I’m working on an email nurture campaign for a new client, and one of the first things we have to do is come up with a great name for the campaign. I’m frequently finding myself these days brainstorming on clever names for things. I want to create smart names that are memorable, that convey the idea of the product in a millisecond. I want to reflect a tone, a brand, a philosophy, an attitude, and I have to resist being too clever or too cutesy.

It’s tough. This morning for inspiration I browsed sites related to the client’s products, looking for fun key words that could inspire a title. I also looked at the titles of best-selling business books for inspiration… some of those titles, like "The One-Minute Manager," have become catch phrases that may inspire memorable knockoffs.

Here’s a short list of some of the places I get inspiration:

  1. Key words from the client’s site itself.
  2. Words on a site in the client’s industry — such as a professional association for the industry.
  3. Titles of similar products from a competitors site — not so much to copy but to avoid copying.
  4. Buzz words from books, movies and other popular culture media.
  5. I’ve tried the Virtual Thesaurus several times — even subscribed for a while. But I could never make it work for me. It’s fun to play with, though.
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