The brief

Due to be spun off from its parent company, Genworth Mortgage Insurance needed a bold new name for its imminent IPO. As with all big corporate naming products, expectations were high and the pressure was on.

Generating viable names that could pass legal screening was, as always, a challenge in itself. But then there was the real mountain to climb. How could we facilitate a process to enable a team of highly opinionated senior stakeholders to select and agree on a final name?

The process

To minimize subjectivity and address misconceptions about how names work, we guided stakeholders through an engaging presentation that offered up “naming traps” to avoid, using proven brand names in diverse categories to explode the myths. Rule number one: a name is a signal, not a manifesto.

But the real secret sauce was the selection session. Using our unique meta-positioning approach inspired by Walt Disney’s creative process, we enabled stakeholders to evaluate names with both rigor and openness, avoiding the subjectivity that can send the process into a tailspin.

The result

Enact was an early favorite. A telegraphic real word that says: make it happen. As pragmatic, action-oriented experts who help make home ownership happen for millions of Americans, our client knew they had found the perfect fit.