With as many of 26,000 new products launched per year, good brand/product names are getting much harder to come by. Naming is an art and a science—part psychology, linguistics, anthropology and marketing. It’s difficult and challenging but rewarding when you get it right.
So what constitutes a good name and what makes it effective in the marketplace? We’d like to offer some insights we’ve learned from our experience naming companies and products in a variety of b2b categories.
Make it short, sweet and easy to pronounce.
If people have to be told how to spell the name once, that’s fine (and may even help with recall). If they have to be told twice, that’s a problem. Using one of the sticky consonants (k, q, x or z) can help with recall. So can alliteration (repetition of vowels or consonants), which is what makes the name Coca Cola so powerful.
Make it unique in your industry.
The name shouldn’t sound like the rest of your direct competitors. For example, HotJobs.com, Careers.com and CareerJunction.com are all easily lost in the crowd, while Monster.com stands out dramatically. Avoid tired word roots like pro, global and ultra.
Make it descriptive or at the very least, appropriate to what you’re selling.
The founders of Starbucks originally suggested the name Pequod Coffee Company, hoping to evoke the romance of the high seas with the image of the boat in Moby Dick. But the branding firm strongly disagreed, saying that people would never drink a cup of Pequod. Of course, they were right. Starbucks, the name of a mate on the Pequod, was a much more suitable option for premium coffee.
If the name can suggest the benefits of the product or brand, all the better. The name Acura was an ideal choice for Honda’s luxury brand because it’s based on the morpheme “acu”, which means “precisely” or “with care”—helping to put the brand in the league of the German luxury car brands.’
The best brand names have universal meaning. Sony, for example, is based on the morpheme son, which means “sound” In many different languages.
The name should be trademarkable.
What’s the point of starting any company or marketing campaign if you can’t have full rights to the name? Your best defense is always the TM, which only can be issued by the USPTO (or an equivalent agency in other countries). If the USPTO won’t issue a registration certificate because they judge it to be generic within the industry you’re competing, then you have problem.
Is it available on the web?
Is a suitable version of the name available for use on the web as a .com or .net?
It’s getting harder and harder to purchase a decent web domain these days.
Avoid acronyms and abbreviations.
If you have a long descriptive name, people will abbreviate it quickly. It may have worked for IBM, AT&T, CBS etc., but how many years and how many branding dollars do you have? For a small company, it means you’ll quickly become YASI (Yet Another Set of Initials) that stand for nothing in the customer’s mind.
The name should be flexible and expandable.
Too many people try to describe their company rather than name it. Copyland, Copydata, Copyshop and QuickCopy all define what they do but they’re barely distinguishable from one another. Kinkos, on the other hand, not only stands out from the competition but it also doesn’t pigeonhole the company into just copy services.
Avoid names that will age quickly.
Be careful of “in” words or expressions that will go out of fashion. They may also not play well across all demographics. Many markets like high-tech have their own “industry-speak” and slang, which tend to make for “me too” names. Names with classical roots tend to endure more easily — and grow old gracefully.
Embrace your company’s brand personality
Ask yourself, “does the name sound like us?” Will it appeal to the customers we’re trying to reach? Does it give the right connotations for who we are and the industry we’re in?
Make sure a product name fits in with the rest of your company’s brand portfolio.
Do all of the names in your product line sound like they all come from the same family? Your naming architecture needs to be properly managed to maximize your brand power and intellectual property portfolio.
Finally, listen to your inner ear.
In spite of all the available criteria, experts say there’s no reliable scorecard for assessing winning names. Final judgment often rests with your own intuition, feelings and “gut” reactions. (Sort of like naming your son or daughter.)
