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“My company would never work with an agency with the word ‘murder’ in its name.”
“Murder hornets failed to launch in the U.S.”
“I prefer almost any of the other names on the list.”
The above is advice from a great CMO, the creative lead of a global agency, and mostly everyone I know. So why would anyone call their ad agency Murder Hornet?
In March of last year I decided that, armed with a few campaigns people have heard of and some solid industry and client relationships, it was time to plant my entrepreneurial flag on American soil. I’d done it twice in South Africa, starting Joe Public Advertising (a corner store that sold ads off a menu) and FoxP2 (named after the language gene in humans), but I had never found the stomach to do it stateside.
My wife, Robyn, has a crazy skill for naming products and companies. She named both the agencies mentioned above. So, we started thinking and sharing ideas with colleagues, friends and family.
Friends and ex-colleagues loved the names that had to do with my insanely large size—names like Giant or sixeight300—but those felt too oddly self-referential. Loved ones liked the names that had sentimental value like Silly Not To (my family credo, we’re up for most things) or Richards of George II (the entrepreneurial sequel to my dad’s beloved but failed clothing store).
But then it dawned on us that what we wanted to create wasn’t an ad agency at all, but a brand that would live in culture and have a great ad agency attached to it. An ad agency that made our brand (and other brands) famous. Like if Supreme or Liquid Death also had a world-class ad agency offering.
Suddenly, one of my wife’s crazy names halfway down the list was the only name it could be: Murder Hornet. It had so much attitude that it couldn’t be ignored. A name that one might imagine as the next great energy drink, skate brand or maybe… ad agency.
I’d been working at big agencies for two decades in the U.S. where we spent a ridiculous amount of time on our own agency positioning. Each agency’s poor head of strategy bleeding out of their eyeballs trying to find something unique to say that wasn’t already being said by every other agency. Gut, Mischief, Mojo Supermarket, Slap Global—some of the hot new kids on the block don’t have that problem. Their name and creative output do so much of the heavy lifting that a stream of first letters of last names of retired founders just can’t do.
