Naming agencies serve a purpose, but 90% of businesses don't need them. Here's when the investment makes sense and when you're paying for mystique.
What Naming Agencies Actually Do
Professional naming follows a structured process: Strategy definition, linguistic exploration, candidate development, trademark screening, testing, and refinement. The deliverable is typically 3-5 vetted names with supporting rationale.
The Pricing Spectrum
When Agencies Make Sense
Consumer Products with Massive Scale
If you're launching a product that will appear on grocery shelves nationwide, naming mistakes cost millions in failed launches. A $50K naming investment protects a $10M launch budget.
Regulated Industries
Pharmaceutical, financial services, and alcohol brands face naming regulations most founders don't understand. Agencies with regulatory expertise prevent costly approval delays.
International Multi-Market Launch
A name that works in English might be vulgar in Mandarin or unpronounceable in German. Agencies with linguistic teams catch cross-cultural disasters before they happen.
Major Rebrand of Established Company
When Accenture rebranded from Andersen Consulting, they needed a name that could carry a $50B company. The stakes justified the investment.
When DIY Makes More Sense
Early-Stage Startups
Pre-product-market fit, you might pivot completely. Spending $50K on naming a product that won't exist in 18 months is waste. Use that money for product development.
Local or Regional Businesses
A Manchester accounting firm doesn't need Landor. The audience is local, the competition is limited, and straightforward names work fine.
B2B/Enterprise Products
Enterprise buyers care about features and pricing, not poetic brand names. "Salesforce" and "Workday" are descriptive, not creative. These could have been DIY names.
Technical/Developer Tools
Developer audiences respond to function over brand poetry. Names like "Docker," "Git," and "Kubernetes" came from engineers, not naming agencies.
The DIY Process That Works
Week 1: Exploration
Generate 100+ candidates using word combinations, thesaurus exploration, foreign words, invented words. Quantity before quality.
Week 2: Filtering
Check each candidate for domain availability and obvious trademark conflicts. This eliminates 70% of options.
Week 3: Testing
Test top 10 candidates with target customers. Simple preference tests, spelling tests, and association tests reveal winners.
Week 4: Verification
Deep trademark search on top 3 candidates. Legal review of best option. Proceed with registration.
The Middle Ground: Naming Consultants
Individual naming consultants charge $3K-$15K for a similar process to agencies. Less overhead, less prestige, similar output for most use cases. Worth considering if DIY feels overwhelming but agency pricing is absurd.
What Agencies Won't Tell You
Most agency-named products fail anyway. A great name doesn't fix a bad product. And many billion-dollar companies have mediocre names that they've simply made famous through execution.
Trademark Lens provides the verification layer for DIY naming - check availability across trademarks, domains, and social handles before committing to your chosen name.