Do brand names matter? That’s the question John Colapinto seeks to answer in Famous Names, an intriguing article in the latest edition of The New Yorker. If you’re on the fence about whether product names can make a difference, here are a few examples for a Friday morning:
- Kleenex
- Pentium
- Chilean Sea Bass
- Dasani
Granted, a Chilean Sea Bass by any other name would taste as great, but it didn’t sell as well when it was the Patagonian toothfish.
So where do you start when you’re naming a product or brand? Follow the lead of Lexicon, a strategic company devoted entirely – yes, entirely – to names.
1. SPARK UNUSUAL CONNECTIONS
As Colapinto points out, one of the keys to Lexicon’s success is their focus on the creative process. Following J.J. Gordon’s maxim to “Trust things that are alien, and alienate things that are trusted,” Lexicon spends a great deal of time brainstorming – allowing any and every idea to flow into the pot.
For example, they might pass out sports magazines when they’re naming a women’s cosmetic. Or they might head in an opposite direction to current trends:
- Subaru Outback was Lexicon’s challenge to car names associated with the American West (Scout, Cherokee, Wagoneer).
2. TRY COMBINING BRAND CONCEPTS
When Lexicon was trying to come up with a product name for Apple’s new computer, they were asked to “overcome consumers’ skepticism about Apple’s ability to make a truly portable computer.”
The solution was to combine:
- The concept of portability – they came up with words like “port” and “carry”
- And speed and performance
The result? PowerBook.
3. ISOLATE ATTRIBUTES
Brands are about wish fulfillment.
- We look for names that convey the essential attributes – speed (Swiffer), sturdiness (Civic) or sanitation (Kleenex)
- Because these are the things we most long for in cleaning products, cars and tissues.
So when you’re in the brainstorm phase, start thinking like the consumer. Ask yourself what your product will do (quicken mopping time) or what makes it different (it’s more reliable than other vehicles) and start listing adjectives or words that might convey these attributes.
- Google was a deliberate misspelling of “googol” – 1 followed by a hundred zeros. Or, in other words, a very, very large number of results.
4. THINK LIKE A POET
Alliteration, assonance, imagery, brevity – these are the tools of poets, and, not coincidentally, brand namers.
That’s not to say that you should have a bard name your products – there is a funny example of Ford asking a poet to come up with name that evoked “elegance, fleetness, advanced feature and design” and receiving “Intelligent Bullet, Utopian Turtletop, Pastelogram, Mongoose Civique.” But you can follow some basic guidelines:
- Keep It Short - Dibs beat Snack-a-Bites hands down.
- Examine the Consonants - For Swiffer, Lexicon took the “sw” from “swipe,” “swift,” and “fast” and combined it with the “i” of “swish” and “swift.”
- Analyze Letters in Evocative Words – For example, if you’re going for something with vigor, crispness and pep, you may want to build your brand name around “c,” “v,”or “p.”
- Make it Easy to Say – Consonant/Vowel/Consonant, as in Amazon, Lipitor and Gatorade, is a useful combination.
- Use Poetic Tools - Check out my previous article on How to Create Original Headlines.
5. CROSS CHECK WITH OTHER LANGUAGES
In a global marketplace, you need to be very wary of foot-in-mouth disease. Colapinto points out a few embarrassing mishaps on the brand journey:
- Creap coffee creamer from Japan
- Bum potato chips from Spain
- Chevy Nova, which in Spanish means “no go”
6. MAKE SURE THE PRODUCT NAME IS ORIGINAL
Microsoft got into a whole helluva lot of trouble when they launched Internet Explorer; they neglected to discover that a small company in the Midwest had already used it.
- 5 million dollars later, they were wishing they’d paid for a trademark lawyer to cross-check their name.
7. TEST WITH INDEPENDENT FOCUS GROUPS
It’s surprising what a group of people will tell you. A client might say that Pentium sounds like a toothpaste, but a focus group might say that it sounds like the “premium line” or the “performance line.”
- To avoid clouding the issue, Lexicon pretended that Pentium was for a fictitious new car. That way they could tell if they name had intrinsic value.
Though launched to a lot of initial skepticism, Pentium was a hit, surpassing even Intel in brand name recognition.
8. TRUST WHEN A BRAND NAME IS RIGHT
Is all this necessary? Sometimes. Sometimes not.
- I.B.M., A.T. & T., Singer sewing machines – these have all had great success on the basis of what they’ve done, rather than what they’re called.
Naming a brand is not an exact science – at some point, gut instinct should let you and your team know what sounds right.
- Though it is always best to follow steps 5, 6 and 7, no matter what name you choose.
NEED HELP NAMING YOUR BRAND?
Thinking about names for your new product or service? Wondering where to begin with brand names? Contact me for a free consultation.
Posted on September 30, 2011
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