Kay, How Do I Name My Brand?
It’s all in the name (no it's not... but some of it is)
This is how I approach to naming brands while doing the Brand Strategy Workshops with my clients:
To begin with, a brand needs a STAND-OUT name. There are seven criteria to look for in a stand-out name.
A strong name is:
- Differentiated: It should stand out from competitors’ names, as well as from other words in a sentence. This is sometimes called “speech-stream visibility”, the quality that lets the eye or the ear pick out the name as a proper (or capitalized) word instead of a common word.
- Brief: Four syllables or less. More than four, and people start to abbreviate the name in ways that could be detrimental to the brand.
- Appropriate: But not so descriptive as to sound generic. A common mistake is to choose a name that doubles as a descriptor, which will cause it to converge with other descriptive names. Actually, a strong brand name can be “blind”, meaning that it gives no clue as to its connection with the product, service, or company it represents, yet still “feels” appropriate.
- Easy to spell: When you turn your name into a spelling contest, you introduce more confusion among customers and make your brand difficult to access in databases that require correct spelling.
- Satisfying to pronounce: A good name has “mouthfeel”, meaning that people like the way it sounds and are therefore more willing to use it.
- Suitable for “brand play”: The best names have creative “legs”—they readily lend themselves to great storytelling, graphics, PR, advertising, and other communications.
- Legally defensible: (I feel like this one should be obvious but still...) The patent office wants to make sure that customers are not confused by sound-alike names or look-alike trademarks. A good name is one that keeps legal fees to a minimum.
But how do I come up with these names?
One common exercise I do while trying to come up with brand names is brainstorm names in the 6 naming styles:
Most brand names that you see out there can be classified 90% of the time into one of these buckets.
Here's a cheat sheet for you to refer if you are brainstorming names for your brand:
P.S. - I picked up this framework from Marty Neumeier’s Brand Gap. Check it out if you wanna learn more about it.