Naming of Brands

One of the most challenging works of a marketer includes naming a product, service or company. In other words, it is termed as Brand Name Development.

William Shakespeare has undersigned once “What’s there in name?”

I believe lot of success of a brand depends also on its name. How would be the reaction of people if Apple would not have been Apple and instead Table, Sky, Grapes etc. It would also not be right in saying that it only depends on branding a right name in fact it also depends on right communication of brand name.

One of the first steps every entrepreneur does is to name his company, product and it is very difficult to find suitable name.

In  a book, Word Craft,  Mr Alex Frankel has explained the procedure of naming a brand with an example of BlackBerry. “During development of product, research team named the product PocketLink. Name was chosen on the basis of perceptual basis. The team described the brand concept on the lines of connecting businesspeople on the go. Portable information was point of differentiation. The team was also very clear about the perceptual categories that the name should convey and these are Connected, Fast, Friendly, Fun, Approachable and Vital.

The name PocketLink implied connected but didn’t cue the other desired perceptual categories. The Team developed various other names like AirWire, Badge, Banter, eBox, GamePlan, Com Top, Slide, Tel Top, Verb, Veon, Wheels, WorldTop etc. But in the end BlackBerry was chosen over all these suggested names because of the following reasons. BlackBerry implies something lie, growing on vine and therefore connected  and vital.  As a fruit, a blackberry is friendly and approachable, not intimidating at all, and as a small, more unusual fruit, it is fun. In addition a small fruit it is fast as well as easy to use.”

BlackBerry, as a name very well defined the intended perceptions of the company. Brands are like concepts and brand name is one cue that reinforces that concept. One should not stick with one word and spend the whole energy in explaining the word. BlackBerry on one hand adopted a very flexible approach and studied the pros and cons of every suggested name. Take a case of one more company as explained in WordCraft is “Mxyplyzyk”. This unusual name is pronounced as "mix-ee-pliz-ik,", inspired by a character in early superman comics. It is a gift shop in New York, in initial stages company faced problems because word of mouth publicity is a problem when customers are not able to pronounce the name of your company properly. However, as Shakespeare rightly said “Rose with any name will smell as sweet as Rose itself”. So unless services and products delight the customers company with any name will successful and in this case Mxyplzyk. The gift shop offers quirky mix of well designed but affordable items gathered from all around the world.

Words project feelings, emotions to your company and product so communicating the brand name effectively is one of the core issues that companies face. Take an example of Idea, The name itself defines that the company is selling ideas, it is giving platform to the people to talk and share ideas. Half of the work of the company is done and communication as mentioned earlier does half the other work. Communication of Idea is to target rural India and empower them with an idea of communicating. The latest advertisement of Idea talks about that the company is for the people and by the people.

In short, Brand Name is like an ambassador of the company that helps in differentiating it from competitors. It will not be surprising if a new department in every company would be set up with a name of Naming Department. There is a huge scope of B2B of offering services in brand name development to other companies.