What’s in a name?

The ONS revealed the country’s most popular baby names this week. This reminded us a) how hard it is to name a child and b) how much harder it is to name a company.

With a child, your friends and family get to share their opinion (my mother STILL doesn’t like my first born’s name). With a company, that expands to the world. On top of that, you can have multiple Olivia and Olivers in a classroom but a company needs something trademarkable, websiteable and socialmediable.

When naming our agency, we spent longer than I probably spent naming my kids. Admittedly there was still the debate parents have (this was where we learned and respected the right to veto) but without the little A to Z book to make it easy. Maybe we’ll launch the Little Book of Agency Names one day, for fun.

In its absence, we looked at naming convention in the industry, current trends and our predicted futures ones. We didn’t go for the surely-due-a-comeback surname combo in the end. M&S for short was not an option either. Same goes for GDPR.

So why SHOOK? We wanted something familiar and vernacular. We didn’t want something hard to spell or hard to say. We wanted something simple but with a deeper story to it. And we wanted something that sums up our original reason for being – making creative work that makes a genuine impact on brands, business and the world. Work that impacts people emotionally (and behaviourally).

So far, we’ve been shook by the support, the clients who’ve put their faith in us (especially when COVID means we’ve never met some in person) and the reaction to our proposition. And just like with a kid, the more SHOOK grows, the more it grows into its name.

If you’re interested in Ideas with Impact using a superpower of behaviour design + creativity to fix brand, business or behaviour challenges, get in touch at hello@welcometoshook.com

By co-founder Gemma Moroney