About this episode

In this episode, Dan Nestle and Scott Milano discuss the importance of naming as a form of storytelling and its implications for branding and marketing.

Everyone thinks they can name things. Toss some words around in a brainstorm, pick the one that sounds right, hope it passes trademark. But naming done right is storytelling compressed to its most essential form, and getting it wrong costs more than most organizations want to admit. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle reunites with Scott Milano, founder and managing director of Tanj, one of the world's top naming agencies, and the man who has named more than 1,000 brands generating trillions of global impressions. He also built ChatNamer, an AI naming assistant with thousands of monthly users, within months of ChatGPT's arrival, long before most people knew what to do with it. Dan and Scott explore why naming belongs squarely in the communications conversation, not just the brand or marketing silo. They dig into the mechanics of encoding brand DNA into a single word, what happens when organizations get it catastrophically wrong, and why AI can accelerate the process without ever replacing the judgment that makes a name land. Listen in and hear about... Why a great name is shorthand for an entire brand story The Apple vs. ExecuTech thought experiment The…

People in this episode

Host: Daniel Nestle

Guest: Scott Milano

Topics covered

• naming
• storytelling
• branding
• AI in naming
• communication
• marketing strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tanj, Apple, ExecuTech, Jaguar, Ally Bank, Natural Bliss, Prosperity Now

Products: ChatNamer

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