The brand name is one of the most important choices made during brand development. The brand name plays a crucial role in the “distinctive memory structure” since it helps to identify, explain, safeguard, and legitimize the brand. Seldom changing, the name serves as a major marketing and financial investment focal point.
Yet, name development is never as simple as people believe it to be and only sometimes receives the funding it merits. To be truly successful, it takes preparation, commitment, and persistence, and, ideally, the help of a seasoned “brand name.”
I’ve provided some essential advice below to assist you in creating strong brand identities.
1. Begin With The End Goal In Mind
Success in marketing depends on having a clear brief. Establish the type of name required and its planned function within the current or future brand architecture.
As we covered in a prior piece here, make sure everyone engaged is using the same terminology (e.g., masterbrand, endorsement brand, sub-brand, ownable description).
2. Think Big From The Get-Go
Make sure the brief is sufficiently imaginative to generate names with enough flexibility to account for any ambitions for brand stretching. The Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company changed its name to “3M” Innovation with an eye toward the future.
3. Foster Brand Truth:
When naming a brand, it’s a good idea to “look back at what made you famous” and find connections to the real-life history of the company.
For instance, as noted here, the team behind rebranding the customized children’s book firm Lost My Name as Wonderbly drew inspiration from the company’s mission.
The company’s website says, “It’s a mix of Wonder, and Impossibly because (we like to think) we help you develop impossibly personalized books that bring amazement into children’s lives.”
4. Play With The Words
Wordplay is the source of many well-known names, including the founders’ names. Early in the 20th century, Adolph Dassler founded his company under the moniker “Adidas,” which he formed by fusing his pet name “Adi” with the first three letters of his last name. And of course, one of the most well-known band names in history was constructed from the initial letters of four Swedish vocalists’ names: ABBA.
5. Include Some Personalization
Part of the creative “alchemy” of a brand name, which gives a brand life, makes it more memorable, and also makes it more ownable in terms of trademarks, is the addition of a dash of individuality. A name’s distinctiveness can come from both the way it appears and sounds.
Some common techniques are mis-spelling (‘Irn-Bru’), exclamation (‘Yahoo!’), short-hand (‘eBay’), and use of different international languages (‘Häagen-Dazs’).
6. Use “Parallel Processing”
Naming is one of the most difficult aspects of brand development, which calls for the most originality possible. Parallel processing is a method we employed on brand gym projects to increase the likelihood of success by utilizing numerous distinct creative processes at once.
Recent efforts include using staff, innovative customers, experts, and AI-enabled web searches as examples.
7. Less is More
A good branding tenet is “less is more,” and this is true, especially in naming. A brand name should typically have two, three, or a maximum of four syllables in order to be easily memorable.
Certain companies, such Red Bull, Accenture, Lush, and Coca-Cola, are born with catchy, concise names. In other instances, businesses develop abbreviations for lengthy names:
.T E Stockwell & J Cohen renamed to a simpler ‘Tesco’
.Bayerische Motoren Werke renamed to ‘BMW’
.Kentucky Fried Chicken utilizes the healthier sounding ‘KFC’
.Most readers of The Financial Times ask for the ‘FT.’
8. Consider Protection Before Going Too Far
Coming up with a wonderful name is excellent, but you must protect it to help everyone. At the very least, get advice from your legal counsel as soon as possible to agree on some basic guidelines for what you may and cannot do concerning names. To make sure fresh name suggestions are legal, attempt to conduct rapid legal checks as you go.
Major international companies we engage with on projects frequently have a bank of pre-registered names which may be drawn from as necessary, given how difficult it is to protect names.
9. Explore Language And Respect It
It’s crucial to thoroughly research your name’s meaning in various languages if you want your brand to be recognized internationally.
Due to the fact that “Mist” in German means “dung,” Irish Mist liqueur has never been very popular in Germany. The Opel “Nova,” which in Spanish translates as “not going,” which General Motors sought to introduce in South America, continues humiliating the company.
Toyota at least had the good sense to avoid introducing the MR2 in France, where it would have been mispronounced as “merde” (crap!).
10. Bring Names To Life
Making sure that the client team and important stakeholders give each proposal in the developing shortlist a fair shot is one of the toughest aspects of brand naming. A typical error is just to put out name options in a regular typeface.
Instead, give the naming concepts a visual life so that internal stakeholders and customers may see them as authentically as possible. Mocking up credit cards and bank bills was a crucial element of the internal pitch when Prudential defied financial industry branding rules with the egg brand.
Takeaway:
Creating a memorable brand name is a challenging task for everyone. This is why creating a good and memorable brand name is crucial to ensure the success of your business.
Hence, coming up with effective names constitutes an art and a science that calls for strategic rigor, awe-inspiring inventiveness, and willpower.
And it is worthwhile making the appropriate time and financial investments. A brand name is, ideally, for life, even though brand communication campaigns come and go while the packaging is updated.
Another crucial part of a brand is a professional brand logo design, which works in tandem with the brand name to propel your brand to the next level. Both work hand in hand with each other and should be given equal importance.
