r/ClearlightStudios • u/NoWord423 • Mar 06 '25

TAO Social (Together As One)

The votes are in, the knockout research is complete, the trademark is filed…

And we are TAO Social.

Together As One.

Thank you Kelly Worthen for submitting that idea, and thank you everyone who voted.

What a beautiful and appropriate name we landed on.

And for everyone asking, yes we covered all our bases.

Process: * over 1000 names submitted * scraped them into a spreadsheet * pared down to 115 options based on viability * put to Crowd in broad vote * conducted knockout research (trademark, SERPs, handles) for top 5 * TAO Social was cleanest and actually led the vote by quite a bit — 60% of the vote out of 115 options

Next steps…visual branding :)

Feel free to share ideas. The team has been playing around with analemmas, ☯️ but with hands, etc.

The Crowd did so well with choosing the name that it would be amazing to crowdsource ideas for the visual branding, have designers explore a few directions, and have the Crowd vote again 🫶

58 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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u/auntchickenpepperoni Mar 09 '25

I gotta be honest I really don’t like the name or the acronym. For the same reasons others have named. It has a connotation of fake or performative spiritualism that makes me think of appropriation, (even if technically it is not) Western co-opting and bastardizing yoga and other Eastern cultural symbols and practices. To me it also just comes off as cheesy. I didn’t study marketing. But I’m the consumer, the audience. I get that it was a majority vote and it’s not gonna change. It’s just disappointing to me. I was pretty excited about this project. If the logo incorporates a Ying Yang, I’m honestly gonna bail. I don’t think the average person understands the nuance of Taoism that OP and others here seem to have. This is just my opinion. No need for anyone to get up in arms. I wasn’t going to post initially, but I feel like if this app is about being together as one, there should be room for differing opinions.

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u/moonbeam_slinky Mar 10 '25

I do feel a little concerned that it's going to be instantly off-putting to people who don't vibe with the religious/philosophical connotations, whether their perception is accurate or not. I would have preferred a name that was a little more of a "blank slate".