Speakers & Topics
Nina Beckhardt
Founder
The Naming Group
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Nina has always preached that “Naming is weird,” and perhaps nowhere is this truer than when hammering out naming engagement contract terms. How can naming practitioners structure their contracts in a way that uniquely serves them? Why do clients always push back on attribution rights? No you cannot own every single name I present!
What started out as Nina shouting into the void evolved into something more productive as the basis for this talk: interviewing in-house and external counsel and biz dev folks to research these questions. This talk will shed light on unique naming contract challenges and provide helpful, actionable legal insights possible to the naming community.
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An internationally published and recognized authority on naming and brand innovation with 15 years of experience running global creative agencies, Nina helps corporations and startups create strong, strategic names with ease.
Her agency, The Naming Group has been naming partner to Fortune 500 and 1000s as well as a handful of cool startups. Their work includes naming cars for Chevrolet models Sonic and Trax, to overhauling how Reebok names their footwear. They have led naming for P&G, GM, Target, PUMA, Capital One, EPSON, and Dow Jones. Nina have been published and featured in The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg , Mashable, CNN.com, Washington Business Journal, WSJ.com, Automobile Magazine, and USA TODAY.
Caitlin Barrett
Founder
Wild Geese Studio and Naming for Everyone
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Naming can be a lonely pursuit: hours hunched over books, lost in trademark databases, immersed in languages from all over the world and throughout time. But namers need each other. As our industry, and the demands on us as namers, shift rapidly, leaning on and learning from each other is more important than it’s ever been.
We will imagine what our community could look like, and how we can make naming a better understood and better valued part of business and brand building for the era to come.
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Caitlin Barrett is the founder of the naming studio Wild Geese Studio and the naming education platform Naming for Everyone. They have spent nearly 20 years helping brand teams improve the way they name. Previously, Caitlin was a partner at the brand-language studio Doublebit and served as director of verbal identity and global head of naming at Interbrand. They were also a senior writer at Ologie and a copywriter at Martha Stewart, where they got their start naming scented candles, kitchen-towel patterns, and, once, a very expensive ham
Rob Meyerson
Founder
Heirloom
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Naming architecture. Nomenclature systems. Naming systems. Have you heard these phrases? Have you done these projects? And if so, have you figured out where brand architecture ends and naming architecture begins?
Rob ... hasn't.
Or, at least, he's not 100% sure he has. But he's been thinking about naming systems a lot, and is looking forward to sharing what he's learned about what they are (and aren't), why they matter, and how to go about solving a naming system challenge (whether you're a consultant or in-house). Join Rob as he dives into this oft-requested but rarely understood type of naming project.
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Rob Meyerson is a brand strategist and namer. He runs Heirloom, authored Brand Naming and co-authored the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity, and hosts the podcast How Brands Are Built.
Anthony Shore
Founder
Operative Words
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Chef Anthony Shore will bring you into his naming kitchen for a behind-the-grinder look at how he makes the sausage, walking you through his favorite tools and techniques for creating new names. He’ll put special focus on the naming tools you probably aren’t using yet, demystifying them and showing how they can add real flavor to your name development projects. This hands-on demo will bring more tasty creative recipes to your book.
Anth will demo for 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes of Q&A.
Mangia!
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Like you, Anthony Shore names things. He’s been doing it for 36 years. Anth doesn’t want to see shitty names from anyone, so he gives away all that he knows about naming at his blog at OperativeWords.com.
Jeremy Huggins
Senior Naming Strategist
Amazon
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“No, I did not make up this job.”
“Yes, I assure you I did think of that option.”“No, I can’t put that into words, but, yes, I know it’s true.”
“Yes, that is the smell of my previous, soul-level conviction burning off like morning dew at this very moment, the first time anyone with authority has questioned my naming strategy.”
Jeremy’s session will give us a peek into the world of in-house naming. In a house filled with some very smart people. Which means we’ll also get access to the inner monologue of someone who’s spent a lot of time wondering what it means to be the expert in the room, how he keeps getting away with it all, and what any of it has to do with being able to properly spell “impostor.”
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Jeremy names things for Amazon from inside Amazon. He and his naming partner Gabriele Zamora form the two-person Naming Strategy team inside Amazon's Devices & Services organization, which brings brands including Kindle, Echo, Ring, Fire TV, and Alexa to customers around the world. Prior to Amazon, he named food, pet, and wellness brands, ingredients, and technologies. His obsession, however, is responding to Instagram requests from fellow potters for names for glazes.
Jake Hancock
Senior Partner
Lippincott
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Lippincott is frequently approached by large, established brands with the existential question: is it time to change our name? It might be driven by reputational issues, limiting perceptions, or the desire to signal a new chapter. And more often than not, inertia wins out. As experts who champion a name's potential to transform, how do we know when to defend the power of continuity vs. the opportunity to evolve? Jake will share how he thinks about the quandary, ways to measure the cost/benefit, keys to overcoming the fear of change and inspiring the ultimate leap of faith required to rename.
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The Case for Change
Lippincott is frequently approached by large, established brands with the existential question: is it time to change our name? It might be driven by reputational issues, limiting perceptions, or the desire to signal a new chapter. And more often than not, Jake Hancock has spent his 20-year career focused on naming from solo practice to boutique firms to traditional ad agencies and brand consultancies. As the current head of Lippincott’s global naming practice, he’s developed corporate and product names, naming systems and strategy for dozens of Fortune 500 brands.
Irina Lyapis
Senior Naming Strategist Senior IP Counsel - Trademark and Brand, Atlassian
Atlassian
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This panel of top TM attorneys will dig into the evolving landscape of trademark law and share creative strategies namers can actually use. From clever registration workarounds, to navigating AI, federal delays, determining your client’s legal risk tolerance, and the sneaky games corporations play, this conversation will lift the curtain on what’s really happening in the trademark world.
We’re aiming to offer up fresh perspectives, practical strategies, and a candid look at how to best support naming clients—whether scrappy startups or global giants.
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Irina Lyapis is an attorney specializing in intellectual property, particularly in the strategic management of global trademark portfolios. Currently, she practices in San Francisco at Atlassian, a global software company, after previous roles at Winston & Strawn and Fish & Richardson. Her expertise includes trademark clearance, prosecution, counseling, disputes, and enforcement, as well as handling oppositions and cancellations before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. She also advises clients on copyright, domain names, social media, and advertising issues. She has been recognized for her work in Intellectual Property Law.
Angela Wilcox
Managing Partner
Wilcox IP
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This panel of top TM attorneys will dig into the evolving landscape of trademark law and share creative strategies namers can actually use. From clever registration workarounds, to navigating AI, federal delays, determining your client’s legal risk tolerance, and the sneaky games corporations play, this conversation will lift the curtain on what’s really happening in the trademark world.
We’re aiming to offer up fresh perspectives, practical strategies, and a candid look at how to best support naming clients—whether scrappy startups or global giants.
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Angela has been practicing Intellectual Property Law for over twenty-five years, beginning her career as trademark and copyright counsel for Playboy Enterprises, Inc and founding Wilcox IP, PC in 2019. She has worked with many of the members of Wilcox IP since 1999 and served as the Managing Partner of the Trademark and Copyright Group of the firm’s predecessor-Vanek, Vickers & Masini-since 2004. Throughout this time, Angela has provided trademark and copyright counsel to her clients in areas such as branding and corporate name research and clearance, trademark and domain name acquisition, trademark and copyright registration and prosecution, trademark and copyright policing and trademark and copyright litigation.
Angela works with a broad spectrum of corporate clientele, ranging from non-profit organizations to Fortune 100 companies. Additionally, Angela represents all sizes of national and international branding and naming firms, assisting in the development of clear and protectable identities, names, brands, taglines and domain names for their clients.
Angela is an active member of the Intellectual Property Association, Chicago Bar Association and Illinois Bar Association and serves as a Board Member of numerous companies and charitable organizations in the United States and India.
Trevor Caudle
Trademark Attorney
Trevor Caudle Law Practice, PC
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This panel of top TM attorneys will dig into the evolving landscape of trademark law and share creative strategies namers can actually use. From clever registration workarounds, to navigating AI, federal delays, determining your client’s legal risk tolerance, and the sneaky games corporations play, this conversation will lift the curtain on what’s really happening in the trademark world.
We’re aiming to offer up fresh perspectives, practical strategies, and a candid look at how to best support naming clients—whether scrappy startups or global giants.
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Trevor A. Caudle, Esq. Is the founder of Trevor Caudle Law Practice, a boutique trademark law firm headquartered in San Francisco. Raised in Gilroy, California, he earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from Santa Clara University and was admitted to the California Bar in 2004. Over the course of a 20-plus-year legal career, Trevor has developed a reputation for providing timely, cost-effective, and personalized service to a wide spectrum of clients—from tech startups to public relations firms, restaurants, and in support of major players in the naming industry, who help sustain the Bay Area’s dynamic innovation economy.
Shannon DeJong
Founder and CEO
House of Who
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This panel of top TM attorneys will dig into the evolving landscape of trademark law and share creative strategies namers can actually use. From clever registration workarounds, to navigating AI, federal delays, determining your client’s legal risk tolerance, and the sneaky games corporations play, this conversation will lift the curtain on what’s really happening in the trademark world.
We’re aiming to offer up fresh perspectives, practical strategies, and a candid look at how to best support naming clients—whether scrappy startups or global giants.
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Shannon DeJong is a naming consultant and brand coach. She thinks branding is a vehicle for existential inquiry and should ultimately lead to enlightenment.
She loves the linguistic and creative juiciness of coming up with snazzy new names (who doesn't?) yet over her 20-year career found herself specializing in doing complex nomenclature projects for tech companies.
The highlight of her career has been bootstrapping her agency House of Who from a single naming job of $100 to a seven-figure business, and then kinda exploding it as an art-project-cum-meditation by giving away the profits and then reincarnating it as just a boring ole agency again. She now lives in France as a newly-minted mom (best naming job ever) and only takes on clients if they're really nice or really interesting.