Caterpillar

Situation

A group of UK-based tech entrepreneurs were developing a fitness rewards app, one that allowed users to link their step counters to various brand loyalty and rewards systems, encouraging those users to make healthy choices. They aimed to use that financial incentive to reach people who wouldn’t be driven by fitness alone. As they sought funding, they needed a brand name that would telegraph their story to government grant-givers, but would also be appealing to users once the app came to market.

I was brought in as a naming consultant, to help develop the brief, create the name, facilitate their final decision, and shepherd them through the logistics of actually acquiring that name.

They fundamentally needed a name that conveyed the idea of improving wellbeing, but wanted to avoid the paternalistic, shameful tone that often comes with such apps. Instead, they wanted to be celebratory, encouraging, and warm.

As a brand tool, the name needed to serve as a metaphorical starting point for the brand’s visual identity, ideally being something that could be represented with a single emoji.

And as an app name, we needed to find a term with availability on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and a plan for URLs and social handles.

Approach

I explored about 150 names across 4 territories, each representing a different permutation of the concepts and criteria outlined above. I presented 30 names across, each with a rationale directly connecting it to the client’s priorities, and facilitated a conversation with the client team to find their favorites.

Some of the second-favorite names included:

Salad🥗: Fun slang for money, creating a very warm, accessible tone; using food as a metaphor to connect to wellness, and imply a visual system rich with colorful vegetables. Similar alternatives included Salt🧂, Cheddar🧀, or Peanuts🥜.
Outcentive: An incentive to get outside. Such a clumsy coining that it creates an effect of self-effacing humor and warmth.
Pound for Pound: A playful interpretation of a known idiom, connecting to the idea of getting cash (for this UK-based audience) and losing weight. Implied a visual system full of coins and bills, and objects famous for being heavy (anvils, pianos) or light (feathers). A similar alternative was Wellth or Wellthy.

Though all these names had potential, only one ended up on top.

Result

The client’s favorite name was Caterpillar🐛

It hit all the right notes—a metaphor for transformation and growth, a cute creature that takes lots of little steps, a solid emoji, and a friendly tonality. The name also only has one other brand association, Caterpillar construction equipment, leaving ample room for the team to build and shape new perceptions. Although it didn’t explicitly connect to the idea of points and rewards, its performance on other criteria made it a clear favorite.

Because the .com was not available, we worked to find a descriptor to pair with Caterpillar, ultimately landing on caterpillar.health, an elegant URL that reinforced the core benefit.