The company I work for just changed its name. This is an expensive exercise that can cost millions of dollars. Why? Well, choosing a name is a tricky thing; after all, one needs to consider many different factors.
On the one hand, for example, it is beneficial if the name stands out from the crowd; on the other, it is probably a good idea if the name requires at least a modicum of inventiveness to be ridiculed. This is not unlike naming a child. It isn’t exactly wrong to name your daughter Xena, but unless she can fight like a warrior princess, she may undergo some serious teasing…
So what about squash? Is it time to re-think the name? Is it time to reinvent our sport with a new image and a new name? Perhaps we should undergo some serious brand analysis.
In an effort to illuminate how corporate naming works, I thought it might be helpful to apply formal branding methodology to our sport. The process is fascinating.
The first step in our complex methodology is to perform some competitive research. In thinking about how to name a sport, it makes sense to look at some others. We looked, therefore, at the three most successful sports in the United States (football, basketball and baseball) to see the factors that make their names so successful.
After a rigid scientific analysis (involving algorithms too involved to describe here), our branding team determined that the convention seems to be to take the word “ball” and add some important factor about the sport in front of it (trust me, that part was complicated).
Our team got excited: “How about racquetball?” one of the junior analysts screamed. The room fell silent, and the young man was summarily fired. Nevertheless, the remaining representatives continued to generate names:
Tinball? Sounds like something robots would play.
Wallball? Catchy, but awfully similar to a short-lived health club sport called Wallyball (which itself sounded like it was from a Chevy Chase movie).
Railball? Two locomotives playing against each other.
Boastball? A game for people with very large egos (the team thought we might want to come back to this one…)
In England, someone said, a slang word for a racquet is a “bat,” so how about Batball? A game for the Batcave, we decided.
Nickball? Almost sounds like a Mickey Spillane character (“Hiya sweetheart, my name is Nick. Nick Ball.”)
Powerball? This might have been a good choice, but the NY lotto contest ruined it.
Speedball? Sounds a little too much like a really powerful alcoholic beverage.
The team collectively wiped the sweat from our brows and decided to take a break. After all, this naming stuff is hard. Maybe, we thought, we shouldn’t be so focused on using the word “ball.” Golf seems to do okay without having to deal with a ball (in its name, of course). What the heck is a golf, anyway, besides a Volkswagen car?
We then focused our energies on coming up with new words that might represent our sport. And after a few drinks, the team became excellent at generating names all over the place. Some of these new words sounded suspiciously like bodily emissions, but I was assured that they were potential new names. Three of them emerged as finalists: trinsica (modern and futuristic), fife (old world and Scottish) and sleeny (almost naughty). None of them fit the bill.
As good consultants often do, we decided that it was time to perform a better analysis of our current name to explore its strengths and weaknesses. Squash accurately describes what happens to the ball, but often gets confused with some manner of vegetation. It is short, looks cool, and implies some power. But there is still that vegetable thing. Then it struck us: we just need to modernize the current word.
We will be able to leverage the current brand, show that we are a progressive sport, and avoid confusion with that damn zucchini. So we solved the problem. Squash-o.
That’ll be a million bucks, please. Isn’t naming fun?
