How to Generate Effective New Names

A name is probably the most important element of your brand. Change your company name and people want to know why. The change may suggest to customers that a major change has happened, that a new CEO has stimulated new corporate direction perhaps, or that a takeover has happened. They’ll want to know why, and you’d better have a good answer for them, even if it was only because your management team decided that the old name was just not working any longer.

People search for companies and products by name. Google has yet to perfect a means of searching for companies by their logo!

Important things to consider
Protect your name as a trademark. New names can be notoriously difficult and expensive to create. Once you have one, ensure that no-one else takes it away from you or tries to register a confusingly similar name. Remember that registering a name in more than one country can be a lengthy and involved exercise.

Invest in your name
All promotional and advertising activities ultimately add value to your name, helping audiences remember it and identify you in an increasingly crowded marketplace. In a name change situation, the sooner you inform people that your name has changed and the reasons why, the more likely they will accept it with no questions asked.

Unique and different
Ensure that your name is unique and sufficiently differentiated from your competitors. Why have a name that’s just like all others in your industry sector? While it is important to be unique, the name should reflect the personality, attitude and core values of your brand. Apple and Virgin are great examples of this.

Apple = a creative and user-friendly alternative to PCs.
Virgin = a reflection of the challenging and rebellious attitude of its founder Richard Branson.

How it looks
The visual manifestation of a name is also important. The name must be supported visually for viewing by its audiences. A name without a logo is not nearly as powerful or memorable, in the same way that people have difficulty remembering other people’s names but remember their face. People remember logo designs and colours and directly associate them with names.

Some companies do colour very well, to the point where their name becomes synonymous with product colouring. Take Cadbury for example. Its products own a very specific purple that appears on all its packs. And it knows how valuable this is to the Cadbury name. In order to protect its interests the company has become involved in several court cases where competitor products have adopted packaging colours similar to the Cadbury purple.

The telecommunications company Orange in the UK (with an orange coloured logo of course) by inference owns the colour orange in the minds of its customers. The name doesn’t immediately reflect any of the key values of the company, it is simply different, distinctive and memorable in this industry sector. The ‘essence’ of the brand is then built through communications, advertising, PR etc.

The golden rule here is to build a brand name that is strong enough to transcend any changes in brand identity.

Integrity of your name
The world is increasingly multicultural. There are more globally recognised and distributed names than ever before. The challenge for companies, even those operating on a local level, is to ensure their name is understood and appreciated by the majority of people in these communities. This requires from them a name that crosses linguistic and cultural barriers. People need to be able to pronounce the name and be comfortable that it has no negative connotations. As a general rule, the further the name travels, the more work you have to do to ensure it won’t confuse or upset people or even be subject to ridicule or even litigation. Choose your name consultants carefully!

Key requirements of a successful name
1/. It must be different to competitor names.
2/. It must be relevant to consumers that you are targeting. They must recognise in your name qualities and attributes consistent with their perception of a good company or product.
3/. Ensure the name is protected by copyright. The consequences of not doing so can be expensive and disastrous, particularly if you are venturing into overseas markets.
4/. The name must be memorable. If it isn’t, you’re faced with spending additional dollars to promote and advertise it.

There are examples of short names that are memorable and also long ones. LG is about as short as a name can be. Its acceptance globally was certainly helped by the addition of an attached statement ‘Life is Good’, that is intriguing and explains the meaning behind the two initials.

There are many instances of names that comprise sets of initials. The majority are not memorable. There are exceptions such as BMW which has a long history and products sold around the world supported by immense investment in advertising. This has helped create a level of awareness where there can be very few people on the planet who aren’t aware of the BMW name and what it stands for.

An example of a company with a long and memorable name is SuperCoffeeMix which has high recognition in the Singapore market after many years of trading and promotion. This name is interesting however in that it suffers from being a name that, when originally launched, admirably spelled out exactly what the company’s product focus was. Over the course of time however, with the company’s diversification into bottled water, tea and fruit drinks, the name has become confusing and potentially damaging. It is now faced with the need for a name change particularly for export markets where new customers will find the name misleading as it may suggest that there is coffee flavouring added to the beverage.

5/. Check the meaning of the name in different languages and cultures to ensure there is no possibility of negative connotations. We have all read of instances where the meaning of names changed in different languages and cultures. For example, the name of the popular Japanese 4WD that in Spain translates as bull’s testicles. Then there are the names that just sound strange in other cultures – for example the Spanish coffee named Bonka. Unfortunately there are many of them, suggesting that companies are not sufficiently diligent when checking and testing names prior to release in new markets.

Why change your name?
A corporate name change normally occurs as the result of a merger, acquisition, demerger, disposal, where a name is misleading or where it is inappropriate for new markets. Examples of changes due to mergers are:

The Sandoz merger with Ciba-Geigy that produced Novartis. A totally new name with no connection to those of the two merged entities, with a fresh and modern ‘feel’ has been well received. Certainly a more palatable solution than Sandoz Ciba-Geigy.

There have been instances however, where it is considered that each of the merger entities have such equity in their names that they don’t wish to relinquish them, leading to combined names such as that of the Australian steel and mining giant BHP Billiton. This naming approach however is inconsistent with the new logo that illustrates two elements merging into one.

Some names just don’t travel well
Companies in places like Singapore face the prospect of having to review their Chinese sounding company names and products when taking them into overseas markets where consumers have strong preferences for English names or ones that are indigenous to that market.

Testing before market release ­- don’t dismiss the unusual
Consumer testing plays an important role prior to a name being selected and registered. In my experience however, testing can be unsatisfactory for several reasons. Consumers in test conditions need to have an in-depth understanding of what the brand stands for and what it hopes to achieve. It is too easy for participants to rely on ‘gut feel’, then default to descriptive names and dismiss the more unusual ones. “Who’d name a computer after a fruit?” "Who'd name a car Ka or Quashqai?".

Generating a new name is not an easy process. Most obvious names in the English language are no longer available. This means that your naming resource must be creative and highly skilled in generating names that are different, distinctive and will be embraced and remembered by your audiences and consumers.

Tony Heywood is a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia, founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia and joint founder of BrandSynergy in Singapore.

View some of Heywood’s work on www.heywood.com.au

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