My team was developing an advertising product which we referred to with a codename. With plans to begin development with partner advertisers ready to kick off, we needed to give the product a name that worked for advertisers.
Note: I’m not sharing the actual name of this product because it did not launch, for reasons unrelated to the design.
Ideation
I initiated and led a systematic naming effort to choose a name that would work for the product team and leadership and resonate with advertisers and end-users.
I planned and ran the namestorm, co-developed decision criteria with our product marketing manager, and processed the data from the workshop. This approach gave our cross-functional (XFN) teammates a stake in the process as well as generating valuable ideas and input.
Validation
I also recognized the need for validation with real people, so I pushed for research and collaborated with our user experience researcher (UXR) and product marketing manager (PMM) to co-develop the research brief and discussion guide. The early data from those sessions gave us the confidence to move forward and were critical to gaining leadership approval.
Navigating approvals
During approvals, I co-developed and presented the review deck to directors and managers with our PMM. When the process bogged down, I was the one who managed upward and enlisted our director (my skip-level x3) to unblock approval for our proposed name.
Later, after our product direction changed, leadership revoked approval for our chosen name. We were days away from opening the product for a round of experiments with third-party developers, and we had no product name. To unblock us, I took the lead on building a new proposal and driving it through channels. I made a deck that highlighted the urgency we faced, clearly laid out our options and made an unambiguous request for an immediate decision. That presentation, and my unrelenting advocacy, rallied leadership to temporarily approve a name we’d proposed before, allowing us to move forward with our experiments