Meridian
Situation
A group of entrepreneurs with decades of healthcare experience were creating a new predictive health analytics company. Using a uniquely comprehensive longitudinal dataset and proprietary analytical models, they planned to help healthcare providers detect their patients’ health risks and address them before they come to pass.
These entrepreneurs had a range of stories they wanted to tell, since their offer was differentiated at almost every step. They might talk about the nature of the offer itself, directly referencing health analytics and insights. They might talk about their uniquely comprehensive, whole-life dataset. Or they might focus on the benefits to their customers (and their patients) of prediction, intervention, and improved health.
I worked directly with the product team to identify a naming strategy, develop and screen names, facilitate their final name selection, and socialize that name with the founders and other essential stakeholders.
Creative Approach
I developed 230 names exploring the definition, attributes, and benefits of the company over a single lightning round of creative. Because of the complex consetellation of messages we considered, and the stodgy literalness that pervaded the space, I focused on evocative names that could suggest several messages at once, such as:
Emptive, derived from preemptive, evoked effective action in advance, the key benefit afforded both to customers and their patients.
Expect Health spoke literally to the patient benefit, that they could expect to be healthy, but also to the company’s ability to predict. As an attractive tactical bonus, the exact name was available as a URL, <expect.health>.
Healthcast focused more on the company’s product, evoking the idea of a health forecast and the complex data and analytics that underpinned such predictions.
Point B was a clear reference to a broad benefit of achieving goals and surpassing challenges. It also had the option to serve as dark humor, referring to the whole-life nature of their data set: from point A to point B.
Spry strongly evoked the patient benefit, of healthful old age, giving a hopeful, colloquial, humorous spin on what could be a complex and dour subject.
After a spirited discussion and a weekend of percolation, the team came to a decision.
Outcome
The team chose Meridian.
Meridian deftly connected both to the nature of the product itself and the benefits it provided to its customers and their patients. As a product reference, it spoke to customers in their own language, referring to the longitudinal nature of the company’s proprietary data set. As a customer benefit, it spoke to the ability to navigate a sea of data. And as a patient benefit, it positioned old age, not as an ending, but merely a halfway point.
Trying to say three different things with a single word?