Does how your organization names ever feel messy?

“We have some guidelines, but internal politics override our ability to enforce them.”

“Our legal team typically gets looped in when names are ready to go to market, and they’re not happy about that.”

“We name everything—everything!—and it’s become a customer experience issue.”

“What we want on the brand team and what executives want from our names are two completely different things.”

“Everyone here thinks of themselves as a namer.”

“No one here thinks of themselves as a namer.”

All successful naming operations are alike; each messy naming operation is messy in its own way.

There are as many struggles with managing naming in large organizations as there are large organizations. (Smaller organizations, you’re not immune either—but the impact on the brand escalates quickly the larger an organization gets.)

My studio is now two quarters deep into research that will likely span the rest of my professional career: How do the world’s largest brands manage their names? What works? What doesn’t? If magic existed, what would they change—and what would that mean for the naming owners, the brand itself, and its customers?

While this research is ongoing, it has already optimized a framework we developed at the start of 2024, and is the foundation of our Naming Operations Advisory practice.

Table of Contents

• Introducing the Naming Operations Framework

• Nine forces of naming operations

  • OWNERSHIP

  • STRATEGY

  • PROCESS + MANAGEMENT

  • RISK

  • TALENT

  • APPROVAL

  • INFLUENCE

  • RESOURCES

  • DOCUMENTATION

• Making the most of your naming operations takes ru …

Introducing the Naming Operations Framework

It’s Wild Geese Studio’s way of diagnosing, planning, and advising large enterprises on how to better manage their naming.

It contains nine major driving forces of success in the management of naming within an organization.

Each force in this framework will get its own issue of The Naming Playbook (and you can already read a little bit about Ownership).

And if I do what I’ve sworn up and down I’ll do to one of the most influential people in my life, it will all come to life in a book.

But I had three new business calls in March where clients said some version of, "This is the structure I’ve needed to create my own planning document,” so I thought I’d preview the framework for anyone else in the midst of a naming operations overhaul.

The sources of naming pain—and their corresponding solutions—tend to fall under one of nine umbrellas:

OWNERSHIP

What is your naming ownership model? Is it the right model?

If yes, let’s optimize. If not, let’s reimagine a better path forward.

STRATEGY

Do you already have strategies to guide name development? Are they the right ones?

Or do you need additional or different strategies?

PROCESS + MANAGEMENT

Do you have a set of standard operating procedures for common types of naming requests? Do you follow them?

How can we better align your naming process with other internal processes so that they feel like a natural part of the process?

RISK

Are you clear about your organization’s risk profile—and does your legal team agree?

How can the legal team be better integrated into your process, and better partner with brand and executive leadership to make sure nothing leaves the building that isn’t aligned with the organization’s risk threshold?

TALENT

Are there namers in the building? Do you want there to be?

Not every organization needs name developers in-house, but they do need to support anyone in a name-related role with the right skills and tools to do their job well. How can we build in-house creative and strategic naming capacity?

APPROVAL

Who gets final say? Are those the right people?

What can we do to improve internal socialization and consensus-building? How can the process be built around getting the right ideas to the right people in the right way?

INFLUENCE

Whenever anyone says, “The naming process starts with a product manager reaching out to me,” I ask, “How did they know to reach out to you?”

“Good question,” they say.

How can we make sure your organization’s approach to naming—and its reasons for it—are well known, well understood, and embraced by the people who need to embrace it?

RESOURCES

What kind of naming stuff do you have? Does it work? Do people use it?

How can we make better use of tools, forms, and software to improve how you manage naming?

DOCUMENTATION

Do you document how naming decisions are made? Do you have a repository of everything that’s ever been named? Does everyone know what each name can be used for—and how?

If not, you’re not alone. Most large organizations don’t have this in place yet. But it’s never too late to start…

Making the most of your naming operations takes ruthless prioritization

It can feel like every single issue needs to be addressed at once.

But they don’t.

In many cases, you're dealing with decades of naming mess, dysfunction, or lack of clarity to untangle.

Start by improving just one thing.

Maybe it's fixing a practical stumbling block—like a naming intake form that’s clunky and hard to use.

Or maybe it’s scheduling a conversation with senior leadership to understand what makes them feel most confident when evaluating naming decisions—then revisiting your process with that insight in mind.

It could even be grabbing lunch with the legal team to get a better grasp on risk and due diligence from their perspective.

If you need help prioritizing your naming operations challenges, we're here. Reply to this email, and we’ll set up a time to talk.

– Caitlin Barrett
Founder and naming expert, Wild Geese Studio
Your strategic naming partner for development, operations, and evaluation.

P.S. If you manage naming in a large organization (1,000+ employees with a robust portfolio of names or frequent naming requests), I’d love to interview you or share our naming operations benchmarking survey. Reply to this email, and I’ll send you the details.