I have been thinking about naming conventions for products and services lately and how user behavior should influence these decisions. As more services, products, people, and ideas come online – search engines try to help users find this data by surfacing these web pages after someone queries the engine.

As you go about trying to find some product you may have all, part of, or a sliver of information from the original memory. This could come from a unique word or phrase from a print ad, it could be a promise or claim from a commercial, or it could be part of a audio jingle stuck in your head. (Example coming up below)

You have to imagine that in a world of seemingly unlimited advertising and an attention problem that people will only remember a small piece of what you put in front of them. To find more information most people go to their favorite search engine and type in that mini-bit of information they have about what they remember.

This is when naming conventions and behavior come into play and should be thought through at the time of production of your ad or message. Think about what bits of information you are providing people. Think about how someone would find your product using only 1% of what you give them.

Here are some quick tips directly coming out of my own searches for things:

1. Is it a unique and short name?
2. Is there a unique phrase that cannot be confused with something else?
3. Is there a identifiable person or name associated? (maybe not a celebrity but it helps)
4. Is there memorable music to help lead people to the product?
5. Who is associated with the production?
6. Does the content also live online and in an easily found place?
7. How would you go about finding more info on google?

These types of questions help narrow down focus for a message, and can influence creative decisions in a way that is thinking about the user vs. the manager of the product.

Example: Audi Q7 – Streets of tomorrow commercial
I posted about this commercial back in 2006 since I thought it was a cool ad and others agreed.

Turns out searches are still happening on this ad, many coming to my blog, looking for the song below

(It is Carla Vallet, album: Journey, song: Streets of tomorrow)

Streets of Tomorrow – Carla Vallet

I know there are people searching for this commercial as I get blog traffic on it every so often – but where is Audi?

Here is the result for Audi Q7 Commercial in Google. Granted this is an almost 3 year old ad at this point, but if interest exists – so should the brand.

Below is the closest thing I could find to the original ad which I could not find:

Searchers will most likely use one or more of the following to find info on this ad:
streets of tomorrow (lyric)
Audi (brand)
Audi Q7 commercial (hybrid)
Q7 cool song (brand+meta)
Q7 streets of tomorrow (brand+lyric)

Each of these examples shows you the possible behavior of someone that is looking to find more information about this advertisement. This may be a purchaser, a fan, someone simply looking for the song, and Audi executive, or many other use cases.

The point is that you should be thinking about how people will recall your information, not how many times your ad gets recalled. What matters is actions take after recall. This is one of the reasons why search marketing is so effective – you can place the answer right at the moment someone needs it most and is showing intent and interest.

In conclusion:
Think about naming conventions and how people will behave. Follow up with content that can live online in a easy to find location. Pick a cool song.