We are launching (on a nationally televised ABC reality TV show no less) a new pet technology company. We hope to eventually product multiple products that improve the lives of pets and their owners through high-design, high-tech and a dash of ingenuity. We desperately need to come up with a name for the parent company (obviously each product will have its own name). Can you please help us? Here are a couple names we have so far but we could definitely use more or if you love one of these please let us know.
[ul]
[li]Animale Inc. (pronounced anim-ahl-ee) [/li]
[li]Animalia Inc.[/li]
[li]Starship Chameleon Inc. (because a group of chameleons is called a starship)[/li]
[li]Pet Project(s) Inc.[/li][/ul]
It’s fun if you know the inside joke. But company names need to speak to the uninitiated, not the insiders.
Pets, at least in the US are synonymous in 90+% of the popular mind with doggies and kitties, period. Only a few percent of people can even pronounce chameleon, much less know anything about them. “Icky slimy lizard”[sup]1[/sup] is the image most people will have, with actual dog & cat owners only slightly less likely to think that than non-pet owners.
Ditto “Animale”. Most people will pronounce it “ana male” and wonder why you hate female pets. If they even make the connection to animals at all.
FYI …
I went around this bush with my last company’s name where the name was specific for the product set we started with but was misleading for what we ended up succeeding with. And after we recovered from that *faux pas *our marketing geniuses chose a name for our main product with embedded punctuation that rendered it unGooglable. Idjits.
The only good news was it wasn’t a consumer product, so sales were more push than pull.
With that lesson learned … If you’re *sure *you’re staying with pet stuff I would propose something more like PetTech or PetDesign or … If not, then something that speaks to sleek design, high tech, trendy hip consumerism, etc.
[sub]1. Yes, *I *know they’re neither icky nor slimy. But your audience (i.e. the general US public) is a different matter.[/sub]
I’ve been involved in multiple consumer/comercial products and I gotta say these are pretty lame…
Animale - if you have to explain the pronouniciation it’s too complicated…does it have to do with male animals??..
Animalia Inc - kinda the same…animal genitalia??
Starship Chameleon - Does your product have anything to do with chameleons? Might be OK as a company name if it’s NOT on your product.
Pet Project - Tells me nothing unless it’s obvious that you use the item to improve your pet somehow - OK company name.
I think you need to decide whether you’re naming the company or a family of products. For either it should be short, memorable, not already trademarked, an obvious pronunciation, and ideally related to the use or need for the product.
For a new specific product a name should reflect something about the product’s use or be paired with a second term that provides this information. IE a Cricket cutter, a Swingline stapler, an i-PHONE… This technique could work with a cutesy product/company name as well.
More information about the general type of product and technology would be helpful.
Our first product is a high-tech (patented and hard to reproduce) coloured and colour-changing kitty-litter that looks/smells great, makes finding the used clumps easy (they are different colours) kills dangerous parasites and alerts owners to medics issues.
Starship Chameleon is nice in that it’s memorable. It’s probably the best on the original list. I can’t imagine anyone getting the reference, though. You also run the risk of people assuming that the company is either about starships or chameleons.
But I have to ask how much the company name matters to you. For example, many tech company names are very important - Facebook is both a company and a product at once. Microsoft is appended in front of every one of their product names. SalesForce.com Inc. is hardly subtle.
On the other hand, how many people know which major franchises are owned by Yum! Brands Inc? From the tech field, everyone knows the name Basecamp, but how many know that 37Signals produced it? These companies are not being hindered by their company names; they just have a different marketing strategy.
Anyway, I think cleverness in company and product names is highly overrated. Memorable, distinguishable, simple, clear.
If you pick Animale, I’ll tell you right now: give up trying to correct people on the definition. You might as well just name it Animail. (Which is actually a real suggestion if your product has anything to do with e-mail. or even @nimail, though that might be better implemented in a logo than a legal name.)
Or to borrow from some of your more descriptive terms: HiDesign, High-Design, HD Tech or HD Ingenuity. These are no more or less original than Facebook or Microsoft.
“Safe Litter” - who would now want to buy the old fashioned* unsafe *litter!
…taking this from the original “Look” bicycle pedals…it made you look
“Change” brand cat litter - tells what it does
and Change Pet Products for the company
“Detect” litter - maybe a little too graphic?
A good demo of the benefit of color change is important, ALL clumping cat litter smells great, clumps, and is healthy, right?