Ever wonder where such wildly successful brand names as Procter & Gamble's Swiffer, Intel's Pentium and Apple's PowerBook came from? They're from a guy who starts each day by immersing himself in a three-minute ice bath. Meet David Placek.
Brrr.
After Placek emerges from that ice bath, he says his brain is charged for the day. Of course, you've probably never heard of Placek or, for that matter, Lexicon Branding, the product-naming company that he founded in Sausalito, Calif., some 42 years ago.
But it's a good bet that you've heard of Febreze air freshener, Dasani bottled water, Impossible Foods, Sonos speakers and the Subaru Outback. He's named them all.
Product names matter. They can be just as important as performance. "Your name is your calling card," said Placek.
Choose Names Wisely Like David Placek
Perhaps that's one reason why Procter & Gamble now sells more than $500 million worth of Swiffer products annually. There's serious money to be made as the result of a product's name. The way Placek figures it, there are roughly $200 billion worth of products on the market right now that were named by his company.
Ka-ching!
What does it take to name a new product? Well, says Placek, it takes the very same thing that he — as a leader — must instill in every one of his employees: courage.
"In all business — and particularly in the communications business — you have to give people the courage to explain a new idea and to speak out," he said.
In his business, he says, real leadership is not just about encouraging risk-taking — but demanding it. "People have to feel safe to take risks and to express ideas that aren't totally thought out," he said.
Be A Role Model Like David Placek
Placek's employees see him living that leadership philosophy daily.
"David is our boss, but he behaves as if he's our coach," said Will Leben, former director of linguistics at Lexicon and former professor of linguistics at Stanford University.
The group meetings that Placek presides over take place around a conference table "yet feel like huddles on a football field," Leben said.
The meetings are brief and strategy-oriented, and participants are often loudly cheering one another on at Placek's prompting, Leben says.
"His leadership approach is to get our creative ideas out there, insisting that there are no wrong answers, and then letting the best ideas rise to the top," Leben said.
To be a great leader, Placek says, there's one other ingredient that's ultracritical: You need to be able to help connect the dots for your workforce. Steve Jobs was particularly good at this, he says. Leaders who show their workforce that they have a real plan with a real goal — and make clear how to reach that goal — are the ones who typically excel.
Oddly enough, these very same ingredients can be critical in successfully naming a product.
Placek: Take On The Impossible
In fact, naming some hard-to-describe new products can feel almost impossible.
That's precisely how he and his employees felt when senior executives for a plant-made meat-replacement product came knocking on his door for a brand name.
Initially, Lexicon thought the brand needed a Whole Foods-type name because the company didn't know who else would buy the product. So it considered names like Whole Earth and Good Earth — basically names that sound like the brand is a tree-hugger. "But then, I realized we had to go a totally different direction," said Placek.
Something told him the name needed a touch of attitude — if not arrogance. That's how he finally settled on Impossible Foods. "The name clearly says, we're not like the other guys," said Placek.
Create An Iconic Brand Like Placek
His team faced similar struggles naming Intel's Pentium.
It was the first microprocessor ever named. So it was a huge decision for Intel. Until then, anything having to do with computers was often assigned a number in its name. But Lexicon wanted to do something different — even as they acknowledged the past. So they compromised just a bit with the prefix "pent" which means "five." It was, after all, the beginning of Intel's fifth generation.
When they initially ran the name "Pentium" by Intel engineers, it was all thumbs-down. But then-CEO Andy Grove liked it. So it stuck.
Another toughie: What to name the state-of-the-art sound equipment made by a then-tiny audio equipment manufacturer in Santa Barbara, Calif.?
"The first thing the name had to make clear is that they were in the entertainment business," said Placek.
That meant somehow incorporating the word — or a part of the word — "sound" into the name. The name had to be descriptive even as it made the brand stand out. That's why they settled on the name Sonos. That once-tiny company is now a $5 billion brand, says Placek.
Have A Creative Process Like Placek
How to create a brand name?
"It's not rocket science but a combination of creativity and linguists," Placek said.
It requires about eight weeks for Lexicon to finalize a name. The first week, they digest information from the client on its goals. Within one week, Lexicon produces a one-page document explaining its mission.
For the next three weeks, three different teams of two employees work on creating a name. Special software helps to funnel down 2,000 possible names to about 150. Then, they winnow that down to 50 — and, after running it by trademark gurus and linguist experts, finally narrow the list to between 10 and 15 names to be presented to the client.
Following input from the client presentation, they repeat the cycle for another three weeks. And then they present the client 10 to 15 final options. The client chooses a name after a few weeks of consumer research that the client and Lexicon do together.
Depending on the size of the company, the process can cost $50,000 to more than $100,000.
Admire Others' Successes
As an industry leader, there are some brand names Placek wishes that he'd created.
He adores the name DreamWorks because the name says absolutely everything about the company. He loves the name Patagonia because it conveys a sense of adventure. And he's particularly envious of the name Tesla, he says, "Because of it's beautiful sound and structure and simplicity."
Placek credits his past for his present success.
He grew up near Santa Rosa, Calif., where he attended a private high school. There, he was required to study Latin. "I didn't like and wasn't very good at it," he said. But now, he realizes, his training in Latin has proved critical to his brand-naming success.
Develop Tenacity Like Placek
His No. 1 recommendation for success in any business: tenacity.
"Tenacity is what you need more than anything else as an entrepreneur," he said. "Don't be discouraged and don't let people talk you out of things you believe in."
After all, he started out working as a night janitor for the San Francisco office of the ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding. He ultimately talked an agency executive into letting him try out his copywriting skills and soon found himself working on the agency's biggest account: Levi Strauss.
There, he learned the importance of new product names — as he helped with the creation of a new Levi's line for toddlers.
Then, in 1972, he opted to leave the ad business and create his own brand consulting firm. "And here I am, four decades later," he said.
Keep Your Passion
Placek has had opportunities aplenty to sell the company for a mint and go live the easy life. But he's resisted, in part, to keep the company independent, says Bob Cohen, who has known Placek for 40 years and was the former senior strategist at Lexicon.
"David is a true entrepreneur. He's not afraid to do things his way," said Cohen. "Opportunities have come and gone to merge or sell the company. David is the asset that potential partners are trying to get. He's been smart enough to know that turning in that direction might only destroy everything he holds dear about Lexicon."
Is he fearful of being replaced by AI? In a word, no.
Placek has tried using AI in branding, but it's rarely helpful, he says. "It doesn't reflect natural language," he said.
That said, he knows it won't be long until his agency will be tasked with naming plenty of AI specialty firms.
Take A Cold Plunge
Before he dives into the AI arena, perhaps it will help if he spends an extra minute or two in that daily morning cold bath at his Mill Valley, Calif., home.
The tub itself is really a large plastic trash can that he's hollowed out and fills each morning with cold water and a several bags of ice.
"To be honest, I'm not thinking cosmic thoughts at the time," he admitted. "I'm really thinking: How much longer can I stand this thing?"
But each day — except Sundays, he says, which he mercifully takes off — he emerges from the icy bath feeling fully revitalized.
"All of our friends think I'm nuts," he said. "But it works"
David Placek's Keys:
- Founded Lexicon Branding in 1982, a firm that has named some of the world's most iconic products.
- Overcame: Challenges of difficult-to-name products in new categories and industries.
- Lesson: "Don't be discouraged and don't let people talk you out of things you believe in."
