Customer Reviews

Naming for Power: Creating Successful Names for the Business World

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Basically the author says that naming is serious staff, you should not do it yourself, yet you should pay me and use my services. He goes on giving examples of his work. I did not get any value out of this book.

This books gives lots of examples, but does not explain why or how the names were chosen. This is NOT a good manual to help people come up with names for products or businesses.

I was amazed, after buying this book, to find that it actually contains almost no advice on how to think up a name or even how to evaluate a name after it has been created. The text largely consists of numerous anecdotes, which are filled with unfunny jokes and clever formatting. The occasional bits of useful advice are woefully few and far between, and not worth the time and effort to uncover them.

This book is amateurish and shallow. Javed peppers his text with exclamation marks and bold lettering because he lacks the skills to create emphasis through language. Perhaps if he were better with the English language, he would better grasp the concepts of naming!

I'm a trademark attorney and I found it a fun read and informative as to the mindset of those who created the trademarks that elicit the "What were they THINKING" or "How BORING!" reaction.

The book is good at telling people what NOT to do, or at least for alerting them to the fact that MONEY will not necessarily help them create a great trademark.

I especially liked the analogy of naming one's own children: it may not be prudent, effective . . . SMART . . . to gather your entire family around to form a committee or a focus group on the subject of what your next child's name will be; such decisions shouldn't be made by a group. Similarly, you should give your product a name that YOU find pleasing, as it is highly unlikely that the resulting name will be worse than a name resulting from thousands of dollars spent on focus groups and committees.

No one can tell you how to come up with a good name that will immediately convey to the masses how great your product is. However, one CAN tell you how to come up with a name similar to thousands of others. No one wants that kind of a trademark. Mr. Javed tries to alert the reader to the common actions that lead to common and similar sounding names.

The ottom line is, NAMING FOR POWER gives you some insight to the naming process and the fact that luck and personal satisfaction with your choice, more than money, will lead to a stellar trademark.

It was fun book.

The sidebars and the historical context of existing brand names is fantastic. The conclusions he draws in the main text are confusing at best, contradictory at worst.

I don't regret having it, and it's got more naming information than any other resource I've found. However, his advice is based on very subjective conclusions and needs to be taken with gigantic grains of salt.

If I am correct, this is the one and only book on Naming. I enjoyed it, and found it quite useful. I think most of the other reviewers expected the book to solve their naming problems for them. It is not up to the book to do it, it is up to the reader.

Inside the author will introduce you to some Case Studies, and show what works, what doesn't and why.