Need some ideas for branding for my business. . .

[cuddlysmurf]

. . . and am not getting anywhere with it on my own; so are you all up for a bit of competition???

Its a driving school, and I'm thinking something a bit abstract might work??

Wander on over and post your ideas.

Aardvark Driving - then you'll be first in alphabetical listings...

Do you have any unique selling point e.g. lady teachers/ special focus (e.g. students)?

Have you googled e.g. driving schools in another country e.g. US to nick come up with an idea? Given that they are likely to be very regional I wouldn't think there'd be a problem if 2 companies 3000 miles apart had a similar name?

Thanks whippet lol at your aaaaardvark ;)

USPs would be female instructor (that would be me!), no special focus as yet as I want to get all the customers that I can and dont want a name that would put off any future corporate customer - looking at assessing competence and doing the "environmental" awareness to this market later in my grand plan.

Off to play on google and thanks for the suggestion to look elsewhere to plagiarise get some creative input

If I had a driving school I'd call it hard drive , cos that's how I found it when I was learning.

I had a quick Google too, and a couple of things:

• 'School of Motoring' now seems to be regarded as a bit passe
• Lots of people look for a driving school in their local area first, so many names are e.g. The Smurfsville Driving School
• People often use just their initials e.g. CSM Driving School which sounds quite safe and professional

I'd be cautious of having anything too clever - it will begin to grate after a while, and may affect people's perceptions. I wouldn't want to learn to drive with e.g. Driving4U or U-Can-Pass-2 etc...

Have a look here for UK ones..... nothing stunning... UK driving school names

Thanks whippet, thats what I seemed to find too. . . you're my first sounding board for something that wandered into by brain once I stopped thinking too hard (you know how it is)

Ultra Drive (not available as a domain name)

or

Ultra Driving (which has an identical domain name now registered to me for a few buttons)

All the "geographic" stuff has pretty much been used up by other driver trainers my area. I live in a place with only a few towns/features that are all graced with either hideously long or unspellable Scottish names. I know that the local learners who are my key audience will be able to spell them, but I dont want to piss off any of my competitors, or lose business to them by having a similar website/business name.

Don't really want to go down the cheezy road of playing with the L or using my initials as "SS Driving School" doesnt have very good connotations (potential customers might think I'm a neo-Nazi sympathiser .

Feel free everyone to contribute your thoughts . . .

I quite like Ultra Driving, but can I make one comment? It makes me think a bit of the sort 'ultimate driving' experience type things where you're going really fast/ off road etc!

Don't want to bang on about the alphabetical thing too much, but my company (a business consultancy) has a name beginning with 'T' and you'd be amazed how often I'd wished it was 'A'! Although directories etc are mostly online now, there are still loads of things which get listed alphabetically.

Hey- what about 'Alpha Driving' ?

cheers whippet off to google it now!

darn and dash it - there are millions of those!

Looks like Aardvark or 123Passyourdrivingtestwithme are gonna be contenders in the corny business name contest!

Discover Driving
Drive by "cuddlysmurf"
You can drive
Driving Force
Key to driving
On your way - driving school
Get ahead - driving school

Somehow all cars which are driven by learners are dark.
I wish they were bright green :)

OK, so the situation is there's quite a lot of local competition, so you need to try and serve some decent sized niches for starters.

Appreciate you want to get all-comers to learn with you, but what would be your biggest potential market audience and the groups you'd get most satisfaction from working with... (e.g. 17 year olds - or the mums and dads who pay; females, males, nervous older people; serial test-failers etc)?

Come up with 8 to 10 audiences. List them in the order you think is right and think about a name that would really work for the top 2 or 3 without alienating any other groups you think are important.

Girly learning? It rhymes with early learning!

Accelerate?
Driving Seat?
Belt up? (sorry, bit of a silly one, but it made me giggle!)