YouSaid · the spoken record

David Placek

lines on the record: 84
first: 2025-06-29
most recent: 2025-06-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I certainly hope so. I do. It's been very, very enjoyable, very thoughtful. And I have nothing but respect for the way you do this and the talent that you have. So very fortunate that we've come together and we live in the same place. So maybe we can get together for a cup of coffee or something.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you, there is one name, and it's Dreamworks. I think it's a wonderful name. And it's somewhat of ironic that the entertainment industry in general has pretty mundane names, right? So you have all these talented people. And yet when you look at the names of production studies, movie houses, Comcast, things like that, it's just very mundane. But here's DreamWorks. Like Sonas, check all the boxes. Compound dream, you expect something great from DreamWorks. They've created an experience, the experience of dreaming in a movie. I think it's a wonderful name. I wish I'd done it.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. I do. And it's a little longer. So I wrote it. I have it written here somewhere, but it's the quote from T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia here, and if I can find it, I should be. Yeah. I think it's a wonderful quote. So I think hopefully your viewers will like this. Here's what he said. He said all men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds waken the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may not act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible. I read that years ago and it just hit me pretty hard.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they didn't name it, although it's got a very good name to it. Our whole family, I have two daughters and my wife, we're all fly fishermen. And last summer, I really bought this for myself, but I gave it to my wife. But it was one of those things that was present for her, but I knew I was going to use it more. And it's a hardy, it's an old British fly rod, but it's a beautiful rod. It's just perfect for the big rivers of Montana. So that's my favorite purchase.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And then the after one, 1923, which is the post one. 1883 really gives people a sense of what it took by those early Americans to build a life in a place like a beautiful place, but a hard, tough place like Montana. And it just, it's just. Phenomenal. The person producing and writing those things is incredibly talented. Taylor Sheridan, I think is his name. Yeah.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, very listen. I can't tell you how fortunate I am. And I bought this property 28 years ago, so it was a lot cheaper than in a snowstorm and it just felt right. But I think particularly the 1883 that the precursor to you. I was going to ask if.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a book called Resilience, which was written by a former Navy SEAL that, and it's not about combat, it's just a tiny bit about being a seal, but it is about overcoming things, right? And it's about tenacity. And I think, you know, everybody in the world, we all have challenges and things. And I do recommend that to people. Second book is Andrew Roberts' latest book on Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill is really one of my heroes. He was one of the most unusual, provocative statesmen, politicians of the 20th century. And here's another person that talked about tenacity and ups and downs and stick with it. And so I do like to recommend that some people just kind of, you know, tip their head and said, I don't know. It seems like maybe a boring book. But those are two books that who would ever say that.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to emphasize one point, I think, which is that I really would like the listeners to really begin to think about how valuable a brand name can be. That is, you're not just looking for a word, you're looking for this experience, right? And if you get it right, not just a good name, but the right name, the value is almost unlimited, right? And so give yourself some time, give yourself a budget, give yourself the right resources to do that. Second thing is, you know, we try to really be helpful here. And so I am always happy to talk to people about where they are in a process and if we can help or just give them a little bit of advice. And we schedule, you know, we call them office hours here. We're judicious about it, but we are open to that. It's just playing a long-term game. So I'd like to. Leave that with the viewers also.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say forget about sailboats. I would go and pick out some magazines about hunting or flying magazines. And I would just look through, I would get a notepad out and put out words that you like, things, expressions that you like. So you're, and then that synchronicity, I said, I would bet you $5 that out of those two magazines, you will get a word that you never would have thought of, but somehow it will relate.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go back to think about, forget about the word, think about behavior and experience. And then the second thing from just a creative help, I'm a big believer in synchronicity. And we try to sort of force synchronicity here. And I'll give you a couple examples of that. But this idea of connecting sort of dots to unrelated ideas together. And so I'll say, look, if someone says, well, you know, we make sailboats. And I'm trying to, I'm here in Sausalito. I guess that's why I thought about that. And I'm trying to create a new name for my company that builds sailboats.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they tend to be sort of older, by the way, and have in their mind sort of the hotness of the internet and having a dot-com, which did make a difference 25 years ago. It's 25 years now, or 30, right? The good news is because they're less valuable, you can typically buy a URL if you negotiate the right way and have time for 15, 20, 25, $30,000. And we say, hey, if you can do that, have fun. I'd put the $30,000 in marketing.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am so glad you asked this question because it is at this point it doesn't really matter at all. The dot-com or URL address has become an area code. And whether you're in 415 or 615, it doesn't really matter to people. And now with AI, search SEO is going to be less important. And so I just think the principle in play here is you got to get the right name. First, and then if you can get the dot com, sure, go ahead. But if you can't, there's ways around that. You know, you can put a prefix in front of it or a little word in front of it or after it, or you go to.ai or something like that. But the principle in play is let's get the right name first. Those who really, and there are people who really get hung up on the dot com.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, now let me tell you why I think this is the right name. He said, Because I see the polarization here amongst people. There's this, you know, pro chip over here. There's the Pentium thing. He said, that tells me there's energy for Pentium here. And he said, that's why I think we should go with it. And I've never forgotten that. And so we do look for that. And when we tell that story, people say, you know, you're right. There is, I mean, we are arguing about this. And there is an intensity with the name. And that's what you want. You don't want to go out into the marketplace, this very competitive marketplace, regardless of the category, with something that doesn't have a level of boldness or intensity.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yeah. And by the way, the opposite of that is we look for polarization. We look for tension in a team about arguing about these things because we think that polarization is a sign of strength in the word. And interesting story. The person who taught me that. Honestly, was Andy Grove over the Pentium name. And I learned a lot from him. I always say this. I just was very fortunate to work with him on Pentium and Ceon and a few other things. But when we went to an executive committee to present Pentium, and by the way, internally, one of the names that makes sense here, descriptive bunch of engineers Pro Chip. Hey, it's professional, it's premium, and it's chipped. So it should be pro chip. Okay, so Andy had me give a presentation about the strengths of this thing. And he said,”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we found in we were always looking for the, I'll set it this way. We were always looking for this answer from consumers. If a consumer said I don't really know much about that new product, but I know that they're not like the other guys. That's when we knew we had a good name. Because they were now what happened there, I mean, the technical term that we use is that name will create a predisposition to consider this product because they're not like the other guys, as opposed to I already have something like that. I don't, I don't, I'm busy. I don't need another one of those things. I need something new and different and hopefully better.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go out and talk to friends who don't work for your company. There's a fund drill that I suggest. I said, listen, go out to them and say, they'll know what you're doing and say, you know what? We just have a new competitor and their name is blank. What do you think about that? What happens there is you're not asking them to give you an opinion or to evaluate a name. You're asking them then, what does that name do for you? The information you're getting is that name. They're telling you what that name does for them, how it helps them to imagine, which is a fundamental role of any name. Slight tangent, but I'm going to go to our kind of research. We do mostly quantitative research now, but for years we did qualitative work. And we still do.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A slight logical connection that I think gave them more permission to move forward with it, frankly. But listen, this is not an easy task. I mean, that's why we're in this business and why I felt we should be specialized because if you start doing design or advertising or other things, you can't have the intellectual engine, you can't acquire the intellectual engine that we have. So I know it's difficult, but it can be done. And you just have to give yourself some time. But stop evaluating, suspend judgment, and speculate. That's my number one advice to people trying to do this on their own. How can you get help? You can talk to your employees, but it's not so much what do you think of this name? It's, what do you think this name could do for us? That's a much better question, right? If you”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First off, we disappear human psychology. Humans only pay attention to what is new or what is different, I should say, right? So if you're looking at shoes and they're all black, black, black, black, and then the next pair of shoes is red. That's the first thing you focus on. And so that usually gives people permission. You know, they'll say, okay, I get that. To look for what is really different between the names that you have on your list, but also what's different from what's out in the marketplace, right? Well, you know, then you get a client like Microsoft saying, well, Azure is different. There's going to be a lot of cloud stuff. And there's a relevant point there Azure is blue.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's what. I think the best advice I can give to whether it's a startup or someone starting a new cookie company is it's not just a list of 200 names. It's 10 or 15 lists of 200 names and it's thinking about what do we have to say here, what behavior, how do we want people to feel in the marketplace about us I imagine with Google, people felt relief that it wasn't a descriptive thing, you know, that there was something new out there in the marketplace.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It makes sense. We survive as humans because we figure out what's wrong with this picture, right? If I want to cross the street, is it safe to cross the street? What's going on? Those kinds of things. You have to counter that. You have to say, let's just suspend judgment for a while. And let's do an exercise here where we take these ten names that we think might work. And what are we going to do with it? Because it's how you execute, you know, going back to Windsurf, if as we showed them pictures of people wind surfing and waves and things, if they said, ah, you know, that just doesn't work for us at all. I'm very uncomfortable with. Well, then it's not their name, right? But they leaned into it. Okay, I can see this. It's easy for us to execute, it's dynamic, it's different. So that's why we build these prototypes for people.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And then you start, but there is this, and maybe it's naive. I guess that's probably the best word for this, is that. Because I do hear this all the time. Hey, we've worked at this, we got a list of 200 names. And they don't. We don't think there's something there, and I'll say, well, 200 names is not enough, right? Get to 1,1500 names and directions. Don't evaluate them. Just generate names and directions and ideas and then have a meeting and don't evaluate, but speculate. You know, what could we do with this name? What's the potential here? There's a lot of over-evaluation in our industry, right?”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right, and all companies are in that same situation, they have a bunch of stuff, but they need a PNG might say, well, we need a good distributor. Okay, all right. Well, put that on the list, right? And then you might say, well, we need when it gets to what do we have to say, we have to say the right things so that a distributor is interested in us. And then you go down sort of an avenue there. Well, what is that, right? And if you work at it, it's not, this is not a one-hour exercise. It may be exercise repeated over the next four or five days.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In really thinking about all the things you need to say, that you can say or you would even like to say, which may be right now you can't say, but you want to name that actually is going to have the flexibility as to when you can say that it still works. And that gets them into behavior and experience. And that usually launches a really good discussion with founders internally.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the top of the diamond is just the word win, and underneath that is how do we define winning for us as a company, right? And that can start off being simple like, you know, we want to be the dominant player here, but you really have to work at that. What does that really mean, right? The second on that right hand tip there of the diamond is what do we have to win? What are we doing now that makes us a winner? Then we go down to the final the bottom of the diamond and it's what do we need to win? There could be technical things. People talk about talent and resources. Often there they'll say we need to a good name. We always correct that. It's not the good name, it's the right name. And then finally is what do we need?”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Either in a Y combinator or getting some seed money, if they didn't have something to win, right? And so, and that's, and often people startups don't appreciate how much they actually do have to win because they're so busy and so stressed on what they're doing. And then what do they need to win and then finally, what do you need to say? And then back up to, you know, defining what is winning to us, which by the way if we, you know, we start with that question usually on an assignment that we've been awarded. And if we're in a room with five people, all five people have a different definition of what their definition of that company winning. And that's good to kind of sort that out because we can move down different avenues from a creative standpoint.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the diamond is too triangular in my mind. Okay, got it, diamond. Great. And so on that next angle there on the right side is what do you have to win already, right? Because they wouldn't be.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Versus info seek, right? Google is an experience. Google says, I don't know what these guys are going to do, but it's not this practical, mundane info seek, right? And that's what attracts people. And so I'll do a little coaching like that. And then that usually kind of sets them free. And they're now thinking about it not as a word. Which has maybe limited value, but as creating experience which has the potential for unlimited value.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's where you just get people thinking about well, you know, what we really have here is, and we're better than this. And then I'll just say, okay, now what you want to take that, because this really should be about experience and behavior. How do you want to behave in the marketplace? How do you want the marketplace to behave towards you and what kind of experience are you creating? And then they'll start talking a little bit. I'll say, now you just need to probe on that. You need to keep going. You need to look at metaphors because this is about experience. And I'll just give them some of our examples. So we've talked about BlackBerry it says to the marketplace, they're not like the other guys. I mean, think of something like Google.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first thing I do is to say, okay, let's forget about developing the name for right now. And I will have them, and I think this is a good exercise for anybody. We do it here internally when we think about our business. So I say just because most of this now because of COVID is on video, I'll say, just draw a shape of a diamond on a piece of paper in front of you. And I said, on the top of that diamond, put the word win, right? You know, how do you define winning is really it? I said, now on that other next corner of the diamond, what do you have to win? Write that down. On the bottom, what do you need to win? And then on that final angle on the left-hand side, what do you have to say to win? Then I said, yeah, let's go all the way to that final thing. What do you have to say to win?”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and just to be clarify that, it's ideas, directions, it's not complete ready to ship names. Yeah, not ready to ship names at all. This is a very inefficient process and a little chaotic”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The process to really say, hey, if a manager or a CMO or a president says, Look, we're the team that's going to execute on this, and we believe in this. We can make this work. They usually rally around it, right? They usually do. But if you're just taking names up to a manager and saying, what do you think, there's a different outcome offered. So we like to be in that implementation phase because we have so much experience. And usually credibility with people.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And what's really important is to help their management. This is a very human thing, but people want their boss to be happy, right? They want to be okay with their boss. And so they're thinking about, I don't know if my boss would like this. You know, he's more conservative or she's more conservative. We try in a, you know, very diplomatic way to say this has nothing really in the end to do with your boss. It has to do with the marketplace. Well, you know, that's easy for me to say because I'm not working at a PNG or an Intel, right? But we really try to give that advice for because it is about being successful in the marketplace, right? And so we, first of all, we try to separate the clients that we work with. We really want to work with clients that play to win, that want to win, not just want to not lose in a marketplace. And so we try to encourage our direct clients to sort of lead.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's our implementation phase for them. And we also do consumer research or customer research at that stage. And we do that probably about 50% of the time on our projects where we're going out and we're really talking to their customers and putting the names in a series of drills. Drills that make them not the marketing person for the day, but we're really making these customers feel that this is a new brand and then we're asking about expectations, right? We're seeing how these names fire their imagination. And that's the most important thing in research. Not is the name popular. Are they comfortable with it? Does it fit to concept? If you're asking people, is this fit to concept? You are inevitably always going to get a descripted name.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the final thing is implement. Now, for us, we're not a design firm. We're really focused on brand names and the nomenclature that supports the name. So for us, implement is helping the client team if they choose, for us to help them with the presentations as it goes up the chain, right, as it to help them sort of write a longer rationale for why these names, if they're presenting three names to the president of their company or the CMO, why these names make a lot of sense and to help them develop what we call prototypes. So we'll put the name on a baseball cap, on a t-shirt. We'll put the name in a mock-up ad in the Wall Street Journal. Something's very positive, like because of Procter& Gamble's new blank product PNG shares gained 10% this year. So that executives can see the lift that that name can have.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, that's known as processing fluency, which is when you think about how the brain processes information. We're told by a number of cognitive scientists that our brains are a little bit on the lazy side. We don't like complex things. And so we really strive to make all of our solutions relatively easy for the brain to process. So it leans in towards them as opposed to I'm too busy, I'm walking past that. And so names that are complicated are, it's a liability. And we really avoid that. But for sell, perfect fluency.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He is. And there's an example of a group that had a lot of confidence, right? And what the product is is very innovative. And so we had permission there to create something new because Versailles is a coin solution, right? But notice that we put some very simple, easy to process things together there or vert, you know, in this case. So we have in Vino Veritas, right? Truth and wine, things like that. You have Verde, green. So very familiar. And then there's cell like accelerate something, which is really what they do. They accelerate a client's performance. So that was a relatively easy name for us to present. We were excited about them to sort of grasp.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The founder actually said, I thought the people at Lexicon were crazy when they presented BlackBerry. And we said, well, let's stop and look at some of the assets here. First off, black colors technology. Yes, not everybody knows the word berry, but we have those two bees. We talked about the nature of a compound. And all of a sudden, people at least lean forward to consider it as opposed to rejecting it too fast. So those are just two examples. I mentioned Z that in Azure, that's a noisy letter. X is fast and crisp as a sound. And of course, there's semantic value to all these letters. So X is about innovation from aircraft to computers. And so at the semantics of it and the sound symbol of it.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, the work is from the linguists, but at this point, I'm pretty adept in it. So let's look at. I'll start with the letter V because it is so illustrative of what this is about V from our research that we've done is the most alive and vibrant sound in the English alphabet. And that's whether you were born in Rome or in Sausalito, California. So if you know that if you know that as you go around the world, there are going to be some exceptions to it. It's going to have that vibrancy. So look at Corvette. I mean, they probably didn't know about the but it's a perfect name for a car that's fast and has a big engine that roars. Think about Viagra. Same idea. And there's been surprises to us. B, the sound of the letter B is one of the most reliable sounds in the English alphabet. That was one of our rationales, by the way, for BlackBerry, right? Because that's another example of a client who thought we were, I mean.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it happens frequently where we will find something that isn't really terrible, but it's worrisome to us. It's interesting, cultures like Australian or people in Australia, they have a lot of interesting expressions, right? And so we do find things that, you know, this sounds like it's I would say it happens every third or fourth project we will find something that we will eliminate and never show the client”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At Berkeley University, but has lived here for 20 years, wouldn't know about that. And we don't want anything linguistically that would slow our clients down. And so that's why we've invested in building this network. We have a woman that runs the network for it. So it's not an insignificant facet of our business that we have to run and manage.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, some of the people there, depending on the assignment, will actually help us create names for sure, right? And so we have linguists here and then we have in the network we have linguists and those linguists are contracts to us, not full-time employees. So there's a little bit of both. But the preponderance of their work in our linguistic network is to evaluate names. Not only just does it mean something negative or positive, but are there cultural implications to it, political implications, or even things that a natural disaster that would have happened somewhere that no one here would know about, even if we had, if this was in Italy and there was a bridge or a flood that killed a lot of people, someone that speaks Italian very well here.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now maybe bigger. But certainly we have more capabilities and we want you to know about it. And because of that, we're changing our name to blank, which reflects those capabilities at some level.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Startups get going early. They get into why Combinator or something like that. They're raising money and they just need a name. And although they know what they're doing, and that may change by 10 or 15 degrees, it's almost like we just got to have a name. And that is the absolute expression I hear from when a startup calls and says, we want to change our name. We started off a year and a half ago. We just needed a name for the documents. And so we chose X, right? And it's not a very good name. So that's example number one Number two is the company actually has pivoted, right? And so the name that they have no longer really reflects who they are or who they're becoming and which makes that name ineffective. And the third is that a company has merged and it's time now to create a new start and reflect to the marketplace that we're”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is challenging, and the larger you are and the more customer base you have, it becomes, you know, a significant project. So, the first thing is you have to make an argument that it's worth the change, right? That we're going to be better off by changing our name. So there's a couple situations where you want to change your name. First one is let's focus first on startups.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They see the future, they see a big future, not too concerned, some are, but most aren't. Consumers are skeptical, worried about it, worried about their jobs, see the hope in it, those types of things, but haven't got the handle. So codium is an example where we said, we think what you're doing needs to be much more tangible and something that people can grab onto and much more natural as opposed to a codium. And they listen to us. It was as simple as that. And in this case, we were right. And by the way, there's also, I have to say, there's some luck to this. WindSurf happened to be available. And they saw it right away. Not exactly right away, but it took about a week going back and forth to select it. So let me stop there and see if it. If that answers your question.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Engineers come to us wanting more sophisticated names, right? Where you're likely to end up with another codium or an andorill or an anthropic. And when we saw this trend of that AI is going to take off, and it was an intuitive feeling on my part. I could have been wrong. I said let's find out what's going on here. So both not only like who's developing the products, but how do people think about AI? And we did a series of research. You know, I'd probably invested $20,000 or so. And we interviewed consumers in Europe, South Korea, just picked out one country in Asia and America and developers in those three. And they really have different views. Developers are all totally positive on it.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Off, we are working mostly with engineers and engineers who haven't Know, delved into the world of kind of creativity and necessarily marketing. And that's their strength. And what we have to do is we have to sort of balance their strength with our strength. So there's a little bit of a challenge there, but I think we deal pretty well with that. Secondly, this is the fastest moving progressing category I have ever experienced. And I have that perspective, right? I went through the early days of the internet, right? And the World Wide Web. And that was moving pretty fast, but the internet compared to this looks like a daycare school or something like that. So we're challenged by just keeping up with developments. Third thing, and this is the creative. Challenge here is that.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's why we actually did research on just how effective our compounds so we could pass that information along. We pass that along to the team at that time Codium. By the way, could not have been a more intelligent, nicer, more respectful team that we've worked with. I'm so glad for their success. But we explained to them about the multiplier effect of compounds. We showed them imagery that they could use, right? I mean, it's simple to execute on something like that. And so that's how that's how that came about. I'll stop there and see if you need more information or not.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About that kind of dynamics, that kind of movement. And there was windsurf sitting on a list Mean sometimes this is just that simple. Of course, you have to have the right framework and you have to give the right sort of directions to someone. And serve for us, particularly for me, it checks all the boxes. It's a wonderful image. It's an experience, literally a physical experience. It's a compound, right? Two words put together. We know from the research we've invested in that compounds like Powerbook or Facebook are multipliers of associations because there's wind and there's circles around that and then there's surf, images around that. So one plus one equals three, right? It's interesting that when we present compounds to clients, we often get the comment, well, yes, a little bit long and it's a compound. I'd rather have a shorter single word.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's intangible. And even though we do an awful lot of technology work, it is still hard for us to kind of really get a hold of what that is, right? So our rule here is if there's something that is intangible like that, we have to make it tangible. And sometimes we do that not by giving a team and sometimes it's an individual the assignment to create ideas for the brand itself, but to just dive into a particular context. And in this case, with Windsurf, it was about sort of flow, about giving people that are coding something much more of a flow process, a smoother process, a more dynamic process. In that case, one team was just given the task of we want to look at a list of all the things that can communicate either in a real word like flow or metaphorically or in a sport.”
2025-06-29 · Lenny's Podcast · Naming expert shares the process behind creating billion-dollar brand names like Azure, Vercel, Windsurf, Sonos, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger | David Placek (Lexicon Branding) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source