Having recently worked on a brand-naming project, my eye has been attuned to company names around me. Out of the many, the ones using word play have stood out.
- Pun: The Title Wave is Multnomah County Library’s used store, selling “books, audiobooks, CDs, DVDs, videos, magazines and cassettes at bargain prices”. I keep hoping they’d sell books I’ve donated to the library, but they only stock catalog discards.
- Pun: Sejuiced is a vegetarian restaurant in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, BC. Here the cleverness may have backfired: when last Sunday I walked by their sandwich board sign sporting an orange-wedge logo, I was so convinced it was a juice bar I didn’t even look at the posted menu.
- Anagram (partial): The Higher Taste is a company that produces ready-to-eat vegan and vegetarian meals. Whenever I bike by their production facility in the Creston-Kenilworth neighborhood near my office I catch a waft of whatever spices they’re using at the time.
Browse these lists of pun store names, comical business names, unusual/funny business names, and abysmal business names for more examples of good and bad word-play company names.
Good business names using word play can be tough to generate. There may be a process to generate such word-play business names. More often than not, however, they’re a result not of a deliberative, namestorming process, but of an insight or accidental discovery (though I believe that the harder you work, the luckier you get).
Word play business names have a distinct advantage: they make the customer feel good about “getting it”, clever about solving the puzzle. They can bring a smile to your customer’s face, and they can be memorable.
On the flip side, word-play business names seem to work best for small businesses. Or, perhaps only small businesses use word-play names well. Perhaps something in their nature limits their appeal.
With humorous business names, your customer can only hear the joke so many times for it to remain funny. Confusion in pronunciation or spelling, or both, is another potential pitfall. The I-get-it moment of clever names can be extremely short-lived. Also stay away from using word-play if you plan to expand internationally.
What do you think about word-play business names? Do they work? What are your favorite and least-favorite examples?
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Image credit: Leo Reynolds
