happylatte

Once we started getting ready to launch our first iPhone app, it became clear that releasing them under the Exoweb name might not be the best idea: Exoweb is well known as an agile software development services firm, and although there’s a lot of overlap internally in the way we use resources, the target market couldn’t be further away.  So, we needed a new brand.

During 10 years of doing online marketing we have helped numerous other companies come up with brands, and we found the best approach to coming up with names is Igor’s Naming Guide to Creating Product and Company Names: Building the Perfect Beast.  So with that starting point, we started creating requirements for the name.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

(1) FEELINGS — It  should be an evocative name, embodying as many of the below feelings as possible:

• fun/ entertaining — something that makes you smile and feel happy
• good/ tasty/ delicious — something you yearn for
• tiny/ small — since we’re creating mobile applications we wanted the name to feel small, and small is often also cute, which is another nice attribute to have for, especially, games.
• social/ humane — we think the opportunity is in creating social, multi-player games, so we wanted the name to also embody this
• creative/ smart/ quirky/ surprising/ interesting — something that tickles your imagination
• convenient/ easy — related to tiny/small, but this has to do with being easily approachable. Due to the casual usage patterns, applications on the iPhone have to be extremely easy to get into, and allow for short periods (< 5 minutes) of use.

(2) VISUAL — Furthermore, for the logo to create a powerful connection with the name, the name should ideally be very visual, ideally representing a physical thing.

(3) SOUND — The name should sound good, as if it is rolling off your tongue.

(4) UNDERSTANDABLE — We’re aiming to target the world so it should be understandable to people everywhere.

(5) AVAILABLE — The name must be available as a .com domain name and Twitter account.

(6) SHORT — The name should ideally be as short as it can be, given the above restrictions.

THE PROCESS & THE OPTIONS

Based on the feelings we wanted to evoke we came up with lots of keywords which we then tried to creatively combine.  The main difficulty was finding an available .com domain name — most obvious two-word combinations are already taken.

After about 3 brainstorming sessions spread over 4-5 days, we had a list of 115 names with available domain names.

We sorted these by how well we liked them.  The runner ups on the final list included:

• pocketgiraffe.com
• tangerinesubmarine.com
• tapsicle.com
• zoocolony.com
• tapsnack.com
• chocohigh.com
• jelloturtle.com
• smallslurp.com
• ultraspree.com
• gurkhaturtle.com
• fierynut.com

Some of the names were quite fun, but obviously not suitable

THE WINNER

In the end we homed in on one name: happylatte.com.  Why?

• Happy implies fun and is a very easy word to understand for people around the world.
• Latte implies tasty, creative (latte art), and is easily understandable to people that have been to coffee shops.  The coffee shop connotation also evokes feelings social interactions, humaneness, casual, and taking a break.
• Together happy+latte sounds good, is a bit surprising and quirky, and is relatively easy to visualize.

FUNCTIONALITY MATTERS

The biggest issue with happylatte is that it is not functional — it doesn’t say anything about what we do.  If just hearing the name you would probably think we are a coffee shop.

To remedy this we added a slogan, which at first was just “iphone games”, but later we tweaked it to make it more surpring and representative of the kind of games we want to make: “newfangled iphone games”.  Now, for a non-native English speaker, “newfangled” sounded cool but it had to be explained to me.  This is what Merriam-Webster says:

new·fan·gled
\nü-ˈfaŋ-gəld\
adjective

ETYMOLOGY Middle English, from newefangel, from new + Old English *-fangol, from fōn (past participle fangen) to take, seize

DATE 15th century

1. attracted to novelty
2. of the newest style or kind <had many newfangled gadgets in the kitchen>

Since we’re aiming at creating new types of applications and games ideally suited for the iphone, “newfangled” sounds all good and well.

So there you have it!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 11:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.