MarketingDoctor.tv
What’s In A (Brand) Name?
The person who said it’s all in the name knew exactly what they were talking about!
Check out Guy Kawaski’s take here and Phil Davis’ 8 Naming Don’ts here. Both offer great insights into the importance and process of naming. I really like Kawasaki’s way of cutting to the chase in good naming –his sound-alike test is a real winner! Kawasaki gets it!
But one thing that I want to focus on is how to avoid being paralyzed by the fear of needing to get the name exactly correct at the beginning. Take Fox’s most watched show—the O’Reilly Factor. The original name was the O’Reilly Report—BORING (sorry Bill!), but that was before O’Reilly rediscovered the fundamentals of his brand by way of Tantillo. When Bill and I used to hang out together in the early eighties, I liked to refer to him as Factor. Add that to O’Reilly and the rest is history (see Rolling Stone’s account of how all this happened).
The lesson here is that you probably won’t get the name right the first time. Or the second. Or the third. Just keep moving forward. Don’t wait until the perfect name drops in your lap! .
Naming a brand isn’t like naming a baby. A baby might grow into his/her name, but a brand name grows out of the qualities of the brand itself. Think about O’Reilly and Factor—you do the math. Agree with him or not –those two words add up to something that really captures his brand! In fact, they grow out of his brand! Or consider Wite-Out. It could easily have been Blot Out,Erase All or Correct It or a number of other names and it might have done okay with any of those, but its inventors really got to the essence of what that brand is when they named it Wite-Out (but they did it only after ditching a longer name Wite-Out WO-1 Erasing Liquid).
So if you’re about to name your small business or name your product, my advice is take your time, think long and hard about what it is you do, what you want to do or what your product does and be ready to change or fine-tune your new name as things develop.
Serving your customers’ needs is about being adaptable and so is the naming process. Keep listening to what your brand, your business and your customers are saying, but most of all don’t let the fear of not getting it right paralyze you. You know what they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is your brand!!!
Did you know that it took the guy behind Coca-Cola three years to hit on the right name (and then another two decades to incorporate the business with the right name). Time waits for no man or woman and he didn’t sit around and wait! All the while, sales of his product were growing and when he got that name … wow, then they really took off!!!
And, oh yes, branding is always easier when you have marketing in mind!
Comments