Naming Evaluation Criteria

Backgrorund reading

What's in a Name?

Away with words - naming blog "The mysteries of naming.

Brand Trends - Brand Naming By Chuck Pettis

• An effective brand name will be appropriate for the category, memorable, and "available" as a trademark and domain name. Here are a few brand name strategies:
• The shorter the name, the better. Example: Apple.
• Keep the name simple. Use fewer letters of the alphabet by repeating letters. Example: Google.
• Be suggestive of the category. Example: PlayStation^??.
• Use alliteration (the recurrence of the same letter and sound in accented parts of words). Example: Volvo. Note: a repeated sound is more effective and memorable than repeated letters.
• Be easy to say and read (spoken as spelled). Test: do you have to spell the name over the phone?
• Be shocking! Examples: Yahoo, Virgin.
• Personalize the brand name. Example: Craigslist.org.
• Avoid negative connotations. People often associate inappropriate ideas and things with names. Do market research to make sure that there are no negative connotations with your name.
• Use a name, not an acronym (a word formed from the initial letters of a name). "Names" are 60% more memorable than an acronym. Comments from a recent BrandSolutions^?? survey on acronyms: I do not like names with abbreviations in them. I prefer the name written out, rather than an acronym. I like names that are not abbreviated. They are simpler to understand.

The brand name is usually the most emotional component of brand identity. I advise clients not to get too attached to any one name during the brand naming process because trademark and domain name conflicts will probably eliminate most potential brand name candidates. Testing of the final names is essential to find the name that is most compelling and credible to customers

Study: New Brand Names Not Making Their Mark BRANDWEEK Magazine, December 8, 2003

With 80,000 words in the dictionary and more than 280,000 U.S. trademark applications a year, no wonder it is difficult to come up with a meaningful brand name for anything.

Many companies and organizations think that once you get a new brand name, then the "brand" problem is solved. Brand names are taken very seriously and emotionally inside the organization, yet once a "name" becomes a "brand name," the impact of the brand name on brand equity is much less than the associated purchase factors and imagery. That is why major companies like Microsoft are prohibiting new brand names unless absolutely necessary. The current trend is to use the company name as the "brand name" followed by a generic category descriptor, e.g. Microsoft Customer Relationship Management software.

Call It Viagra The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2004 Wordcraft: The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business by Alex Frankel (Crown, 241 pages, $24) gives an inside-look into the brand naming process for five brand names: BlackBerry^??, Accenture, Viagra, the Porsche Cayenne, and IBM's e-business. Mr. Frankel, a journalist in San Francisco, researched the topic after being a "naming consultant" for companies during the dot-com boom. Wordcraft is a look into the different and various ways that companies and products are named.