It was the early days back in college. Our brand name came to me almost immediately from our first conversation about the idea.

But it’s not the one you think.

It was “Wingman.”

My cofounder Nick and I had spent several months brainstorming on the idea of men’s makeup. We’d come up with our first product, a name, and a brand identity.

It’s 9pm on a Thursday night and Nick texts me: “Hey are you around?”

We lived in the same dorm so it was relatively easy to meet up, even at this hour when I would much rather be getting ready for bed.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that there was a problem.

When we get to Cambridge Common, a pub a short walk from the Quad, we sit at one of the familiar large wooden tables. I turn to him:

“So what’s the problem?”

“The lawyer found an issue with the trademark.”

We had cleared “Wingman”on the trademark front – but evidently, our USPTO search had not been thorough enough.

For all of 6 seconds, I panicked.

I’d spent several months creating the vision for our fledgling brand – built around the concept of a new concealer product that would serve as a useful sidekick to the user and boost their confidence in a social situation. A wingman, of course.

But just as quickly as the panic set in, the next thought came.

“Ok let’s start over.”

We grabbed a napkin and started spit balling new brand names, rapid fire.

Pictured here is the said napkin. I tucked it into my pocket on the way home, careful to save our work lest we need to spontaneously rebrand the entire thing again sometime soon.

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Looking at this napkin four years later, I’m struck by a couple things:

1.   We left this meeting with a few top contenders (circled) and some backups (check marked). You’ll notice that “Frontman” is neither circled nor checked. We were probably more likely to go with “Top Dog” than “Frontman” at this point. And Top Dog is decidedly less cool. In fact, “Frontman” only has a dash next to it, to signify just okay, meh.

2.   Most of these names (much like the original “Wingman”) didn’t really inspire me. They were all vaguely macho, fairly obvious, and altogether bland. Though I had grown to be attached to “Wingman”, I definitely struggled to come up with a solid brand identity to match it. When I heard the word “wingman”, I didn’t see anything.

My takeaway from both points is that sometimes your first thought isn’t the best one. We loved our original name, but the brand meant more to me than just a friendly sidekick for a guy wanting to look good.

In my mind it was (and is) a movement – a rejection of the reigning hypermasculinized consumer market for an alternative that embraces new values, where “manliness” doesn't need to be defined by how much one can bench press.

A: “How about ‘frontman?’”

N: “What is that?”

A: “Uh I think it has to do with the mob?”

N: “No isn’t it from a band?”

One Google search confirmation later, and I knew we had it.

frontman (n): the lead singer of a pop or rock group

Suddenly I was flooded with images of “frontmen” I had known all along: Freddie Mercury with one arm victoriously high in the air, The Beatles meeting throngs of adoring screaming fans, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Stevie Knicks, Paul Stanley yelping with his tongue out, Bruce Springsteen, Elvis, Kurt Cobain, MJ, Janis Joplin…

It was a veritable feast of inspiration.

Each of these artists had, in their own way, bucked the status quo. Gone where others hadn’t dared. Changed culture at large. The name fit so well I could hardly contain my excitement.

LEARNINGS

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Accidents can be for the better.

Had we not had an issue with the original name, we might not have ever developed FRONTMAN as it is today.

Powerful emotion can be the sign of a great brand direction.

Brand is first and foremost an emotional connection with you. It is whether your first instinct as a consumer is to laugh or cringe or look away. And drawing on a wealth of associated ideas is a fantastic shortcut to creating emotion.

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Building a brand is an evolution.

This napkin reminds me that things will change, and that’s ok. No brand comes out of the gate a masterpiece. It grows and stretches over time into something worthwhile to the people it serves. That can be a hard reality to stomach as a creative who strives for perfection. I try to remind myself that all the brands I admire today started as some shitty version of themselves at the beginning.

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Being a designer is an evolution.

Your ideas and processes will change, and that’s ok. No person comes out of the gate with a masterpiece. Even the Great artists had their periods of trial and error before settling on a style or medium.

We are often fearful of change, especially when it means explaining it to someone else. (I was most worried what others – investors, advisors, partners – would think.)

Change is painful and costly and requires lots of paperwork from very expensive lawyers.

But reinvention is necessary for us humans, and we must embrace it, because it is a prerequisite of growth.

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