How the name Rawr! for a Reason was picked

I’ve been spending an hour a day starting the mobile game studio and finally decided it was time to give it a name. I wanted a name that was fun and viral, and really embodied what my company stands for—we give 50% of all our net profit to charity and strive to bring light to important causes. After brainstorming several names, I decided it was only right to have the winner chosen by my future gamers—the reddit community! After several rounds of surveys and interviews, the winner is “Rawr! for a Reason.” I’m a big fan of the name, and my interviews with the community have shown promise of it resonating with my target audience of reddditors, mobile game content creators, and other mobile game media.

I’d like to thank r/samplesize and all who have donated their time for helping pick such a wonderful name.

I’m posting my process here for those interested. It took 3 surveys to reach the final name. Some of the notes below have realizations from the in-person interviews I did during that time as well.

The Surveys

First Survey Results
Notes on the first survey

• About 50 of the 250 total results were from Reddit. The other 200 were from friends, family and Facebook groups.
• Reddit is my target audience and they had surprisingly different tastes than my family and friends. I decided that in going forward I would collect only Reddit responses .
• The survey format had “logic” so that it only asked which company name you liked after you picked your favorite animal, as the names were related to each animal (our potential mascots)
• Reddit surprisingly liked dinosaurs the most, dogs second, cats third(I would have bet BIG money on this being first) and sloths fourth. They also put in some REALLY weird animal suggestions. I never new salamanders were a cute / popular animal.
• Even though the dinosaur was the most popular mascot, a lot of people did not like the company names that paired with the dinosaur.

Second Survey Results
Notes on second survey:

• The survey had “logic” so it only asked for variations of the original name after you picked your favorite general name.
• A surprising amount of Redditors did not understand the Company McCompanyFace reference to Boaty McBoatFace.
• Overall, people disliked the name options that I came up with.
• People liked not having studio, games, etc. at the end of the company name.
• Redditors gave some really detailed feedback in the free-response areas.(I’m sorry I couldn’t include it in the published results, per privacy reasons—a few people gave me their e-mail address to follow-up with them.)
• I got a few e-mail addresses from the e-mail capture form at the end of the survey and had a few great conversations with these people. I see that as a positive sign!

Third Survey Results
Notes on the third survey:

• Rawr! for a Reason was redditors’ first choice on average and had the highest number of first place rankings.
• It’s important to note some of these conclusions were not done just through the surveys but also a few dozen interviews either in person or over Skype.

My Final Thoughts

I’m a firm believer that it’s the execution of the project that creates success — not the name. However, through talking with customers I’ve learned that the mobile game studio’s name will be paramount in creating a brand that coveys my value proposition strongly and quickly. The average mobile game user does not hesitate to delete games that they deem a waste of space often after only a single play. I’m hoping that giving my company the name Rawr! for a Reason, along with strong and meaningful branding, will pique their interests enough to give our games a chance and prove that we are a brand worth supporting.