Brand Name Shop Novanym aims to name 'that' dot com

by Startacus Admin

Startacus is a great brand name, we hope you agree! However before we get too boastful, appreciate that said brand name took weeks to brainstorm and we had the support of a fab design company to help along the way. Thankfully we'd also been financially supported by the NI Arts Council so being able to work with a design agency was a big bonus. However, what if we hadn't at that point, had the bucks to help pay for all the brand agency costs? What would we be called now? But I digress...

Step forward branding specialists Dave and Vince who with their new brand naming shop Novanym aim to help startups find industry specific and great sounding dot com brand names and at an affordable price...

Intrigued by the concept we chatted to the two founders to get the lowdown on their business, their target audience and from their experience, the startup scene and business branding full stop.

Dave and Vince, cheers again for agreeing to chat to Startacus. Lets start with a biggie - tell us about Novanym - what gap in the market are you trying to fill?

Ah, the famous Elevator Pitch, eh? Well, it’s quite simple: Novanym is a brand name shop. It’s a selection of company names that we have created, that each comes with a perfect one-word .com domain and a choice of three logos. So the gap that Novanym fills is between the branding agency and the domain seller. It’s for people who want to name their business, without briefing a branding agency – maybe they don’t have time, or the budget – or maybe because they simply want to do it themselves.

Coming up with a distinctive name for your business is tricky – and it’s even harder if you want to have a good .com web address, and most people do – after all, the .com is still king. Whatever you’re called, if you have the .com address, you have extra credibility, authority and memorability. But if you look at the companies that sell domains, you’re only going to find weird and gimmicky words are available to register as .com domains. They’re pretty much all taken.

What we’ve done is use our experience in branding to identify credible names with available .com domains, that we think would work well for the right business.

With Novanym, who do you think is your typical target customer?

It’s for someone who’s starting up a business and who knows the value that a distinctive and engaging brand name can add. They want to do it right from Day One.

In less than 140 characters, how does the Novanym concept work?

Browse our selection of names. Find one that feels right for your business. Click Buy and it's yours. You're named, branded and ready to go. (I think that’s bang on 140!)

You also run brand agency Bond Branding and have been working with startups and corporates since the late 1980s. How much do you think the startup scene in the UK has changed in recent years?  

It’s unrecognisable. Today, it’s vibrant, exciting …and mainstream – everyone knows someone who’s starting or just started their own business. Back then, it was a bit of a specialist niche activity that nobody really spoke about! And then there’s the tech revolution, of course. The costs associated with setting up a new business have dramatically decreased. And there are far fewer hurdles, too. “If you can imagine it, it can be done.” As the saying goes.

What are some of the most common mistakes that startups make in terms of their business branding?

There are quite a few pitfalls. Let’s face it, people usually start a business because they have a great idea and are good at something – But they’re not necessarily branding experts, or even particularly creative. Possibly the biggest three mistakes are not thinking it matters, going for the Me Too approach, or being descriptive.

If you ignore branding – and that means everything from what the business is called, to what it looks like and how it communicates – you’re missing a trick. If you get it right, it’ll help you to be distinctive and to connect with your potential audience. It’ll give your business a real boost from the start. And if you just look around and copy the last high profile startup success, you’ll probably just blend into the background. We call it Brandifying. You know – “Spotify did well, they were a startup and now they’re huge. Let’s call our business Something-ify.”

Being descriptive is so tempting, that lots of people fall in the trap. If you’re starting a bike business in the West Country, it seems sensible to call yourself Bristol Bikes. But that’s so anonymous and generic that it doesn’t really help you at all. For a start, if a customer Googled you, they’d never find you. And it’s not exactly telling your customer what kind of business you are is it? Are you urban hipsters, racing specialists, a repair shop, or off-roaders with a social scene.
And leading on from that, what in your experience makes a strong business name?

It has to support the two Holy Grails of branding: differentiation and Engagement. So, in real language, it has to be distinctive so that you don’t blend in, you don’t sound like everyone else in your inevitably crowded marketplace – and you can get found online. And it has to feel right and resonate with you and your potential customers. It should help you to make a connection.

Before we leave you, a quick question we've been wanting to ask - What does Novanym itself mean?!

It’s a word we made up that means New Name – Nova as in ‘new’, and nym for name, as in synonym or pseudonym.

We had to practice what we preach, didn’t we? We could have called our business BrandNamesAreUs, but that wouldn’t really be right, would it? Seriously, it’s a good example of our philosophy. There are literally thousands of businesses out there with combinations of branding or naming in their names – we didn’t want to be invisible in the crowd – Novanym is unique and it’s ours. And it’s got a really easy to remember domain – Novanym.com obviously!

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Published on: 15th December 2014