Name a new product

The naming brief is what lets you choose between ideas later, so Kite writes it before it suggests a single name. The brief turns "we need a name" into a short list of things the name must do and things it must avoid.

Kite builds the brief from your knowledge base and from what you tell it about the new product. A typical brief covers:

• What the product does and who buys it. For example: "A tool that sends physical therapy patients their home exercise plans, bought by clinic owners."
• How the product relates to the rest of the company. Should it sound like part of your main brand, or does it need a name of its own?
• The feeling the name should give. This comes from your brand voice. A brand that sounds warm and plain wants a different name than one that sounds technical and precise.
• Practical limits. These include the length, whether the name has to work in other languages, and any words you can't use.

Kite sends you the brief before it goes further. You add what only you know, such as a name the founder already loves or a word a big customer finds confusing. Once you approve the brief, every candidate gets judged against it.

Kite looks at what your competitors call their products before it suggests anything, because a name only stands out against the names around it. If you've already been researching your market with Kite, it starts from the competitors in your knowledge base and adds any others that sell something like the new product.

For each competitor, Kite reads the website and records the product names, the patterns behind them, and how each name connects to the company's positioning. It also searches the web and the main social networks for other products in your category that use names close to the ones you're considering.

The result is a map of the naming patterns in your category. In a category where most names are invented words ending in "-ly" or "-ify," Kite might suggest a plain English word. If every competitor uses a technical compound like "DataSync" or "CloudBase," a short, human name will stand out. Kite also notes the words your customers use in reviews and online discussions, because a name that echoes their language is easier for them to remember.

Kite generates candidates in several styles and keeps only the ones that meet the brief. The styles usually include:

• Descriptive names that say what the product does.
• Suggestive names that hint at the benefit without spelling it out.
• Invented or blended words that you can own outright.
• Names built from your company name, when the brief says the product should sit under your main brand.

For each name on the short list, Kite explains what it suggests, which part of the brief it serves, and where it might fall short. A name that's clever but hard to spell gets marked as such. You see the reasoning, so you can disagree with a specific point instead of just saying you don't like a name.

You can steer at any point. Tell Kite "shorter," "less playful," or "more like the second one," and it generates a new round with that direction added to the brief.

Kite checks every finalist against the market, so you find conflicts before the name is on a slide deck. This is the step teams most often skip, and it's the one that saves a rename six months later.

For each finalist, Kite checks:

• Who already uses the name. Kite searches the web for companies and products using the same or a similar name, and notes whether they sell in your category, to your customers, or in your region.
• What Google shows for it. Kite looks up how often people search for the name and which pages rank for it today. A common word that a large company already owns in search results means your product page would start at the bottom.
• What AI assistants already think it means. Kite can ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude about the name to see whether they already link it to another company. A name that answer engines confuse with someone else makes it harder for buyers to find you when they ask about it.
• Whether you can get a usable domain and handles. Kite checks whether the obvious web addresses already host a live site and whether the matching social handles are taken.

Kite's own name shows what sharing a name costs. Other products already use the name "Kite," including a retired coding assistant, so Kite is listed as "Kite AI" on review sites and directories to keep its reviews from getting mixed up with theirs. Kite points out this kind of overlap for you before you commit, while changing course is still cheap.

Kite's search for existing users is a first screen, not legal clearance. Before you announce the name, have the shortlisted winner searched in the official trademark database for each country you sell in, or ask a trademark attorney to run a clearance search. Kite's findings tell you which names are worth paying to clear.

Kite compares the finalists side by side against the brief and the conflict checks, then recommends one. The comparison shows how each name does on fit, distinctiveness, ease of saying and spelling, availability, and room to grow, with a sentence of evidence behind each judgment.

The recommendation reads like a colleague's advice. For the exercise-plan tool in the brief above, Kite might say: "I recommend Homestretch. It describes the product's job, it sounds friendlier than the competitors' names, and no physical therapy software uses it today. Restore is shorter, but several health products already use it, and most of Google's first page for it is about furniture restoration."

When two finalists are close, Kite can help you gather evidence from real people. It can draft a short email asking a handful of your customers which name they prefer, and you approve it before anything is sent. If your website runs on Kite, it can also build a landing page in two versions, one for each name, and split visitors between them to see which one gets more signups.

Once you've chosen a name, Kite turns the reasoning behind it into a naming rule, so your next product doesn't start the debate from scratch. A naming convention is the written rule for how products in your line get their names.

The rule usually settles a few questions:

• Which pattern your products follow. One common pattern is your company name plus a plain description, the way Google names Google Docs and Google Sheets. Another gives each product its own name, the way Atlassian names Jira, Confluence, and Trello.
• How editions and plans are named. For example, you might decide that paid tiers are always called Starter, Growth, and Business, and that you'll never use "Pro" or "Plus."
• How the name is written. This covers capitalization, spacing, and whether the company name always comes first.
• Which words are off limits. These might include words a competitor owns, words that mean something awkward in a market you sell to, or words you've already used elsewhere.

Kite saves the rule in your team's knowledge base next to your positioning and records the new product with it. Every piece of work Kite does afterwards follows the rule. If you correct how Kite wrote the name somewhere, it records that correction too, so the same mistake doesn't come back.

A name is only finished when it's live, and Kite can carry the new name into the work that follows. It updates your positioning in the knowledge base so every later page, email, and post describes the new product consistently.

If Kite hosts your website, it can build the product's page or a launch landing page under the new name, with images in your brand's colors and fonts. It can also write the launch announcement, the social posts, and the email to existing customers. Kite shows you each piece before it publishes or sends anything.