Brand Naming 101

Brand Naming 101.

A great brand name is more than just a label—it’s a strategic asset that can significantly influence a company’s success. It serves as the first point of interaction between a business and its potential customers, making it crucial for creating a strong first impression. A memorable and impactful brand name helps establish a unique identity in a crowded market, differentiating a business from its competitors. This distinctiveness can foster recognition and recall, making it easier for customers to remember and engage with the brand. Essentially, a well-crafted brand name lays the foundation for a brand’s entire identity and reputation.

Beyond initial impressions, a great brand name also contributes to building trust and credibility. It should evoke positive associations and align with the values and promises of the business. When a name resonates with its target audience and reflects the company’s mission, it enhances the overall perception of the brand. A name that conveys professionalism, reliability, and quality can reinforce consumer confidence and encourage brand loyalty. This trust is invaluable, as it often translates into repeat business and positive word-of-mouth recommendations, further cementing the brand’s presence in the market.

Moreover, a strong brand name has significant implications for marketing and branding strategies. It provides a foundation for creating compelling narratives and consistent messaging across various channels. A name that is both distinctive and relevant allows for the development of a cohesive brand story that can be effectively communicated through advertising, social media, and other promotional activities. This consistency helps to build a unified brand image, which is essential for attracting and retaining customers. In essence, a great brand name supports the creation of a robust marketing strategy that can drive growth and establish a lasting connection with the audience.

Finally, a well-chosen brand name can offer long-term value and adaptability. As businesses evolve and expand, having a versatile name that can grow with the company ensures that branding efforts remain relevant and effective. A great brand name is not only memorable but also flexible enough to accommodate changes in product lines, markets, or business models. This adaptability helps prevent the need for frequent rebranding, which can be costly and disruptive. By investing in a thoughtful and strategic brand name, businesses set themselves up for sustained success and ongoing relevance in their industry.

Here are the critical Steps to effective Brand Naming:

1. Seek Professional Assistance to Begin
   Finding the right business name can be a challenging endeavor. It may be beneficial to consult a professional, particularly in industries where your company name can impact your business success. Naming agencies utilize sophisticated methods to generate new names and are well-versed in trademark regulations. They can help you avoid poor name selections and clarify the reasons behind effective choices.
2. Define Your Brand Name Goals
   Identify the specific message you want to convey to potential customers. Your brand name should reflect what you do and how you do it, highlighting what differentiates you from others in your industry.
3. Generate a Variety of Names
   The most effective brand names resonate emotionally while also providing logical information. Approach the brainstorming process from various perspectives to explore diverse possibilities.
4. Verify Trademark Status
   With countless trademarks currently active, it’s essential to check each of your preferred names to ensure they are not already registered. If necessary, you can create a unique word or name to navigate around existing trademarks.
5. Develop a Brand Image for Each Option
   After narrowing down your choices, design visual concepts for each brand name. Creating mood boards will help you visualize and assess your options more clearly.
6. Make Your Final Choice
   Regardless of whether the decision is made by an individual or a group, select the name that best represents your business. Once you’ve decided on your brand name, complement it with a marketing and ecommerce strategy to engage your target audience effectively. While your brand name should appeal to a broad audience, it’s also crucial to deliver on the promises associated with it.

Avoid these Brand Naming Missteps:

With countless poor brand names in existence, identifying what makes them ineffective can be challenging. However, certain characteristics, when combined, contribute to a notably bad brand name:

1. Associating with an Inappropriate Image
   One major branding blunder was made by Burger King, which featured an actor wearing a king mask in their commercials. The intention was humor, but it ended up feeling unsettling. Choose imagery that aligns well with your brand name to avoid this pitfall.
2. Lack of Originality
   Building consumer trust is essential for your brand. If you mimic another brand, potential customers may assume your services are simply copies rather than unique offerings.
3. Personal Jokes or Niche Puns
   Names that are obscure or rely on inside jokes can be frustrating for consumers, especially if they are transformed into puns that may not resonate with a broader audience.
4. Unconventional or Misspelled Words
   A brand name should remain recognizable as a legitimate word. Companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon have gained significant recognition through clear and simple spellings. Consider whether your name is easy to pronounce and remember.

Brand Naming Guidelines:

1. The Brand Name Should Be Simple
   A simple bit of information is more easily learned and recalled. A simple brand name has two key cognitive advantages when it comes to memory. First, humans have a finite amount of attention to work with. Simple brand names require less mental effort to process, making them more likely to catch and hold a consumer’s attention. When something successfully grabs our attention, we’re more likely to process it deeply, leading to better memory retention.The second advantage comes into play once we’re actually paying attention. Simple information is naturally easier for our brains to store in memory. This becomes especially important in low-involvement situations – when consumers aren’t particularly motivated to learn about a product, they’re unlikely to invest the mental energy needed to remember complex information. In these casual encounters with brands, simple names have a clear advantage in being remembered.
2. The Brand Name Should Be Distinctive
   Distinctiveness is often considered a crucial characteristic of brand names, with some experts viewing it as the most important feature due to its benefits for memory retention, legal protection, and market positioning. Think of memorable examples like Apple, Hoka, Amazon, Google or Lush. Two cognitive processes explain why distinctive names stick in our memory. First, unusual or unique brand names naturally draw our attention. Second, they trigger curiosity, which motivates us to remember them. The attention-grabbing power of distinctive stimuli is well acknowledged. Importantly, a brand name doesn’t need to be completely unique, it just needs to stand out within its product or service category. When surrounded by similar competitors, a different name naturally catches the eye, increasing the likelihood that consumers will process and remember it. Apple is a perfect example: while it’s a common word, it became distinctive when applied to computers, standing out among more technical-sounding competitors in the technology sector.
3. The Brand Name should be Meaningful.
   Brand names that carry meaning for consumers are naturally easier to remember. At Straydog, we believe that names should be intuitive and user-friendly. We recommend using real words rather than invented terms, acronyms, or personal names. Names should reflect the product’s benefits. When a name communicates an advantage that consumers actually want, it becomes inherently meaningful to them, ie: Budget or Sprint.
4. A Brand Name Should Paint a Picture in the Mind
   When we talk about a brand name’s “image,” we’re referring to its ability to create a mental picture, rather than its market positioning. Research consistently shows that words that easily evoke mental images are more memorable than those that don’t. This effect holds true both for words in general and specifically for brand names. Concrete nouns – words representing tangible things you can picture, like “dog” – are easier to visualize than abstract concepts like “justice.” This explains why brand names like Dove, Mustang, Explorer, and Apple are typically easier to remember than abstract names like Pledge, Tempo, Ban, or Bold. Words that are easily visualized create richer mental connections. When a brand name generates a clear mental image, it creates multiple pathways in the mind. These additional mental connections – whether they’re truly visual or just word associations – give consumers more mental “hooks” to grab onto when trying to recall the name later. In contrast, abstract names give marketers a blank slate to build meaning from scratch, but they lack these natural memory advantages.
5. The Brand Name should be an Emotional Word
   People better remember information, words, and brand names that carry emotional weight. Names that evoke positive associations, generate good feelings, and carry strong symbolic meaning. Think of emotionally charged brand many perfume brand names such as Opium, Allure, Obsession. Emotional brand names are particularly effective when they match the emotional nature of the product category.This aligns with the psychological principle of “state-dependent memory” – we tend to recall information that matches our current emotional state. For instance, when someone is shopping for cologne (an emotional purchase), they’re more likely to remember romantic or passionate brand names as mentioned above.Research has even shown that consumers prefer brand names that align with the emotional experience they hope to get from using the product. Interestingly, the memory advantage of emotional names isn’t limited to emotional product categories. Even when studying seemingly unemotional products like computer software or board games, researchers found that a name’s emotional impact was so powerful that they had to control for it when studying other naming factors like image. The key challenge for companies is to understand how potential brand names resonate emotionally with their target market.

Brainstorming a Name

A simple 6-step process to come up with 100 ideas:

1. Competitors
   What name/s are your competitors using to brand their products?
   Include substitutes.
   Write down 15 words.
2. Value
   What words encompass the most important thing your product does for its users? Use verbs. Write down 15 words.
3. Literal
   Which words come to mind when thinking about your product’s physical characteristics?
   Write down 15 words.
4. Abstract
   Which words related to feelings or emotions best convey your product’s key functions? Write down 15 words.
5. Combinations
   How could you combine (either by prepending or appending) any of the words in points 1-4 to form a new name?
   Write down 15 combinations.
6. Synonyms
   Find synonyms for the best 25 words that you came up with in points 1-4.
   Spend more time on your strongest ideas.
   Write down at least 25 synonyms.

To learn more about Brand Naming, leap over to our Brand Naming page.

Other articles on Naming:

Brand Naming Styles

The Rules of Brand Naming

The Importance of a Great Name