Gawen Rudder: What will you call your agency?

It’s always been your dream. You’ve got a killer team together and lined up a founding client. You’ll work out of the family room at home, but with the first baby due anytime, you’ve got an eye on office space -2010 in Sydney or 3121 in Melbourne – all set, but as with the first born… what will you call it? Ad industry veteran Gawen Rudder investigates…

How about ‘Wexley School for Girls?’ Apparently the name was picked from a phonebook. The founder of this Seattle-based ad agency’s advice to those looking for a name, “Pick one that sticks,” (Like The Glue Society, perhaps?) “Something you really love living with and that brave clients will at least call to see what you’re on about.” StrawberryFrog comes to mind.

Or do what the founders of landmark London agency Mother did and run some groups. Co-founder Paul Malmstrom explained to US Adweek: “Sixteen different tests were done around a randomly generated set of words, and all groups (except one) settled for ‘Mother’ as a top contender. The tests showed ‘Mother’ had pretty positive associations, ranging from ‘Nurturing’, ‘Familiar’ to ‘Don’t eat with your mouth open’. Words not rated as high were, for example, ‘Wallet’, ‘Meager’ and ‘Clogs’, but a close runner-up was (inexplicably) the word ‘Wienerschnitzel’.

The back story on naming Naked is said to be based on the dictum, “The consumer is no longer using communication as an image cloak, but instead as an open transaction in which people are equal partners with the brand.” Not quite as deep and meaningful, the origins of 18 Feet and Rising that’s run in Sydney by Ben Colman, derive from the combined height of the three UK founders.

I really miss the sixties animated series ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’, the show that inspired the St Louis agency Moosylvania. Did ‘Popeye’ inspire Melbourne’s STW agency Spinach. And why the food-related agency brands on the West Coast? BLT, Caviar, Creative B’stro, Digital Kitchen, Fish, Sockeye, Egg and Omelet.

If you want to weave your name into your name then it’s hard to go past Mo and Jo’s co-joined Mojo, or Droga5 with its clever 5=g logo graphic. Or extend your surname as Jules has with The Hallway. The ever-humble John Bevins admits he never thought through the pros and cons of an eponymous single-person brand when he started his agency from scratch. “I never expected it to grow as it did”. He also recalls the time a new, young member of staff commented to him what a coincidence it was that, “You work at an agency with the same name as yours”.

Back in the day agencies called themselves after themselves: Doyle Dane Bernbach, Brown Melhuish Fishlock, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Boase Massimi Pollitt. Pretty simple really, but then someone leaves or dies and they revert to DDB, BMF, etcetera. Pity the poor 1970 telephonist at the newly merged multilingual, multinational Tragos Bonnange Wiesendanger Ajroldi. TBWA seemed like a sensible alternative. Another option is to launch as an initialised acronym like SPASM – the seventies incarnation of Singleton Palmer & Strauss McAllan – or a little later, BADJAR. AJF perfected this with their unique trifecta of Adelaide A-Listers: Andrew J. Fabbro. Andrew J. Foote and Adam J. Francis.

Alphabet soup aside, there are other alternatives. Pick a name with attitude like Lean Green Fighting Machine, Razorfish (not to be confused with London-based Blowfish Digital), or our much missed The Campaign Palace. Feel good agency 72andSunny is a wonderful California Beachboys sort of brand, with a reputation to match, however what one could expect from the Philadelphia agency called High Heels and Bananas is hard to say.

Pick a pigeon pair, like David & Goliath, the El Segundo, CA challenger brand agency with a seven-foot slingshot in reception. Or the Book of Genesis inspired Adam & Eve – DDB London bought the four-year-old start-up for £55 million two years ago and won Cannes 2014 Agency of the Year. There’s a Chicago-based shop called Tom, Dick and Harry, a Melbourne minnow called You, Me and Him, there’s Them in Adelaide and Us that was part of Razor, now happily badged Joy.

Launched in 2005 by former search-engine employees, Steak (now part of Dentsu) set out to help marketers make the most of new digital opportunities. Their mission is ‘rare, medium, well done.’ Some names just flow off the tongue, like Karmarama. Others defy logic, like London’s Elephants Can’t Jump. For music to the ears, what about Kazoo? Or Andrew Varasdi’s Banjo. Still need more inspiration? Ad Age has a useful, or useless, self-help site, check out adage/agencynamegenerator.

Names change. After five years the three inebriated primates morphed into The Monkeys and swung from strength to strength. Seattle-based Ad Age 2013 Small Agency of the Year (now presumably a little larger), changed its name from Wong Doody to the wonderfully weird collective Wong Doody Crandall Wiener. The Pudding Factory based in the old Big Sister premises in Balmain became Evocatif and moved to Pyrmont, while Purple Cake Factory, a predominantly PR agency is based in downtown Costa del Sol. Balmain-born Oddfellows, from the Hall of the same name, shares part of its brand with an unrelated creative shop called Odd based in Shoreditch, London.

Add a sense of gravitas to your agency brand by adding the definitive prefix ‘The’ in front, like The Palace did. Or suffix your agency with ‘Partnership’ or ‘Partners’ like Sean Cummins did in the nineties and then returned to when Jason left. In the Big Apple, a city obsessed with size, the list of agencies include Big Duck, Big Fuel, Big Spaceship, Huge and Mammoth Advertising (don’t tell Big Red Ted.)

For big city quirky, my pick is Barton F. Graf 9000, the NYC agency started by Gerry Graf who explains things thus: “It’s named after dad and the BFG9000 gun from the video game Doom, in case you were wondering.”

We were.

Gawen Rudder [right] is principal of The Knowledge Consultancy, Sydney. This article first appeared in Campaign Brief magazine.