Naming & Tagline Tests

A name or tagline is a high-stakes decision that is made rarely, and often by gut feel in a meeting. Testing replaces that with evidence. You check each candidate for memorability, clarity, tone, distinctiveness, and legal and domain availability. This catches names that confuse customers, conflict with a trademark, or are hard to say in key markets before you spend money on them.

How it works

A good name is easy to remember, easy to understand (or at least not misleading), and easy to own (distinct from competitors and available as a domain and trademark). A test shows candidates to real target buyers under realistic conditions and measures recall, associations, and preference. This keeps personal taste from deciding the outcome.

How to do it

Generate 15-25 names across types: descriptive (“Salesforce”), suggestive (“Slack”), abstract (“Hulu”), founder (“Bloomberg”), and acronym (“IBM”). For taglines, write 10-15 options from descriptive to emotional to provocative.
Screen for viability before testing. Check domains, trademark databases (USPTO, EUIPO), meanings in other key languages, and similarity to competitors. Drop anything that fails.
Test with a few hundred target buyers. Show each candidate in a realistic mock (ad or site header) for a few seconds, give a short distractor task, then ask for unaided recall, aided recognition, what the company does, three adjectives, and a preference ranking.
For taglines, add a brand-fit check. Show the tagline next to your logo and two competitor logos and ask which brand it belongs to. If people cannot tell, it is too generic.
Build a weighted scorecard. Set weights for your context (B2B may weight clarity higher; consumer may weight memorability higher). Take the top 3 to the decision makers with the data and legal status.

What to measure

Unaided recall: share of respondents who correctly recall the name or tagline after one brief exposure.
Communication accuracy: share who correctly guess your category or purpose from the name alone.
Emotional fit: overlap between the adjectives respondents chose and your target brand traits.

Best practices

Test names in context, such as a mock ad or website header, not on a blank screen.
Include a known brand as a control. If respondents cannot recall it, the test setup is broken.
Test with customers and non-customers. Customers judge clarity and fit. Non-customers show you distinctiveness without prior bias.

Common pitfalls

Falling for a name before testing. Attachment leads to reading the results selectively.
Testing only inside the company. Employees see meaning that outsiders will miss. Always include external respondents.
Choosing clever over clear. Abstract names can work for brands with very large media budgets. Most companies cannot afford to teach the market what their name means, so lean toward names that communicate.