February 21, 2025 • 14 mins
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of the Nerd Brand Podcast.
We're talking about naming.
You know, what do you thinkabout when you want to name
something, or is it taken?
You might want to consider thatbefore you name it Up next.
Welcome to this episode of theNerdBrand Podcast.
(00:38):
We're talking about naming.
I have an idea.
I'm going to name a thing.
Uh-oh, can't do it.
Trademark Happens all the time.
That was more than you think.
So there are ways to go aboutchecking that to make sure that
it's not taken.
So we're going to go throughsome of the ways to do that.
(01:00):
Hire a lawyer, business lawyer,have them do the research,
somebody with a trademarkingbackground, so you don't get it
right.
Otherwise you can go down theroad and not realize it, because
most agencies this is not whatthey do.
We're told to make a thingpretty and strategize and do
(01:21):
this and SEO that, and that'sall we're supposed to do.
We're not lawyers.
But well, we can talk about afew things here on this podcast,
about how to go aboutobjectively naming something or
how to just figure that out.
Before you go through all thatexercise and waste time.
You're going to laugh at this.
But Google it.
(01:42):
A search engine like GoogleSearch is very powerful.
Google it.
A search engine like Googlesearch is very powerful.
You'll see right away.
First of all, are there domainswith it?
You can use another cool toolcalled Panaby or just your
registrar.
If you have a Google account,you can just put it in there.
It'll tell you if the domain istaken or not.
If you want to use the exactname in the domain that is, the
(02:03):
dot com, for your business.
But doing a Google search willallow you to see whether or not,
if a part of the name you'reusing is trademarked, because
that could happen to you.
It could be just a part name,it could be part of it, it could
be, I don't know.
I've seen the weirdest things,to be honest, with you over the
last five years.
That people trademark thatmeans you have to add a, the or
(02:23):
an s or something to to get outof.
However you know, but you wantto make sure that you know just
doing a Google search and thesearch result page and looking
that over for the first three orfour pages, just to make sure
you know you're not runningacross something that's been
used and generally that firstresult page is going to tell you
right away that right away whatyou need to know.
(02:46):
The next one is social media.
Some folks may be at the startof the process, and that would
be another place that you can goand see if it's in use.
Consistent usernames andbranding across social media
platforms should be the norm,but you never know.
It's always good to just gointo Facebook and do a search
(03:10):
there.
It has a search feature.
You can also do the same onInstagram.
You can do the same onbasically any platform, so it
gives you an idea of issomething out there?
Of course, ultimately, businessname checker tools.
Those are really important.
Big one, secretary of State,that you're in, you know, but
you'd have to check all 50states, cause you could find the
same name in 50 states.
So you know, sometimes, ifthey're not trademarked, you can
go ahead and use it.
It may not be popular enoughfor people to want it, but yeah,
(03:33):
you know, it's not a problem,just do it.
However, um, oh, and Ishouldn't be clear that I am not
trying to say trademark andcopyright are the same here.
They're not anyhow um, so use abusiness name checker tool.
Uh, you know, I, you canactually do a search for that
term, um, to find a bunch ofthem.
(03:53):
Uh, they could be reallyhelpful and even if you pay like
20 bucks for one just to do aone-time shot, to make sure it's
worth it.
It's just just, you know, youdon't want to spend thousands of
dollars on creating a brand andmarketing campaigns and three
months in you're like, oh, wecan't do this.
Um, you know, and a $20 thingwould have been nothing compared
(04:16):
to that, right, so you can usethose.
Um.
Other things are it's like youwant to name something, make it
easy to spell, and I know thatto get around naming of things,
that it's sometimes, like I said, you can add an S, you can add
a the.
Some people just drop off nounsoff the end.
It's kind of funny, but itworks and that name comes from
(04:39):
that.
So if you really try totrademark something and you do
the same thing, I mean you'rethe exact spelling.
I mean that's yeah, you'regoing to get caught, get caught.
So the naming of something isit easy to spell?
There's this weird thing foreverybody that listens to this
podcast it's in Louisville andin Kentucky.
We all can agree, right, thatit's not Walmarts or Meyers
(05:01):
Kroger's, like there's no S,right?
So, yeah, I'm pretty sure theythought about that.
I wonder how many times theythought about that in their
boardrooms.
Like people still put an S onthe end of this thing because
there's not an S Sort of likehow some people add an R to wash
.
Like no, it's wash.
Anyway, I digress.
(05:23):
So make sure it's unique in thestate.
If you figure out and get thespelling right and you do your
searches, like I said, look forthe state, look at Secretary
state.
If you figure out and get thespelling right and you do your
searches, like I said, look forthe state, look at secretary of
state sites.
They, thosegovs, are prettyreliable.
They have places where you canlook up business registrations
and then you can find outwhether or not if it's been
taken.
Um, there was a rule a whileback and again, I'm not a lawyer
(05:44):
, so you cannot take any of thisas legal advice but there was a
while back where somebody wastelling me that 30% change would
make it justifiable to do.
Now I don't know how much I buyinto that Story time.
So once upon a time this webdeveloper was much younger and
(06:05):
did websites for a category ofbusinesses that most people
would cut their eye out with aspoon, so doing that.
By the way, nobody at NerdBrandthat we service is in this
category.
So if you're listening, no,it's not you Anyhow.
(06:25):
So they literally wanted aSuperman logo for their thing.
I'll say it that way.
And, of course, naturally, theplace I was working at was like
hey, jason, you know.
So I was like all right.
However, and you got toremember, this is like 15, 20
(06:45):
years ago.
You can't do that, and I had toexplain why to people I worked
with, but then also to theperson on the phone who wanted
it.
So the compromise was to makeit 30% different, so it didn't
look like the Superman logo oremblem.
(07:06):
Yeah, this happened.
Fast forward to today.
There's a Superman movie comingout and we don't really know if
we're going to get to see.
It Seems like it is.
They're pushing it still.
I mean, technically, thelawsuit for this is that in the
(07:27):
UK courts, the copyright or thetrademark or something it stands
, and so, going back to pastmovies and that includes the
Zack Snyder run, I think as farback as that they claim that you
cannot use Superman or make amovie or distribute that film or
(07:48):
any of that, and this wouldalso include, by the way, the um
, for those that don't know,there was another like clark and
lois.
Lois and clark uh film.
This is not the dean.
It may actually include deankane actually and in that, in
that series, but um, yeah,because you can't distribute
that.
So basically they're filming afilm in la that they could
(08:10):
distribute into theaters acrossthe continental United States.
It's definitely not going to goon streaming because that's
worldwide, but that would be theonly places that would get the
film would be theaters in thecontinental United States, so
they couldn't take the film andrelease it in the UK, china and
all these other markets, whichis absolutely critical for a
(08:32):
film like that to hit the goalsthat it needs to make money.
So that's kind of ongoing rightnow.
So it's very interesting to seewhat Warner Brothers will do,
because they've run into theirown little issue with using a
property or an IP that theycannot fully use because they
were operating under currentUnited States trademark laws.
(08:55):
So trademarking is a nastybusiness.
When you name something oryou're messing with a property
and you want to market thatthing and sell it or be that
thing.
It's just, it just is.
It is more probably difficultto come up with the name.
Well, I guess maybe that wouldbe debatable.
If Mitch was here He'd tell us.
But the debate about is itharder to come up with a name or
(09:17):
is it harder to deal with allthe legal hoops in order to you
know if you really have to usethat name or whatever.
So I would say that it'sdefinitely a challenge.
It's a challenge in of itselfbefore any logo is made or any
colors are selected.
But, anyways, you hope that thename is unique, at least in the
state that you're operating in,and you want to hope the name
(09:41):
doesn't imply the business isaffiliated with an illegal
organization or agency.
Just saying it could maybe looklike it'd be something else and
that could be a problem.
So you will definitely.
This is where you definitelywant to hire a business lawyer
is where you definitely want tohire a business lawyer.
So, um, you just won't legalconflicts when you're trying to
(10:02):
build a brand.
I mean, it creates confusionwhen that happens because you
could end up partially deployed.
Um, you know, a unique nameshowcases like your unique brand
name, showcases your uniquenessin the first place.
So it's not, um, it's not a badinvestment to hire an agency
like ours to do that researchand of course, we would still
(10:22):
tell you to hire a lawyer,because we're not lawyers.
I mean, that's what thesepeople do.
They live for this.
Um, we live to get the name andand or make the name and then
work through that process andthen when the lawyers say all
good, they come back and we gocool, but we do not include that
(10:43):
as part of our service line.
To pay for XYZ lawyer I'm sorryIf there's any lawyers out
there listening and you want tohelp with that, happy to talk to
you and how we can roll that inif it helps us both.
But honestly, it's somethingthat you know.
They're separate businesses.
I mean, we can come up with thename, send it off.
Our customer sends it to thelawyers.
Lawyers come back, say all goodand then we proceed with
(11:06):
creative and deliverables and Ithink that's a safe way to do it
for everybody involved.
So, um, naming is a very trickyuh thing.
It's also, um, it's hard whenyou find out you have to rename
anyway.
It's hard when you have tochange the dream because you
kind of feel like you are, butyou know you're really not.
(11:27):
You got to remember theidentity is built around you.
It's just a name, as Mitch says.
It's like with the logo it'sjust a mark, it's not.
You know, you are the brand andeventually, even though you may
be a large organization, whenthey see that, eventually it's
like what is it that they'regoing to remember the most?
Are they going to remember aface, a place, or are they going
(11:48):
to remember how they weretreated, to focus on?
And then everything elseorganically falls in line.
Many brands come and say wedon't really know how to shape
this.
We know we want this kind ofculture.
Don't say culture, we want thiskind of thing, we want to feel
this way, and those are very,very legitimate things to think
(12:09):
about.
But you have to start with notand then I was taught this a
while back with startups thatget out of the boardroom, talk
to the people that actuallyinteract with your brand every
day current customers, pastcustomers, potentially even the
new customers and figure out andagain, you have to spend this
(12:31):
money with an agency like oursto figure this out because these
interviews and these things areimportant to do before you
start any sort of major projectwith regards to brand identity.
So, anyways, that's about all Ican say right now about naming.
It's a short episode.
We have been very busy here atNerdBrand.
You know the boys are outcracking the whip doing the
(12:55):
thing that they need to do andI'm really proud of them.
So they're getting it done.
We've had one heck of a year in2024, and we are looking forward
to hopefully some, I think, foreverybody, including our
customers some brighter futuresand horizons, whatever the term
is, moving forward as we getready to get towards spring,
(13:17):
because right now we're in themiddle of another snowmageddon
and I'm done with snow now andwhoever's doing whoever's
causing it, stop, thank you.
Anyways, if you like thisepisode of the NerdBrand Podcast
, you can go listen to it atnerdbrandagencycom slash podcast
or your favorite podcast appThat'd be Spotify, or it's
(13:40):
always Apple iTunes in my heart,but anyways, you can also find
us on other networks likeiHeartMedia and other places as
well, and or, if you just wantto, just Google Nerd Brand
Podcast, you'll find a way tolisten to us online, and we
appreciate all of our listenersand we hope out there everybody
keeps their nerd brand strong.
On this episode of the Nerd Brand Podcast.
We're talking about naming.
You know, what do you thinkabout when you want to name
something, or is it taken?
You might want to consider thatbefore you name it Up next.
Welcome to this episode of theNerdBrand Podcast.
(00:38):
We're talking about naming.
I have an idea.
I'm going to name a thing.
Uh-oh, can't do it.
Trademark Happens all the time.
That was more than you think.
So there are ways to go aboutchecking that to make sure that
it's not taken.
So we're going to go throughsome of the ways to do that.
(01:00):
Hire a lawyer, business lawyer,have them do the research,
somebody with a trademarkingbackground, so you don't get it
right.
Otherwise you can go down theroad and not realize it, because
most agencies this is not whatthey do.
We're told to make a thingpretty and strategize and do
(01:21):
this and SEO that, and that'sall we're supposed to do.
We're not lawyers.
But well, we can talk about afew things here on this podcast,
about how to go aboutobjectively naming something or
how to just figure that out.
Before you go through all thatexercise and waste time.
You're going to laugh at this.
But Google it.
(01:42):
A search engine like GoogleSearch is very powerful.
Google it.
A search engine like Googlesearch is very powerful.
You'll see right away.
First of all, are there domainswith it?
You can use another cool toolcalled Panaby or just your
registrar.
If you have a Google account,you can just put it in there.
It'll tell you if the domain istaken or not.
If you want to use the exactname in the domain that is, the
(02:03):
dot com, for your business.
But doing a Google search willallow you to see whether or not,
if a part of the name you'reusing is trademarked, because
that could happen to you.
It could be just a part name,it could be part of it, it could
be, I don't know.
I've seen the weirdest things,to be honest, with you over the
last five years.
That people trademark thatmeans you have to add a, the or
(02:23):
an s or something to to get outof.
However you know, but you wantto make sure that you know just
doing a Google search and thesearch result page and looking
that over for the first three orfour pages, just to make sure
you know you're not runningacross something that's been
used and generally that firstresult page is going to tell you
right away that right away whatyou need to know.
(02:46):
The next one is social media.
Some folks may be at the startof the process, and that would
be another place that you can goand see if it's in use.
Consistent usernames andbranding across social media
platforms should be the norm,but you never know.
It's always good to just gointo Facebook and do a search
(03:10):
there.
It has a search feature.
You can also do the same onInstagram.
You can do the same onbasically any platform, so it
gives you an idea of issomething out there?
Of course, ultimately, businessname checker tools.
Those are really important.
Big one, secretary of State,that you're in, you know, but
you'd have to check all 50states, cause you could find the
same name in 50 states.
So you know, sometimes, ifthey're not trademarked, you can
go ahead and use it.
It may not be popular enoughfor people to want it, but yeah,
(03:33):
you know, it's not a problem,just do it.
However, um, oh, and Ishouldn't be clear that I am not
trying to say trademark andcopyright are the same here.
They're not anyhow um, so use abusiness name checker tool.
Uh, you know, I, you canactually do a search for that
term, um, to find a bunch ofthem.
(03:53):
Uh, they could be reallyhelpful and even if you pay like
20 bucks for one just to do aone-time shot, to make sure it's
worth it.
It's just just, you know, youdon't want to spend thousands of
dollars on creating a brand andmarketing campaigns and three
months in you're like, oh, wecan't do this.
Um, you know, and a $20 thingwould have been nothing compared
(04:16):
to that, right, so you can usethose.
Um.
Other things are it's like youwant to name something, make it
easy to spell, and I know thatto get around naming of things,
that it's sometimes, like I said, you can add an S, you can add
a the.
Some people just drop off nounsoff the end.
It's kind of funny, but itworks and that name comes from
(04:39):
that.
So if you really try totrademark something and you do
the same thing, I mean you'rethe exact spelling.
I mean that's yeah, you'regoing to get caught, get caught.
So the naming of something isit easy to spell?
There's this weird thing foreverybody that listens to this
podcast it's in Louisville andin Kentucky.
We all can agree, right, thatit's not Walmarts or Meyers
(05:01):
Kroger's, like there's no S,right?
So, yeah, I'm pretty sure theythought about that.
I wonder how many times theythought about that in their
boardrooms.
Like people still put an S onthe end of this thing because
there's not an S Sort of likehow some people add an R to wash
.
Like no, it's wash.
Anyway, I digress.
(05:23):
So make sure it's unique in thestate.
If you figure out and get thespelling right and you do your
searches, like I said, look forthe state, look at Secretary
state.
If you figure out and get thespelling right and you do your
searches, like I said, look forthe state, look at secretary of
state sites.
They, thosegovs, are prettyreliable.
They have places where you canlook up business registrations
and then you can find outwhether or not if it's been
taken.
Um, there was a rule a whileback and again, I'm not a lawyer
(05:44):
, so you cannot take any of thisas legal advice but there was a
while back where somebody wastelling me that 30% change would
make it justifiable to do.
Now I don't know how much I buyinto that Story time.
So once upon a time this webdeveloper was much younger and
(06:05):
did websites for a category ofbusinesses that most people
would cut their eye out with aspoon, so doing that.
By the way, nobody at NerdBrandthat we service is in this
category.
So if you're listening, no,it's not you Anyhow.
(06:25):
So they literally wanted aSuperman logo for their thing.
I'll say it that way.
And, of course, naturally, theplace I was working at was like
hey, jason, you know.
So I was like all right.
However, and you got toremember, this is like 15, 20
(06:45):
years ago.
You can't do that, and I had toexplain why to people I worked
with, but then also to theperson on the phone who wanted
it.
So the compromise was to makeit 30% different, so it didn't
look like the Superman logo oremblem.
(07:06):
Yeah, this happened.
Fast forward to today.
There's a Superman movie comingout and we don't really know if
we're going to get to see.
It Seems like it is.
They're pushing it still.
I mean, technically, thelawsuit for this is that in the
(07:27):
UK courts, the copyright or thetrademark or something it stands
, and so, going back to pastmovies and that includes the
Zack Snyder run, I think as farback as that they claim that you
cannot use Superman or make amovie or distribute that film or
(07:48):
any of that, and this wouldalso include, by the way, the um
, for those that don't know,there was another like clark and
lois.
Lois and clark uh film.
This is not the dean.
It may actually include deankane actually and in that, in
that series, but um, yeah,because you can't distribute
that.
So basically they're filming afilm in la that they could
(08:10):
distribute into theaters acrossthe continental United States.
It's definitely not going to goon streaming because that's
worldwide, but that would be theonly places that would get the
film would be theaters in thecontinental United States, so
they couldn't take the film andrelease it in the UK, china and
all these other markets, whichis absolutely critical for a
(08:32):
film like that to hit the goalsthat it needs to make money.
So that's kind of ongoing rightnow.
So it's very interesting to seewhat Warner Brothers will do,
because they've run into theirown little issue with using a
property or an IP that theycannot fully use because they
were operating under currentUnited States trademark laws.
(08:55):
So trademarking is a nastybusiness.
When you name something oryou're messing with a property
and you want to market thatthing and sell it or be that
thing.
It's just, it just is.
It is more probably difficultto come up with the name.
Well, I guess maybe that wouldbe debatable.
If Mitch was here He'd tell us.
But the debate about is itharder to come up with a name or
(09:17):
is it harder to deal with allthe legal hoops in order to you
know if you really have to usethat name or whatever.
So I would say that it'sdefinitely a challenge.
It's a challenge in of itselfbefore any logo is made or any
colors are selected.
But, anyways, you hope that thename is unique, at least in the
state that you're operating in,and you want to hope the name
(09:41):
doesn't imply the business isaffiliated with an illegal
organization or agency.
Just saying it could maybe looklike it'd be something else and
that could be a problem.
So you will definitely.
This is where you definitelywant to hire a business lawyer
is where you definitely want tohire a business lawyer.
So, um, you just won't legalconflicts when you're trying to
(10:02):
build a brand.
I mean, it creates confusionwhen that happens because you
could end up partially deployed.
Um, you know, a unique nameshowcases like your unique brand
name, showcases your uniquenessin the first place.
So it's not, um, it's not a badinvestment to hire an agency
like ours to do that researchand of course, we would still
(10:22):
tell you to hire a lawyer,because we're not lawyers.
I mean, that's what thesepeople do.
They live for this.
Um, we live to get the name andand or make the name and then
work through that process andthen when the lawyers say all
good, they come back and we gocool, but we do not include that
(10:43):
as part of our service line.
To pay for XYZ lawyer I'm sorryIf there's any lawyers out
there listening and you want tohelp with that, happy to talk to
you and how we can roll that inif it helps us both.
But honestly, it's somethingthat you know.
They're separate businesses.
I mean, we can come up with thename, send it off.
Our customer sends it to thelawyers.
Lawyers come back, say all goodand then we proceed with
(11:06):
creative and deliverables and Ithink that's a safe way to do it
for everybody involved.
So, um, naming is a very trickyuh thing.
It's also, um, it's hard whenyou find out you have to rename
anyway.
It's hard when you have tochange the dream because you
kind of feel like you are, butyou know you're really not.
(11:27):
You got to remember theidentity is built around you.
It's just a name, as Mitch says.
It's like with the logo it'sjust a mark, it's not.
You know, you are the brand andeventually, even though you may
be a large organization, whenthey see that, eventually it's
like what is it that they'regoing to remember the most?
Are they going to remember aface, a place, or are they going
(11:48):
to remember how they weretreated, to focus on?
And then everything elseorganically falls in line.
Many brands come and say wedon't really know how to shape
this.
We know we want this kind ofculture.
Don't say culture, we want thiskind of thing, we want to feel
this way, and those are very,very legitimate things to think
(12:09):
about.
But you have to start with notand then I was taught this a
while back with startups thatget out of the boardroom, talk
to the people that actuallyinteract with your brand every
day current customers, pastcustomers, potentially even the
new customers and figure out andagain, you have to spend this
(12:31):
money with an agency like oursto figure this out because these
interviews and these things areimportant to do before you
start any sort of major projectwith regards to brand identity.
So, anyways, that's about all Ican say right now about naming.
It's a short episode.
We have been very busy here atNerdBrand.
You know the boys are outcracking the whip doing the
(12:55):
thing that they need to do andI'm really proud of them.
So they're getting it done.
We've had one heck of a year in2024, and we are looking forward
to hopefully some, I think, foreverybody, including our
customers some brighter futuresand horizons, whatever the term
is, moving forward as we getready to get towards spring,
(13:17):
because right now we're in themiddle of another snowmageddon
and I'm done with snow now andwhoever's doing whoever's
causing it, stop, thank you.
Anyways, if you like thisepisode of the NerdBrand Podcast
, you can go listen to it atnerdbrandagencycom slash podcast
or your favorite podcast appThat'd be Spotify, or it's
(13:40):
always Apple iTunes in my heart,but anyways, you can also find
us on other networks likeiHeartMedia and other places as
well, and or, if you just wantto, just Google Nerd Brand
Podcast, you'll find a way tolisten to us online, and we
appreciate all of our listenersand we hope out there everybody
keeps their nerd brand strong.
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