Diamond Test: A Naming Framework for Billion Dollar Brands

Strong names keep working while everything else changes. Designs get refreshed, taglines rotate, features ship and ship again—but the name is the anchor people use every time they talk, search, or recommend a business.

David Placek, founder of Lexicon Branding, has named billion-dollar brands like Azure, Sonos, Windsurf, Vercel, Pentium, and others. Some of his principles on naming are mentioned below.

A good name is catchy and tells a story. Think where TikTok would've been if it had a terrible name.

The Enduring Asset: How a Distinctive Name Compounds into Long-Term Market Advantage

A name that's clear, memorable, and different compounds with every impression. Descriptive labels—think "CloudSync," "DataPro," and cousins—blur together on day one. Market-shaping names don't.

• Google didn't pick a dictionary "search" word; Infoseek did. Only one became shorthand for the action itself.

• BlackBerry outlasted entire device generations because the word stuck in conversation, culture, and headlines.

• PowerBook made a laptop feel capable, mobile, and personal in a single hit—no tech jargon required.

Love & Hate is Data: What Strong Reactions Reveal About a Name

Teams often reject the best candidates first. Not because they're wrong—because they're unfamiliar.

• Intel's Pentium beat -"ProChip"_-style thinking precisely because it created heat in the room. Debate is energy; energy is signal.

• Sonos initially faced internal pushback for not sounding "entertainment-y" enough. Customers didn't care about that filter; they heard a name that felt like sound.

A useful filter: if smart people love and hate a candidate on first contact, don't toss it.

The Diamond: Four Corners to Get Everyone on the Same Page

Before generating names, map a quick diamond:

• Win: what "winning" looks like in the market (adoption, word-of-mouth, premium perception).

• What do we have: real strengths today (technology, channels, voice).

• What do we need: gaps to close (trust, simplicity, speed).

• What do we need to say to win: the behavioral promise the audience should feel.

Let that last corner set the creative brief. It keeps brainstorming tethered to experience rather than internal slogans.

Volume First, Judgment Later: The Case for High-Volume Ideation

Great lists are the result of wide exploration, not perfect first passes.

The working numbers are unglamorous and very effective: 1,000–1,500 ideas/directions, spread across 10–15 lists of ~200.

Expect 3,000–4,000 rough ideas upstream to end with ~250 "diamonds" worth fracturing and testing.

Organize small, deliberately different teams with different prompts. Ban the "find the flaw" reflex in early sessions. The only question at this stage: "Where could this go?"

Paint the Picture using Metaphor-First Naming: Turn 2 Common Words into 1 Big Idea

The fastest way to move an idea from the head into the gut is metaphor. That's why compounds work so well: they stack associations without adding cognitive load.

Examples worth stealing lessons from:

• Windsurf (born from a developer-flow brief): motion, ease, rhythm—easy to visualize, easy to talk about, easy to brand.

• Swiffer: swish + swift; it doesn't describe "a disposable mop system," it paints a feeling of quick, satisfying cleanup.

• Impossible Burger: instantly frames a challenge and an outcome rather than a commodity descriptor.

• PowerBook: two plain words that, together, rescripted what a laptop feels like.

• Facebook: another two-worder; concrete social object + place.

Compounds act like 1+1=3. Two ordinary terms, new meaning, bigger memory.

Ears First, Then Eyes: Sound and Shape Matter More Than You Expect

Some letters carry reliable signals in people's heads. That doesn't mean rules; it means useful ingredients.

• Z often reads as signal/noise/energy (see Azure).

• V feels lively and forward (see Vercel, whose ver- and -cel also break into familiar morphemes that parse fast).

• B tends to feel grounded and reliable (BlackBerry benefitted from that heft).

• X reads crisp, engineered, precise.

• Rhythm matters, too. Dasani flows, literally, in the mouth. Sonos rides on sibilants and is palindromic—easy to remember, fun to repeat.

None of this replaces strategy; it's the engineering layer that turns strategy into sounds people like saying.

Out of the Cloud Crowd: Why Azure Worked and “Cloud-___” Didn’t

When the brief is "cloud," the temptation is to name the thing "cloud-something." That path strips away advantage.

Azure side-stepped the pile-up, giving Microsoft a word with lift, color, and just enough sky to connect without collapsing into category sameness.

Early resistance inside the building faded once customers started carrying the name around.

The .com Domain Isn't the Hill to Die On

Treat .com like an area code. Get the right name; find a sensible URL path or modifier; move on.

In an AI-forward discovery world, exact-match domains matter less than memorability and fit.

When Renaming Is the Smartest Move

Renaming is heavy, but sometimes keeping the old badge is heavier.

• Placeholder origins that never matched the market.

• Strategy pivots that make the old signal misleading.

• Mergers or capability resets that need one clear flag.

The bar: will the business be meaningfully better off after the switch? If yes, budget for the project properly—creative, legal, design, roll-out.

Translating Technical Instincts Into Human Words

Technical teams often love sophisticated or abstract words like ChatGPT. Customers often don't. The fix is not dumbing down; it's making outcomes tactile.

• For developer tools, "flow" becomes Windsurf, not Latinate abstraction.

• For consumer AI, prefer names that evoke a job done or a feeling achieved rather than internal architecture.

Bridging that gap is half of naming in fast-moving categories.

A Mini-Gallery of Moves That Travel

Not a hall of fame—just a reminder of the range that works:

• Sonos: sound-forward, symmetric, repeatable. It sits well on hardware, software, and retail.

• BlackBerry: sturdy consonants, distinct color cue, and a compound shape that felt fresh.

• Azure: out-of-category word that still whispers "sky," enabling a broad story.

• Swiffer: speed + cleanliness baked into the sound.

• Impossible Burger: surprise plus promise; tens of thousands of dinner-table mentions later, everyone knows it.

• Vercel: familiar pieces, modern posture; easy to say around the world.

• Windsurf: explains "flow" without explaining "flow."

Stress Tests That Reveal Keepers

Once the list is narrowed, the goal is to break names in realistic conditions.

First, stress the execution:

• Packaging comps, app icons, motion tests.

• How it sounds in support scripts and sales decks.

• What it does to a headline when paired with the core benefit.

Then, do two quick gut checks:

• If a rival launched with this name tomorrow, would the team feel urgency—or relief?

• After a day of use in conversation, does the word keep its shape, or does it fray?

Across every example, the pattern repeats: distinctive words carry further than descriptive ones, especially when the team aligns on what needs to be felt. Names like Pentium, Sonos, Azure, BlackBerry, Swiffer, Impossible Burger, Vercel, PowerBook, and Windsurf didn't win because they described features. They won because they made people see and say something vivid.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

There is a massive chunk of population who is tech illiterate. Once you see a normies use tech stuff, you realize how big the gap is. Obvious cues like the emojis and arrows above make a huge difference.

2/

Derek Sivers has a short post on this titled "There is no speed limit."

One of my favorite posts of all time.

3/

One hack to get discount from big companies is by mentioning their competitors so they give you a discount to keep you as a customer.

Most software apps have a huge feature parity nowadays and it is only going to accelerate with AI now.

The only difference between competitors charging high prices would be monopoly and branding.

Rabbit Holes

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3. Market your mobile app in the US — without being there by Julian Valdy

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