The Wild Geese Method
Naming is pivotal work
It stress-tests the strategy that comes before it, and makes everything downstream of it clearer. Doing naming well requires ownership, a process, and a price that reflects the work.
Meet the Wild Geese Method
The way geese fly is the perfect metaphor for a naming practice that runs smoothly. Their V formation reduces drag and makes every movement efficient. Geese coordinate easily, navigate collaboratively, and relay information so they can respond quickly.
Naming should work like that.
Out in Front:
Your POV
What your agency believes about naming, and the confidence to lead with it. Yours should be clear, and it should be aligned with your most authentic work.
Backed by:
Empowered talent
People who can think strategically, develop names creatively, and filter rigorously for risk. People your clients trust because they're experts—and who don't need the principal in every meeting to get things done.
Supporting it all:
A naming engine
One you build once and run every time: A repeatable, documented process that’s built to bring stakeholders along, so naming stops being the service that costs you the most and becomes one you're known for delivering well.
What a strong naming practice looks like:
You lead with a point of view. Clients stop hearing "we also do naming" and start hearing about the value of doing it with you.
Your team runs the work. Strategy, creative, and risk screening are choreographed. Your team arrives at the presentation ready with rationales and risk assessment, and everyone's ready to support the client in making a decision.
Your process holds. Every project follows the same path. You can pull in freelancers when you need more muscle and have them run from the same playbook as full-timers. Project stakeholders are confident in the journey, and stop derailing it.
Naming fits your service set. Your team understands how a name shapes identity, strategy, and launch, and can speak to it with the same authority they bring to everything else.
You charge what it's worth. A practice that knows its outcomes can price like the expert work it is.
Let’s start where you are
The Wild Geese Method comes in three formats, each built for a different starting point. You can sharpen one area, transform the whole practice, or build one from scratch.
Supercharged SOPs
One workshop, starting at $20,000
For teams that already do naming and want to fix one part of it.
Pinpoint the area that's costing you most—process, strategy, name generation, risk, new business, or client management—and we'll show up with the training, frameworks, templates, and shared language your team can use on the next project. You'll also start shaping the point of view your agency leads with.
Best for: agencies who know where the friction is and want to address it directly.
Practice Intensives
Three-day offsite + three months of support, starting at $40,000
For agencies ready to make naming a practice they're known for.
We come to you. Over three days, we work through new business, process, strategy, creative, risk, scoping, and client management—and run it all through a project so your team can test it out in real time. We interview your team, map who owns what, and build naming SOPs tailored to how you'd work best. Then we support from the sidelines for three months while you put it into practice.
Best for: agencies with a working naming offer that's ready to become a high-value one.
Naming Practice Buildout
Three-month program, starting at $90,000
For agencies that don't offer naming yet—but should.
We build the practice with you from the ground up. We define a process, roles, frameworks, and point of view. We help you figure out how to scope, price, and sell, and we train whoever owns the client conversation. We'll even help you hire the right full-time talent. Then we run a test project together, and stay close through your first real one.
Best for studios ready to add naming as a deliberate, profitable offering.
Designed to keep you going
Every program includes a set of supplemental materials not available anywhere else. They’re designed to help your team put what they learned into practice immediately: guides, frameworks, prompts, reference tools, and checklists built to travel with your team into your very next naming project.
Developed by doing the work. Built for the way agencies work.
The Wild Geese Method was developed by Caitlin (Early) Barrett, a professional namer with 20 years of experience across hundreds of brand-building engagements with household names like Ford, Docusign, Microsoft, and the WNBA.
It's been refined across years of development, through workshops with design studios, branding agencies, and strategy teams ranging from two-person shops to large global practices.
Every element of this program comes from doing the work: running naming projects, managing stakeholders, navigating risk, and finding the name that makes it to market.
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