Compare these two lines of cars. Honda:

Lexus:

Now close your eyes and try to do the following for each company:

• name 4 of their cars
• name one that’s SUV shaped
• name one that’s a small car
• name one that might be good on rugged terrain
• you’ve just won a free car, and you can pick any of these! which one do you want?

I bet you can do all of these better for the Hondas. Why? Because Honda models are Pokemonized.

what is pokemonization?

Giving everything in the group a name that is:

• pronounceable
• distinct
• 3-12 letters
• maybe related to something in the real world
• customization-free

For example: Pikachu, Charmander, Blastoise. These fit all of the above criteria; even if you didn’t know which one was the fire one and which one was the little mouse, you could probably guess. And if I said “Blastoise”, you’d know exactly what I mean; it’s not like there’s Blastoise, Blastoise v2, and Blastoise-X.¹

The Hondas fit this almost perfectly². They’re easy to pronounce in 1-3 syllables. None of them are in danger of being confused with each other. I can guess what they each are from their names: “Ridgeline” sounds like a rugged truck, “Brio” and “Jazz” are cute, “Civic” is middle of the road.

Lexuses? The names are unpronounceable. (sure, you can say them, but “GS F” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue). They all sound the same, and they tell me nothing. If my friend was excited about his Lexus NX, I wouldn’t know whether he’s going camping or track racing. And the first time you buy spare tires for the GS only to find that they’re actually for the GS F, you will wish that there was only one Lexus GS.

Now that it’s been a minute or so, try to name the Hondas and the Lexuses again. Here, I’ll wait 60 seconds and try real time: Brio Jazz E:ns1 Accord Civic Ridgeline Odyssey, and um, IS CS LS GS GSF CX NX EX? 7/8 Hondas and 4/8 Lexuses with 4 false positives.

pokemonize your set

If you’re trying to sell something, this seems like a no-brainer to me. It will stick in people’s heads, interoperate cleanly, and even have personality.

If you’re Printercorp and you sell 3 printers, and they’re called Rolfus, Flurbo, and Sneepy, wouldn’t that be nicer than Printercorp x300, 274q, and 274i-1? I’d gladly buy a Flurbo printer and then Flurbo replacement ink, without worrying if it’s the right version of Flurbo.

If you’re making a software package called Glorf, telling people “install Glorf” will work way better than “install GSP (Glorf Software Platform)”.

Can you imagine people doing this if Bidoof was instead called Pokemon 118.24?