What We Do: Product Naming
Products should have cool names. Sometimes we have more freedom when we are naming a company because we are starting from scratch. If you have a hierarchical situation, you’ve got to make it work with what you already have. But generally you still have a lot of leeway to come up with a product name that has some electricity and emotional appeal. We have never caved into the abject poverty of naming a product line “The 2000 Series.” Life is short and there are just too many cool names out there waiting for a good home.
 Steelhead
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This was part of our work for Riverbed, formerly known as NBT Technology. Once we arrived at the corporate name, we started exploring life on the river. Because we were naming an appliance in a metal box and we were selling it to guys, it seemed that we needed a name with some grit. So in this case it was mostly about the poetry and the resonance with the rest of the brand. The name doesn’t tell you anything about what the product actually does or why you should buy it.
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Farm-In-A-Box
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This project involved some long drives down to Salinas, where they grow a lot of vegetables. The client was Charlie Kosmont. He was the CEO of Growers Transplanting, a company that grows seedlings for farmers across the west. Because they’re putting partially-grown plants into the ground, it shortens the growing cycle, which means the farmers can get an extra crop out of their valuable land. But there’s not much going on at Growers Transplanting in the winter. That’s where we came in. We invented a company, Rocket Farms, and a product, Farm-in-a-Box, which was a little pre-fab vegetable or herb garden for folks in the city.
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Breakfast with Jamba Juice
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A Hundred Monkeys worked with Jamba Juice to name a new line of ready-to-eat breakfast foods. The new breakfast menu is a lineup of on-the-go drinks, some of which are meant to be eaten with a spoon. The new menu items are full of granola, yogurt and chunks of fruit.
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