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When Should You Name a Product?
Can you tell me at what point in the process should an organization name a product and what is your recommended process to accomplish this successfully?
Naming is part of positioning. A good name conveys the essence of the product--as NetBackup does and iPhone does not. Ideally, positioning is done long before you begin creating collateral--as soon as feasible. Be careful of placeholder names or project names; once they leave the building they are hard to squelch (XBox wasn't supposed to be the name of Microsoft's game device). The process: do positioning, find the one idea that you want to convey, and that's the product name. We teach a method for positioning and naming in our Practical Product Management seminar. A couple of blog posts that might help are On Product Naming and Naming (and Renaming) Products.
Answered by Steve Johnson
