Good morning. What's in a name? For brands, increasing amounts of work, The WSJ Leadership Institute's Patrick Coffee reports:
"We screen, on average, 750 to 1,500 names per project," said Early Barrett, founder of naming firm Wild Geese Studio and co-founder of the Business of Naming conference, which recently held its second annual gathering in Brooklyn.
The proliferation of businesses and services, and concurrent growth in related trademark applications, has made coming up with the necessary handles more complex than ever, Barrett said.
It can also be perilous.
Many think of corporate naming in the context of disasters like Tronc, the notoriously short-lived rebrand of media conglomerate Tribune Publishing, or Reebok's Incubus, a shoe named for a mythological demon that attacks sleeping women. Reebok wound up urging retailers to black out the name on boxes.
Some marketers are staffing up to handle the challenge.
(Ford Motor) Co. last December named Scott Hauman its first head of nomenclature. The automaker doesn't just name new cars, but everything from buildings on its properties to new buttons and switches inside its latest models, Hauman said. Recent examples include Ford trucks' BlueCruise hands-free towing and the G.O.A.T. dial, for Goes Over Any Type of Terrain, in its Bronco lines.
Hauman's role was established as part of a broader Global Center of Excellence for naming and taxonomy across the company's huge brand and product portfolio.
With disorganized or "rogue" naming, "there's no consistency and so you're not building any equity," he said.
Naming prescription drugs has grown particularly challenging because of scrutiny from regulatory bodies like the FDA as well as increasingly aggressive trademark practices, said Jenna Wise, associate creative director of verbal design at branding agency AW.
"If they are too similar to other names that already exist in pharma, it can be fatal," Wise told attendees at the Business of Naming conference. "So they have to get weirder and weirder."
Barrett and Nina Beckhardt, founder of the Naming Group agency, created the conference as a gathering place for this small and often misunderstood part of the larger marketing discipline, they said. Attendees ranged from strategists at Anthropic and SAP to employees of branding firms, as well as patent attorneys who discussed AI's influence on trademark law over coffee.
More CMOs are beginning to realize how much monikers can matter in a crowded marketplace, according to Barrett.
"When your naming is crystal clear, people can tell at a glance what you have to offer," Barrett said.
Rogan Re-Ups
Spotify is keeping its grip on ad sales and licensing rights for "The Joe Rogan Experience," renewing its contract with the star podcaster for multiple years, Anne Steele reports for The Wall Street Journal.
The agreement mirrors Rogan's previous deal, which carried an estimated $250 million earnout and let the show be distributed broadly across rival platforms. That wide-net strategy is a major selling point for advertisers seeking big reach.
The show reaches about 28.4 million Americans-up from 6.6 million in early 2020-and has topped Edison Research's list of the most-listened-to U.S. podcasts since 2019. It boasts more than 18 million followers on Spotify and another 21 million on YouTube.
Spotify's podcast business has grown alongside Rogan's show, said Jordan Newman, Spotify's head of content partnerships. The streamer, which remains the largest audio service, now counts 300 million premium subscribers.
The Magic Number
47%
Share of U.S. adults that say businesses should take public stands on current events, down from 51% last year, according to a poll by Gallup and Bentley University.
What I'm Watching
A global flywheel? The Japanese owner of Uniqlo and other brands plans to open stores in San Francisco, Miami and Cannes, France, in the coming months, after recently opening new locations in New York and Cambridge, U.K. (Fast Retailing) CEO Tadashi Yanai said Uniqlo's growing recognition in the U.S. and Europe has attracted customers drawn to its global brand appeal, especially in markets like Southeast Asia, India and Australia. "This is a big chance to realize further growth," Yanai said.
Connecting the dots: Gap, which is pursuing a "fashiontainment" strategy under (Gap) Inc. CEO Richard Dickson, has introduced an apparel collection featuring Roy Lichtenstein's art timed to an upcoming exhibition at the Whitney Museum. Items include a Standing Explosion hoodie, a quarter-zip covered in red-and-blue Ben-Day dots, and a "Sweet Dreams, Baby!" cap.
The AI price war: OpenAI stirred up a pricing battle this summer with the release of its GPT-5.6 lineup, which gave customers access to models with varying capabilities, including options that are less expensive to run. Its Codex product and other business tools are now gaining ground on Anthropic, and OpenAI has rolled out additional iterations of its cost-efficient models. But the landscape shifts quickly in AI: Anthropic late last month began releasing its new Claude 5.5 family of models, touting lower cost and better efficiency.
Quotable
"The pursuit of internal trust can undermine external trust." Brand consultancy Lippincott and Bloomberg Media in a recent report on the outlook for CMOs. Marketing leaders are "winning influence internally" with performance marketing, the report says, but they risk neglecting essential brand-building work in the process.
The WSJ CMO Council Summit
This Nov. 17 and 18, CMOs will gather in New York for the WSJ Leadership Institute's CMO Council Summit, featuring marketing leaders such as FUBU founder Daymond John, Visa's Frank Cooper III, Mars Inc.'s Gülen Bengi, IBM's Jonathan Adashek, United Airlines' Josh Earnest, PepsiCo's Mark Kirkham, e.l.f. Beauty's Oshiya Savur, and the National Women's Soccer League's Rachel Epstein.
Together, they'll explore the power of participation in cultural events, social platforms, professional communities and anywhere that passionate consumers gather.
Join the WSJ CMO Council and be part of the conversation shaping the future of marketing leadership.
Inquire about membership
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