Today we’re talking about brand naming.
Now, naming and logos are two of the aspects of a brand that people get most hung up about, most precious and the most sort of engaged and protective of – sort of funny, human nature I guess.
Naming falls in to two categories. We’ve got new naming in terms of establishing a new name for a new business or product or service and we have a renaming from a company that’s been existing for a number of years.
So our approach to naming is really exactly the same for both of those two categories and this approach kind of goes at odds to how business owners tend to approach named themselves. They come up with a business, brand or a you know a system or an idea and then jump straight into a name and trying to develop and pluck one out of thin air and we’ve seen time and time again people go round and round in circles because they haven’t got a framework that they can actually produce and judge and names’ validity on so they just go round around in circles. They’re lost.
So when we take a process we actually take a strategic process to it. You know define your business first, understand the business and understand yourself and therefore we can actually create a name that tells and helps position the company in the market place. The name remember it’s just a one brand element everything else can help do that sell that story position that company the name doesn’t have to do it all.
So when it comes to naming you want it to be short, you want to be unique and therefore it’s going to be memorable. These days you get a lot of these short sort of snappy names they’re great for use in the modern world. You want to make sure that the URL is obviously available, companies offer some things if you want to register a company and things as well but that can be a bit a bit more flexible. But you definitely wanna make sure that URL. If it has been purchased but not used then you’re gonna have to negotiate with that person around they’re using that name – of course there’s a flexibility and alternatives you can do there as well.
You then want to make sure that there’s no negative connotations to the name that you’ve chosen in terms of if it was an acronym shortened to an acronym or does that spell does the pronunciation how it sounds does that not sound offensive or rude and also how that might translate into different territories different countries and languages and what that might mean and it’s not a negative rude word as well.
You also want to ensure that the name is broad enough to cover your future or desired products or services that you might want to offer. If you have a name that is too niche then you can be feel constrained and that name won’t clear or clearly will accurately reflect to the other services that you’re trying to deliver in the future and to be honest when people come to us for a rename that is one of the biggest problems that we see – a name not accurately selling and positioning and telling that story accurately anymore. They’re feeling constrained.
So, make sure you go through and consider all of those points and I would highly recommend doing it from a strategically led basis. Don’t try and think of a name straight up you know out of thin air, think about who the company is, how you’re unique, how you’re different, how you positioned in the marketplace and what you stand for some of those brand essence elements and then let the name fall out of that. Let that those are those aspects be the litmus test for what is a good or bad name. That gives you some clarity that gives you a framework to start thinking about and there should deliver a bit more success.
I’ve been Tim dove from Re:brand
