Our very own Maria Cypher was selected as a featured attendee for NamesCon 2019 and profiled in its magazine!

FAST FACTS
Location: Oakland, California
Time spent in the domain industry: Almost 20 years
Favourite extension: .com
Tell us which domain you wish you owned: CarInsurance.com would help the bank account
Currently reading: “The Lessons of History” by Will & Ariel Durant
Your mentor: My father

Q&A
Describe your company. How long have you been there, and what led you to this career choice?
Twenty years ago, I co-founded Catchword Branding, and it’s become a leading, global naming firm. For me, it was the perfect blend of creative, strategy, playing with words, endlessly learning about new things, and having my own firm. A few years later, we launched a very natural offshoot, Just The Word, which is a marketplace of 1800 premium brandable domain names. I love the Wild West feel of domaining.

NamesCon is all about business networking. Can you tell us a story about the success of a meeting at NamesCon?
Because of NamesCon, my partner Mark and I have forged successful relationships with several domain brokers, with whom we’ve referred quite a bit of business from Catchword, and to whom we’ve sold domains from Just The Word.

Can you tell us about how your service or product helps deliver value to your customers?
Because Just The Word is part of Catchword (ranked as the #1 naming firm in the world), the domains we sell are truly creative and appropriate for startups and others interested in affordable brandables. Our names aren’t a random bunch of gobbledegook letters. Twenty years of work on hundreds of projects for blue-chip clients has resulted in an unmatched pool of domain names.

How does your career compare to what you envisioned in your youth?
Ha! I didn’t know this career existed. I think I gave the rote answers of “doctor or lawyer” when I was a kid, but in my heart I knew I’d be playing with words.

How would you describe what you do in a single sentence to a stranger?
I create company and product names.

Full Story

Fintech innovator and finance industry leader Enterprise Engineering, Inc. (EEI) has launched Ninth Wave, a software company with an innovative approach to financial data and a name developed by Catchword.

Built from the ground up for the world’s largest global banks and wealth managers, the Ninth Wave platform provides integrated delivery and aggregation of every type of financial data – bank accounts, 401ks, bill pay.

“The Ninth Wave platform is the bridge between fintech applications and financial institutions,” said founder George Anderson in a release.

EEI came to Catchword in May of 2018 searching for a name for the new company whose platform not only connects financial data and the real world, but breaks down data barriers to create a universal standard.

A term out of nautical history and mythology from many cultures, the Ninth Wave is a single, massive wave that is the last of a series of incrementally larger waves. The name naturally conveys the flow, integration, and power of the company’s new platform to sweep away obstructive complexity while avoiding the obvious “fin” and “tech” references of so many players in this sector.

As an advanced, award-winning data platform for seamless financial data integration, Ninth Wave is the wave of the future. Best wishes from Catchword!

This week, the fast-growing life science services platform built in partnership with investment firms Water Street Healthcare Partners and JLL Partners unveiled its new name and brand: Eversana. Catchword developed the name, a blend of ever and sana (Latin for “healthy”), to convey the company’s long-term commitment to advance life sciences for a healthier world.

Eversana encompasses the six premier service providers that were merged over the past year to form the industry-leading platform: Dohmen Life Science Services, The Access Group, Alliance Life Sciences, Health Strategies Group, Triplefin, and Patient Experience Project.

“As our name implies, Eversana is poised to offer the services and products that support today’s needs and tomorrow’s future,” said Jim Lang, chief executive officer, in a release. “Together, we offer integrated solutions to the life science industry that address the shift to value-based, patient-centered care and deliver long-term sustainable value for payers, providers, channel partners, and patients.”

Water Street approached Catchword to name the company last May on a fast track for rollout early October. In partnership with the Water Street team, we developed thousands of names, then narrowed to several hundred that expressed the brand’s messages.

In addition to ever and sana, the name recalls versatility, suggesting the company’s range of services and ability to respond to the ever-changing life sciences industry, healthcare system, and patient needs.

Eversana employs more than 1,500 experts and professionals around the world that collaborate with more than 500 organizations to maximize the impact of new therapies.

Kroger is known for groceries, operating 2,800 retail stores under a variety of names. Food accounts for 94% of their total sales. Yet some of their stores, like Fred Meyer and Kroger Marketplace, offer non-grocery items as well, including apparel. Until now, these private labels haven’t been unified. But this week 300 of these stores will start carrying Kroger’s new exclusive clothing line, which they’ve named Dip.

Dip has a ton of meanings, most of which are a good fit for this brand. It brings to mind a tasty accessory, easy and casual, fun, festive. It proudly embraces Kroger’s status as a grocery giant. Kroger described Dip apparel as “simple, fresh and goes great with everything.”

With most of the pieces priced under $20, this is fashion you can “dip into” when you feel like it. Store signage further suggests the brand has a flavor for every palate: you can dip into style or action or cuddles or “awwww.” 

It’s immersive, brief but satisfying – a quick dip in the pool makes everyone feel better. And there’s more: price dip, skinny dipping, dip your partner in dancing, slang for leave abruptly, even diploma. All good.

However, dip has a few negative associations that can’t be ignored. Dippy, dipsh*t, dip stick, dip tobacco. For some of us Gen Xers, the connection with stupidity is pretty tight when the word is presented on its own. At least one marketing expert believes this negative connotation is a big mark against Dip.

But brand names don’t exist in a vacuum. Visual ID, tagline, packaging, and of course the product line itself contextualize and define the name. In 2010, the new iPad was lampooned for the name’s feminine product association, despite the word’s other relevant meanings. No one makes those connections now.

Dip is fun, memorable, and expresses many spot-on-brand messages. The stupidity connection will hang some folks up a bit at first, but the word’s positive meanings, supported by the brand’s positioning and marketing more than make up for that. I’ve already moved beyond it, and I haven’t even been in a store.

Ultimately, a small minority of Kroger customers may forever think of dipsh*t when they hear “Dip.” But if they see a cute sweater for $19, will the Dip label stop them from throwing it in the cart along with the cookies and cabernet?

Soluna, the name Catchword developed for the first blockchain infrastructure firm to supply all its own renewable energy, has been shortlisted for Best Naming Strategy by the prestigious Transform Awards – North America.

Catchword worked closely with Soluna, which launched earlier this summer, to create a name that would suggest the sustainable solution the company provides to the problem of exponentially increasing blockchain computing power use.

A coinage of sol and luna [“sun” and “moon” in Latin], Soluna tells a rich story, evoking humanity’s most fundamental aspirations – looking up to the great light in the sky.

CEO John Belizaire explained in his Soluna blog post about the name, “Our goal was to create a name that represented our ethos, our ambitious plan, and one that was unique in our field. … Soluna elegantly meets our brand objectives. … it tells our story the best.” (Complete details of the company and its name in this August 2nd CatchThis post.)