Hi, there.

It seems like our name development work comes in waves. 

We’ll go a year without much action, and then all at once, we’ll end up naming 4 or 5 brands and products over the course of a few months. We’re in one of those heavy waves now, and since it’s been a minute since we last talked about naming, I wanted to revisit this topic. 

Plus, given all the Brand Architecture and new brand development work we’re helping our clients work through right now, I bet you likely have name development on the horizon sometime soon as well. 

So today, I want to give you a quick rundown on how we approach this problem, including:

– How we weigh preliminary considerations and frame and project context. 

– How we define themed “buckets” and develop hundreds of really shitty upfront ideas. 

– How we winnow down to the best choices

– How we share these with our client partners

– How we manage the trademarking process

– Our *top secret* method for naming legacy beer brands

To make this more concrete, we’ll walk you through our recent naming work with AleSmith Brewing to name, brand and launch their new flagship Pilsner. This isn’t a formal case study, but it will help to illustrate the different steps in our process. 

Cool? Let’s kick this off by discussing the Creative Brief. 

(Above): Revisit our case study on naming and branding Birdsmouth Beer Co.

—
 

Building the Creative Brief 

Before we develop anything — Brand Strategy, name options, design concepts, etc. — we have to understand your objectives. We do this with a Creative Brief.

A Creative Brief is a document that captures the broad strokes of the project you’re working on at an executive summary level, as well as what you’re trying to accomplish. So, things like product attributes, intended audience, positioning, how this brand fits into your broader Brand Architecture, messaging, visual art direction, brand voice and personality cues, etc. 

For AleSmith’s new flagship Pilsner brief, we defined the following parameters:

– This is a German-style Pilsner, though AleSmith doesn’t want to focus on the German aspect. 

– This has been a best-selling beer in their taproom for several years. This will be the first time they can it.

– They foresee this becoming a #3 or #4 brand in their portfolio within a few years.

– They want the name to sound vaguely European.

– They want the design to be European-inspired as well, vs. the more Americana “Nostalgic Regional” aesthetic you see across American lagers.

– They want to tie it to AleSmith’s parent brand in some way (because it’s a flagship).

– They don’t want the name to geographically limit the brand — e.g. San Diego Pils — since this beer will end up in all 16 states where AleSmith is sold. 

—

A few things to pull out here:

You need to clearly define your “buckets”

A “bucket” is how we collect themes that we can deep dive on and explore. This can be one idea, or multiple ideas that, if combined, could be interesting. 

Some examples: Lager, Springtime, A European vacation, Feeling empowered, Midwest work ethic, Contemporary cannabis, Outlaw Country, etc.

You want to frame 3 or 4 buckets at a minimum, though more is okay as well as long as they align with your objectives. 

Without these guardrails in place, you have no idea where to even begin looking for a name. Most of the time, when we start working with someone who has struggled to find a name for their brewery or product, it’s because they have’t done this initial work. 

How important is this brand? 

It’s important to consider how important this thing you’re naming will be. 

If you're naming your overall brewery, brand, business or hospitality group itself, then this is about as important as it gets.

If this is a new flagship, or a brand in another category that will add real revenue to your business, then the name — and the work that goes into it — is more important than naming a quick limited time only (LTO) release that will be gone in a month. And this includes everything that follows: How many options you initially consider, how (or if) you trademark the name, etc.

If the product isn’t really important to your overall business — again, say a quick, one-off LTO — then you don’t need to invest as much time and energy into this. In this case, as long as you’re not clearly infringing on someone else’s trademark, especially in your market, you can use whatever name you want. (*This is not legal advice, obviously. I’m wearing jorts while typing this.)

Style names as positioning tools

Again, this isn’t an AleSmith case study, but I do want to note how their team is thinking about this beer’s style as a critical positioning tool. For a beer that could be as big as #3 in their portfolio (for a brewery that already sells 65k+ bbl per year), it makes sense to go more mainstream. 

While this is a German-style Pilsner, they felt that focusing on that would only add unnecessary friction for people who might not know what that means, but would otherwise enjoy a beautifully made Pils. 

So this will be billed simply as a “Pilsner.”

Read more about the idea of style names as positioning tools here.

(Above): At CODO, we bake the Creative Brief into our larger Brand Strategy process. This creates a nice, rolling conversation where we gather all relevant project context, differentiators and buckets into one place. 

—
 

What makes for a great name? 

Let’s quickly revisit how we judge name options so we know what we’re aiming for. A great name should accomplish a few things:

– It should be available to trademark (first and foremost).

– It should be reflective of your differentiator. 

– It should be easy to spell and recall.

– It should be likable and fun to say (with a great mouthfeel — bonus points for alliteration).

– It should be flexible (think of it as a platform upon which you can scale later on). 

– It should be portable — not geographically-limiting — unless there's a specific opportunity you're moving on.

And finally…

– It should be a phenomenal “bar call.”

The Bar Call 

The bar call heuristic is a simple way of putting a potential name in context. 

Someone walks up to your taproom bar and orders the beer. How does that sound? 

– “Can I get a Cold Smoke?” 

– “805.”

“Two Banquets, please.” 

– “Old Fashioned.”

– “Make it a Cold one.” 

– “Can I get two Shy Giants.”

– “Hop Drop!”

—

After the ability to federally trademark a name, we believe a great bar call is the most important quality you should aim for. 

A great name is a platform. 

And you can build an entire world — on-trade programming, POS, campaigns, Co-branded products and other extensions — around a great bar call.

(Above): Make it a cold one. (How's that for a bar call?)

—
 

What does the naming process actually look like?

Every agency will have their own process here. After we’ve worked through Brand Strategy and built the Creative brief, CODO’s unfolds like this:

We develop hundreds of options between two or three team members. Out of those, 90% (95%?) will be junk (though important from a process standpoint — the creative process is iterative and you’re not hitting home runs every time you’re at bat. Or at least, I don’t.).

Nine of the remaining 10% will be unavailable from a trademarking standpoint. 

And there are still some options that, while available, might not hit the mark for some other reason — doesn’t tell a story, too limited, too esoteric, hard to spell, etc. So we'll cull these as well. 

What remains is a tight list that meets the criteria we laid out above. 

While we don’t have a hard and fast number for the amount of names we share, it usually clocks in around 15 to 20 options. 

And while we build time into our schedule to allow for a second round, this is rarely needed. 

That’s not a subtle flex, but a reflection of how much emphasis we put on Brand Strategy and building the upfront brief itself. If we don’t get really close to a few final contenders in this first round, then our original brief is likely off in some way and we need to get that dialed in before heading into round two. 

A quick note on pre-vetting options 

Lawyers are an important partner in the naming process. 

Having them review options is such an important step that we won’t move forward with a name until an attorney (your’s or CODO’s) has verified that it’s available. They have to make the final decision.

(This was a very painful lesson Cody and I learned earlier in our career.)

Anyway, an attorney will run a knockout search on any name options you’re considering in order to unearth potential conflicts. This can cost several hundred dollars (or more) per inquiry, so we want to make sure we’re not presenting obviously unavailable options and wasting your time and money. 

This is straightforward on our end, and we do the following:

– We Google the name.

– We ensure the URL is available (if applicable).

– We check Untapped and major social channels.

– We check the USPTO database (for relevant classes, e.g. 032 / 033).

If a name passes these preliminary checks, we’re comfortable presenting it to our client. 

But an attorney will still have to make the final-final call. More on this in a moment. 

For now, let’s get back to AleSmith’s pilsner.

(Above): After you've defined your buckets, your job is to dive headlong into rabbit holes to generate as many words and ideas as possible. Don't swing for the fences at this stage (i.e. think you're gonna solve this problem in one go), and DO NOT EDIT. You're aiming for volume at this stage. 

Bonus tip: One of my favorite ways to find cool words is to look through online glossaries. The grungier and more home-brewed the better. I'm talking hard-coded, typo-ridden, schizophrenic and MySpace-looking. 

There's some guy (a webmaster?) in Iowa who's really into katanas (or in AleSmith's case, Blacksmithing). And he developed (literally, hard coded) a website to share his passion back in 2006. That site is (somehow) still live. So when you go to name a new flagship in 2025, thank him.

—

 

Naming AleSmith’s Pilsner 

The big buckets (collection of themes) we explored for this new brand included:

– AleSmith’s parent brand and Blacksmithing.

– Bright, airy and refreshing (on the beer itself).

– German / European-inspired names.

– Wild cards.

These are all self-explanatory, so we can fast forward a bit here. 

We ended up sharing 16 options. AleSmith liked three of them for this Pilsner and another one for an upcoming brand. 

This is common in our work. You might pay for help naming one product but end up with 3 or 4 killer options that you can use later on. (AleSmith actually used one of the names we proposed during this project — Sun Path — for another beer. Check that out here.) 

We recommend trademarking anything you think you’ll actually use from this process, even if that means you need to get an intent-to-use filing in place for now. We discussed this topic at length with CODO’s IP attorney, Matthew McLaughlin, on a recent podcast. 

Back to your attorney (“your lawyer makes the final call”)

I tee’d this up a bit ago. Let’s bring it home now. 

AleSmith liked a few of our proposed name options for this Pilsner. They shared these with their attorney and found them all to be available. This is actually rare. 

Usually, an attorney will come back and tell us that there’s a clear conflict with at least one of our options — something they found that didn’t show up in our pre-vetting work. (They have access to databases and tools that we, as lowly designers, don’t.)

This is why we say the lawyer makes the final decision. If you like two names and your attorney determines you can’t use one, then you go with the remaining option. 

Easy. Peasy. 

(Above): Sorry for the obnoxious redactions here. AleSmith paid for this work, so we can’t share it.

—
 

A few notes:

Are you an older brewery? Check your archives

If your brewery has been around for 15, 20, 25+ years, you will have brewed and named hundreds of beers. And you will have (hopefully) trademarked a good number of these. 

This is one of our secret weapons when naming products with older breweries. 

If you’re not currently using a particular name and feel like it could work well for this new project, repurpose it. 

Clients are often surprised when I suggest this. But I’m equally surprised they’re not doing this by default. 

What good does a solid name do for you sitting on the sidelines?

We can’t use that name. It was a Hefeweizen we brewed back in 2016. 

No one remembers. And if they do, I’m not sure it matters. (They’ll catch on. Your fans are smart.)

Using the best name available is what matters here. 

—

So, which name did AleSmith choose?

Anvil Pilsner. 

This name checked nearly every box on our Creative Brief. 

– It ties to AleSmith and blacksmithing. 

– It is memorable. 

– It is easy to spell. 

– It is flexible. 

– It’s a killer bar call. 

And to prove my point from above, this is actually a name AleSmith had used years ago for an ESB. 

And bonus points: They have the name federally trademarked. 

How did we discover this? We asked Brandon and Kristen to name the most on-brand AleSmith beer name they could think of during our kickoff conversation. “Anvil” came up and was an immediate contender right then and there. 

It doesn’t always work out this way, but when it does, it can expedite things nicely. 

(Above): We’re focusing on name development in this issue, but I don’t want to leave you hanging. Here's Anvil Pilsner in all its glory.  

—

What have we learned here? 

Context is important. Without a solid Creative Brief, you're swinging in the wind without any direction.

You need to nail your bar call. How will people order this beer? Gleefully and proud, or sheepishly mumbling into their chest? The difference can make or break your brand.

Check your archives. If you're an established brewery, you might be sitting on a goldmine of old names. Sometimes your best option is already in your back pocket.

Bring in an attorney. If this brand is important enough to trademark, you need to go through that process properly. If you don't wan to go through that effort, imagine building this brand for 4 years, it becomes your best seller and is transforming your business. Then one day you receive a C&D. We've seen this happen. 

Trust the process. Naming is creative and fun, but it's also methodical and iterative (and frustrating). Build your brief, generate hundreds of options, work through the bad, find the good, pre-vet everything, and always — always — get your attorney's sign-off before moving forward.

—
 

Want help naming your next product? Shoot me an email and let’s make that happen.