The other day I was listening to my iPod and working on a project to come up with snappy name for a new service. I was a bit stumped until I reached for my iPod to scroll through and find a song I wanted to hear. As I did that, I drew some instant inspiration for my project based on the titles of several songs.

I’ve done this over the years and always find that song, movie and book titles can give you some very proven creative help when you are looking for impactful names and messages. Everyone knows that your product or service stands a much better chance of connecting with a prospect if the name is memorable and evocative, but sometimes you need a little help getting started down the right path.

All you need to do is visit Amazon.com, lyrics.com, or the Internet Movie Database and cruise around looking for ideas and phrases that you could mold to fit your needs. Understand I’m not talking about ripping these titles off, simply drawing inspiration from the words and phrases you find as examples.

You might also check out Sam Horn’s great book POP! as I know she promotes this idea too along with some other great naming and message creation strategies.