What is the most cost effective way to create a name for my food product?

Im going to write a blog article on this exact topic, but before I do that, here's a few things you should think about/do for the name itself:

1. Discovery session - If I we were face to face, I would ask you all about your product. What does it do? What benefits does it have? Who is your target customer? Is it a fun product, or is it a classy product? Or is it a "green" product? Is it going to be expensive, reasonably priced, or cheap? All of these questions serve to help you think of adjectives that should give you some inspiration.

2. Take these adjectives and try to identify the ones that most identify your product. Narrow it down a bit.

3. hit thesaurus.com to get all the variations of these words. You'll get more and more inspiration.

4. Take one of those words and try to come up with a variation of it.

Take my company for example, Iconosites. This process above led us to the word "Iconic" to describe the high quality of the designs available in our business website platform, which is precisely what we wanted to emphasize. From the concept of "Iconic Websites", we named the company "IconoSites" and feel like it elicits a perfect representation of what we do in one name.

This is a very simplistic explanation but I hope it wets the noodle a bit and helps you get your creative juices going. You can do this. You just need to start.

My company does branding work, and I'd say good branding involves the interplay of several factors, not least of which is considering your target market, what competitors are doing, cultural and language considerations too if you're considering marketing it abroad in the future and so on, its not a trivial matter and I would agree with the poster who mentioned you should get it done professionally or at least buy some time with an expert to guide you through your options face to face.

with all due respect to the other poster's opinion about using 99 design, I totally disagree about crowdsourcing something like this, unless you have an incredibly well written brief, you could risk trvialising something that could be vital to the success of your business. A decent design agency with branding experience would guide you through the whole process and help you be part of the ideation phase and research so that you effectively own the brand and live and breathe it well into the future! :)

Well i had the same for my Domain name and i found the solution in pickydomains.com.
Maybe they can help with brand names too.

the most cost effective way to get a brand name is to launch an online contest where you will get dozens of proposals from real people. You can do this on DoNanza.

After that, launch an online design contest to get a good logo / packaging design. I suggest you do this on 99designs as they are simple to use yet have thousands of designers in their community.

You do not have to spend more than $300 on either of these contests to get great results in a few days. If that's beyond your reach, you should definitely bootstrap and ask from friends and family to help you think up the perfect name for your brand.

Hope this helps.

I want to reiterate the answers by organized and iconosites.

You get what you pay for when it comes to design. If you serious about really branding your product, then someone needs to spend time researching the customer, defining the unique and emotional selling propositions (USP/ESP), thinking about how to position the product with respect to the ESP and your competitors, and then create visuals to match that position. I would be hard-pressed to find and marketing specialist and designer that can do that in two hours (a $150 logo at $75 per hour). A logotype and corporate ID package used to sell for around $3,500-5,000 for small businesses just for the design alone, which more accurately reflects the hours necessary to do something that makes sense.

If you are serious about really branding it, then try to find an agency or studio that specializes in food packaging and branding. Don't leave it up to an amateur. Sure, there are interesting and sometimes impressive visuals available on contest sites, but do they mean anything? Do they convey the message you want to send? Are they original and do they really differentiate your brand? Most times, the answer will be no.

Also, let me refer you to the book "Positioning" by Al Ries and Jack Trout, which I have mentioned in other posts.

They offer excellent advice on how to position your brand via the name and the slogan (really this is all the exposure 99% of the population will have to you anyway). The takeaways:

• You have to find and define your space in the mind of your prospect
• When you brand your product, what's important is not what you want them to believe, but what they already believe about your product, your competitors' products, etc. Work with perceptions that are already there, don't try to create new ones.
• The name is critical. Look for one that describes what the product's major benefit is.

Hope this helps.

Dragon's Den (Or Shark Tank in the USA). They've had quite a few food products on, including energy bars, and it is a great way to get national exposure for almost no cost.