If you’ve seen The Sting or Ocean’s 8,11,12, or 13 you know every con game has a name. The Happy Idiot, as it’s known in professional naming circles, was a naming process perfected by Landor in the 90’s. To their credit, Landor walked away from the Happy Idiot several years ago.
But it’s been brought roaring back by other agencies.
It’s called The Happy Idiot because a naming agency delivers a name that’s a liability to a smiling client who’s happy with the result. The Happy Idiot was designed to be the fastest, smoothest route to client buy-in on a name, with the least amount of effort by the naming agency. It came about because someone on the client side will always object to some facet of the most powerful, memorable, effective, interesting, conversation-owning names an agency presents. Rather than pushback and take the time and effort to give the client the confidence that a particular name is the best choice, the agency defers and smooths down the edges until there is nothing interesting or effective left in the names they are presenting.
Whether it’s a con or not depends on the intent and awareness of the agency that rolls it out. It’s possible they believe the resulting names are good, or that they simply aren’t capable of getting client consensus on net positive names. Or that the results represent the limits of the agency’s creativity. But like a con, it’s designed to make the mark feel like they are getting something of value and that the entire process was based on their own strategic thinking and actions. And like the best cons, the mark never realizes they were taken down.
There are three variants, The Happy Idiot, The Happy Idiot with a Passport and The Happy Idiot with a Wallflower.
To illustrate each, we’ll use actual names and case studies from a single anonymous naming agency.
The Happy Idiot
In this classic version the agency invents a word with no resemblance to any existing word. Because the name neither means nor implies anything, there are no objections from the client. It’s been sanitized for their protection. But in order to sell the name, the agency needs to convince the client that the invented word has positive, relevant meaning. The agency breaks the name down into morphemes(a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language) and assigns positive meaning to each. They have someone with a masters degree in linguistics from Berkeley or Stanford certify the meanings – in languages neither the client or their target audience speaks – to give it weight and to assure the client that this meaningless construction is not only full of meaning, it’s perfect for them. Thusly:
Mirvie
“Mirvie is a rich coining that draws on several Romance languages: Mira means “objective” in Italian, “purpose” or “look!” in Spanish, and the feminine form of “wonderful” in Latin. Vie is “life” in French and “means” or “paths” in Italian. Mirvie suggests the wonder of pregnancy, a means to your objective, and lifesaving, targeted insights”
No one objects, a positive meaning has been established by an expert who no one feels qualified to argue with, job done! Client is happy. Is it possible the naming agency believes, “Mirvie suggests the wonder of pregnancy, a means to your objective, and lifesaving, targeted insights”? Anything’s possible. When agencies rely heavily on this strategy, it’s referred to as morpheme addiction.
The Happy Idiot with a Passport
Same basics as the original, but this variation uses real words from foreign languages that neither the client nor the client’s target audience speaks. The Happy Idiot with a Passport produces names that the client can’t object to because they don’t mean anything to the client. Foreign language names function as invented names, but the positive meanings the agency claims the name has are based on their meaning in an obscure language. Like so:
Ikena
“Ikena, a Hawaiian word meaning “vista, perspective, knowledge.” The name also recalls “I ken” (an older English word for “know”) and “I can”
The Happy Idiot with a Wallflower
The Wallflower version employs the one thousand most common words used in brand names. The agency simply pairs two of them in a combination that hasn’t been used in the client’s trademark category. These words are so generic that they don’t draw any objection from the client and each contains a slight, one-dimensional positive attribute. The one thousand most common include words like Active. Arc, Atlas, Blue, Bridge, Care, Clear, Complete, Core, Curve, Edge, Engage, Ever, Expert, Flex, Force, Front, Fusion, Future, Go, Green, Hill, Hub, Key, Lead, Light, Line, On, Next, Path, Plus, Point, Power, Pro, Pulse, Sense, Scape, Shift, Sky, Span, Splash, Star, Sun, Titan, Triton, Up, Vista, Wave, Wise and Zip.
Combining these wallflowers has gifted six different clients of this one agency with these six names:
Bridgescape
Bridgespan
Everbridge
Flybridge
Gainbridge
PSI Bridge
And four different clients with these:
ClearCurve
ClearLead
Clearsense
Clear Splash
Some agencies will actually kickoff a naming project by sending the one thousand most common words in used in brand names, ask them to circle their favorites, and then combine words and present them back to the client. Believe it or not…
Now that you can recognize the Happy Idiot, try not to be one.
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