| name | brand-strategy-and-naming |
| description | Author the brand strategy substrate BEFORE any visual generation — a discovery questionnaire → positioning statement, value proposition, target audience, and archetype — then bulk-draft business/product names + taglines and hand a human-curated shortlist. Owns the strategy-before-visuals gate artifact. Naming availability + trademark collisions route to security-reviewer; not legal advice. |
Brand Strategy & Naming
The first and most expensive brand decision: what the brand means and what it's called. Everything
downstream — the logo, the palette, the type, the brand book — is directed against this. Author it
deliberately, because a fuzzy position generates slop no matter how good the model is.
Strategy is authored, naming is curated. Neither is auto-generated as a final answer. AI explores;
the human decides. Any naming-availability or trademark-collision judgment is routed to
ravenclaude-core:security-reviewer (and counsel) — this skill states facts, not legal conclusions.
Prices [unverified].
Workflow
- Discovery (before anything). Answer the questionnaire below with the client. Do not skip to a name.
- Author the strategy brief. Fill
../../templates/brand-strategy-brief.md:
positioning statement, value proposition, target audience, competitive frame, and archetype (with the
rejected alternatives named). This file is the strategy-before-visuals gate artifact — no visual
concept is generated until it exists.
- Bulk-draft names + taglines. Generate a longlist (20–40), screen against the shortlist rubric, hand a
shortlist to a human. Never present one auto-picked name.
- Flag legal. For every shortlisted name, flag any obvious trademark collision and recommend a formal
USPTO clearance search before promising availability — route to
security-reviewer.
- Hand off. The strategy + voice go to
identity-systems-designer to direct the visual system against.
Discovery questionnaire
| # | Question | Why it matters |
|---|
| 1 | What does the business actually do, in one sentence a stranger understands? | Kills jargon; forces clarity |
| 2 | What is the real alternative the customer is choosing you over (incl. "do nothing")? | Positioning is against the alternative, not a category |
| 3 | Who is the target customer — specifically (not "everyone")? | Audience precision drives voice + visual register |
| 4 | What emotional job does the brand do (status, safety, belonging, rebellion)? | Picks the archetype |
| 5 | Three brands you admire and why — and three you never want to resemble | Constraint donors: "like Stripe but warmer, avoid blue" |
| 6 | What must NEVER be true of this brand? | Negative constraints escape the legible middle |
| 7 | Where does the brand live (site, packaging, app, retail)? | Fixes which identity assets are in scope |
Positioning statement (the shape)
For [target audience] who [need/context], [brand] is the [category/frame] that
[key benefit / point of difference] — unlike [the real alternative] — because [reason to believe].
Write it, then pressure-test: could a competitor claim the same sentence? If yes, it's not a position.
Archetype selection (priors)
The 12 brand archetypes (Hero, Sage, Explorer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Innocent, Everyman, Jester, Lover,
Caregiver, Outlaw) are a starting lens, not a horoscope. Pick one primary + at most one secondary; name why
the tempting alternatives were rejected. The archetype constrains voice and visual register — it is a design
input, not a personality quiz. Traverse the tier-selection tree in
../../knowledge/brand-decision-trees.md if the engagement scope is
still open.
Naming — shortlist rubric
Screen each candidate on:
- Distinctiveness — memorable, not a descriptive commodity term (descriptive marks are weak trademarks).
- Meaning-fit — supports the position/archetype; no unfortunate second meanings (check other languages).
- Availability plausibility —
.com/handle plausibly obtainable; obvious TM collision flagged to
security-reviewer (a real clearance search is counsel's job, not this skill's).
- Sayability — spellable on hearing it, pronounceable, works as a verb/handle.
- Longevity — doesn't box the company into today's single product.
Present the shortlist with the rubric scores + the trade-offs, and let a human choose. Naming types:
coined (Kodak), real-word (Apple), compound (Facebook), descriptive (weak TM), evocative (Nike). Note the type
per candidate.
Anti-patterns
- Jumping to names/logos before the positioning is authored (the slop factory).
- Presenting one name as "the answer" instead of a curated shortlist.
- Promising a name is "available" without a counsel clearance search.
- A positioning statement a competitor could sign — that's a category description, not a position.
- Picking an archetype and never saying why the others were rejected.
See also
