Scrabble Marketing
My experience with how a board game, Scrabble, can revolutionize your branding and product naming strategy sessions. It’s a fun, exciting and productive method for idea generation.
A brief history: In 1931, an out-of-work Connecticut architect, in the height of the Depression, created a world phenomenon; known today as ‘Scrabble’. Alfred Butts’ revolutionary concept was first turned down as being ‘too intellectual’, no doubt on the popular but conveniently improvable business theory that ‘No one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the public. By strong suggestion the name of Butt’s game was changed to Scrabble. No particular significance attached to the word: it just happened to be one of several nice-sounding possibilities that research showed had not already been registered as a trade name. (But would the game have been so successful had it been published, as it nearly was, under the title Logo-Loco?). Butts, who incidentally, never made any money from what became one of the most successful board games of the twentieth century noted, “If there hadn’t been any Depression in the Thirties there wouldn’t be any Scrabble.”
The term I’ve coined as “Scrabble Marketing” shares its utility with that of the board games fascinating fruition. Branding, product naming, success and profits are the root of what “Scrabble Marketing” is all about.
One late night in the office surrounded by a team of tired and approaching unproductive creative types – we struggled with a product naming issue. We needed a name; a unique product name – one concept unlike anything we’ve been tossing around. At this late hour, innovation, creativity and imagination seemed non-existent. Being a dot com start-up, the game room (yeah, I miss the days of ‘the game room’ also) was full of toys, board games and the dreaded foosball table. That is when it struck me – Scrabble was the perfect medium for idea generation in the product naming and branding sphere.
The same basic principles and point values apply: all players select ten random letters to which they must create a word. The twist is simple; each player may only create a word that is relatively applicable to the product and its new name. This fun twist brought the excitement and, more importantly, the creativity back to our strategy session. Now, forced to generate a word (product name) with ten randomly selected letters, we had to change our creative process. Instead of generating concepts out of thin air and through brainstorming; we now had to generate concepts from a selection of letters. This forced the creative team to think within options; concentrating and focusing our efforts – letting us develop suggestions we otherwise would never be free (or limited, depending on how you look at it) to do so.
- February 1st, 2006
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Very good concept and usefull tip.
I can see why this ‘reversed’ brain storming process can have better results, compared to usual methods.
I read something once about The Beastie Boys playing “Boggle” when they wrote lyrics. Sometimes a bit of non-sequiter can create a far more interesting outcome than any amount of research or brainstorming.
That’s a nice tip Ill have to remember - Often when being forced to do something, or applying pressure, you can get better results, or results you would otherwise not have got.
Wow, that was cool! I’ve never heard of using that approach, but really, it’s quite brilliant. I will definitely try it, as I’m trying to come up with a product related word for “edition” (In the sense of “Lego: Star Wars Edition”).
Thanks, a lot!
This is simply great!
I’ll use it now for all of our “Naming Products” sessions to start with! :)
Thanks for the comments! I’ve used scrabble marketing ever since and its always proved to be a fun and exciting way to get some serious work done. If anyone has any other creative idea generating concepts, please post here or link to their posts.