An overview of our firm\'s core capabilities, experience, and process.

1. Catchword Backgrounder
February, 2009

2. the order of things
> the importance of naming
> background on Catchword
> samples of our company naming work
> samples of our product naming work
> Catchword process
> team bios
> contact information
catchword © 2009

3. naming ROI
The most bang for your marketing buck
Free, permanent, constant advertising (if done right)
It’s your first chance to make an impression
Just like at a party: “Hi, my name is....”
It’s the most basic and frequently used brand component
Logo and tagline don’t appear in the Wall Street Journal
It’s how people recall and recommend your product
Smart, distinctive names aid in memorability and immediately build brand loyalty
It’s harder to change than the other brand elements
It’s important to get it right the first time
It’s gotten significantly harder to find names that work
T.M. and .com availability screening can be painfully frustrating
catchword © 2009

4. the basics
A Full Service Naming Firm ...
> Since 1998, we’ve helped hundreds of bright ideas become thriving brands
> 16 clients in the Fortune 100
> 59 repeat clients (including 10 who have hired us 5+ times)
> 87 “early-stage” clients
> We specialize in verbal branding (it’s not a loss-leader to get a foot in the door)
> Our principals are engaged in every project
> We have offices in Oakland and NY and an int’l network in Europe and Asia
> Our creative team averages 10+ years in the biz with strong academic and
professional backgrounds in advertising, journalism, marketing, law
catchword © 2009

5. some of our clients
catchword © 2009

6. company naming
catchword © 2009

7. product naming
catchword © 2009

8. process summary
1
Review of materials & competitive landscape
>
briefing > Briefing to establish strategic and creative parameters
> Development of creative brief
2
Development of preliminary creative concepts
>
creative > Creative Checkpoint meeting
> All-hands creative relay/Comprehensive development
3
Preliminary legal/URL availability screening
>
> Collaborative Name Review of 50 names
distillation > Refined creative work and further availability screening
> Final presentation of 6-8 recommended names
2
catchword © 2009

9. reasons to hire us
Our Creative Intelligence
Creativity is grounded in strategy (which we’ll help you to develop)
>
Skilled at developing names to attract customers and distinguish you from competitors
>
Our focus
Highly specialized expertise and process honed over a decade
>
Your project gets the benefit of entire company’s involvement (rather than the short shrift
>
it might in an advertising agency or design firm)
Our international expertise
Best global linguistics network in the industry
>
Evaluation by native speakers goes way beyond typical translation services
>
Our personalities
We’re fun to work with
>
Minimal ego involvement (unlike some creative powerhouses)
>
Good at collaborating: with clients, designers, strategy specialists, attorneys
>
catchword © 2009

10. Catchword team
Burt Alper, Strategy Director
More than anyone else, Burt is the voice of Catchword: the one you’ll hear quoted in the press or lecturing at business schools. Burt was already a seasoned
brand strategist and naming pro when he co-founded Catchword in 1998. Since then, he has spearheaded brand name creation for clients such as Charles
Schwab, HP, P&G, Palm, and Wells Fargo. If you’re thinking of hiring us, Burt’s probably the guy who’ll talk to you about your branding challenges and ways
we can be of service. He’s also the go-to guy for thornier issues of strategic naming, and he has a knack for distilling complex marketing challenges into
plain English. (A skill our clients are perpetually grateful for.) A California State Debate Champion in high school, Burt clearly was destined for his role as
Catchword megaphone. He has a B.A. in Psycholinguistics from Swarthmore College and an MBA from Harvard. He currently serves on the Board of
Trustees for the College Preparatory School in Oakland.
Mark Skoultchi, Managing Director
Mark’s passionate about…well, just about everything. Especially breakthrough branding. And he brings that intensity to each step of our process—from
strategic analysis through final screening—to take our creativity up a notch (or three). Sort of like the volume knob on your TV or sound system that takes
the output to a whole other level. With his ear for high-impact names, Mark has helped brands in just about every commercial field amp up their presence in
the marketplace. Including launches for companies such as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Xerox, and Ahold USA. Before becoming a partner at
Catchword, he was a creative director of naming at Interbrand’s New York office, where he honed his 360-degree understanding of branding. A graduate of
Brandeis University with a B.A. in history, Mark also has a J.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He’s getting a much more playful sort of
education these days from his two young kids, Anna and Jack.
Maria Cypher, Executive Creative Director
Maria’s a paradox. She’s so inventive she can give wings to just about any brand idea—in a thousand different ways. And she’s so meticulous you’d trust her
with your accounting. You could call her approach to creativity (and our creative group, by extension) tough love. Her philosophy is that only by being
rigorously—exhaustively, you might say—thoughtful and strategic can creative ideas and connections really take flight. Among the many companies who’ve
embraced Maria’s creative vision are Safeway, Dockers, CBS, Gymboree, Microsoft, Pepsi, and Schwab. In love with words her whole life, Maria was the
editor of several trade and travel magazines based in Asia (did we mention she speaks fluent Mandarin?). She was also a senior project director at Master-
McNeil, another naming firm, prior to co-founding Catchword. Maria earned her B.A. in Psychology and Economics at Stanford University, before going on to
get her MBA (also from Stanford). She enjoys singing and playing guitar, and expects to self-publish her first children’s story, Winkletown, online soon.
catchword © 2009

11. Catchword team
Laurel Sutton, Linguistics Director
Laurel brings an element of depth to our branding process. For starters, she’s a scholar in the fields of etymology, sociolinguistics and phonetics. And she’s
an eclectic multi-linguist who knows German and French—and dabbles in Irish, Japanese, Gothic and American Sign Language. (Would we make this stuff
up?) She’s also a virtual encyclopedia of information about commercial names: past, present and from around the world. So to say Laurel can assess name
candidates from a variety of perspectives is something of an understatement. A veteran naming strategist even before co-founding Catchword, Laurel has
directed every imaginable kind of naming project—from simple product launches to intricate architectural systems—for clients such as Cisco, Roche, Adobe,
and Allstate. She was the first person to receive a B.A. in Linguistics from Rutgers University, and majored in English there as well. Laurel has a Masters in
Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley (where she managed the university’s phonology lab)—and is a dissertation away from her Ph.D.
Beth Gerber, Creative Director
Beth’s role at Catchword is a bit like that water spritzer you use on plants—she helps keep our thinking fresh and vigorous. She enlivens all things
creative here: from naming companies and products to designing right-brain exercises that help clients get to the heart of their brands. Before
joining Catchword, Beth was an award-winning advertising creative director and copywriter for almost 20 years and a fanatic about strategically-
driven creative. So she gets the big picture, and knows how to create names that will play to your brand’s positioning and help tell your story.
Between naming and advertising, her experience building brands spans just about every industry. (And includes Wells Fargo, HP, Leapfrog, Toyota
and THQ.) Beth got her B.A. at Brown University, majoring in both Organizational Behavior and Creative Writing. She later trained at the
Pennsylvania Gestalt Institute, where she learned a lot about what shapes people’s beliefs and behavior— and how to create change.
Aaron Hall, Project Director
Aaron has the power to bridge the gap between imagination and reality, and bring ideas to life. Throughout our creative process, he keeps clients in the loop
and contextualizes naming ideas so that clients can see—and capitalize on—their commercial potential. He also has extensive experience screening names
for common law and trademark issues—and can steer clients towards names with the most potential and least baggage. Aaron has helped birth formidable
brands for companies including Leapfrog, Magellan, Kyocera, Vudu and THQ. An expert on social media, he was formerly a youth marketing strategist,
conducting focus groups and other research for companies such as Levi-Strauss, Pepsi and Carsey-Werner. He was a project manager at Master-McNeil,
another naming firm, before joining Catchword. Aaron received his B.A. in Psychology from Harvard, where he also studied Spanish and Italian.
catchword © 2009

12. contact information
New York City
405 Lexington Avenue
26th Floor, Chrysler Building
New York, NY 10174
Phone: 212.472.8936
Contact: Mark Skoultchi
San Francisco Bay Area
409 13th Street
12th Floor, Tribune Tower
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: 510.628.0080
Contact: Burt Alper
catchword © 2009