this is for you. So I am talking to you right now.
Speaker 1:
The Tiny Marketing Club will help you build your lean marketing engine, where you will identify your dream client, your signature offer, your main social media channel, your core content, two lead generators a passive and an active one and one gateway offer that will help you find perfect, fit clients and build systems around it. So we streamline, we systematize, we automate, we use AI and we outsource where we need to. This gives you a budget-friendly, effective and efficient marketing strategy that you get to use with an entire community, a community of B2B founders, and you can rely directly on me, where you'll have one-to-one access with me through the VIP option, with Voxer and the community and our strategy sessions that happen on average once a month. So I can't wait to see you over there. Make sure to go down to the show notes page and sign up for the wait list. I'm taking 10 people in my pilot, where you will get bonuses, discounts for being a pilot member, a founding member of the Tiny Marketing Club, and you get it all. You're going to really love this.
Speaker 1:
I hope to see you over there. Go down to the show notes page and sign up now. I'll see you. Bye.
