Naming and positioning

Editor's Notes

• #3: Name helps recall.
• #4: Bruno Brusinski Pek Yew Chai Don Mariano de Baron III Goliath Elephant Diyosa Gandanghari The name is first thing that people hear when you tell them about the company. At best, it signals maturity and relevance; at worst, a lack of vision, attention to detail and creativity. Before you can even finish your pitch, people are already making judgments of your company, and bad names can be a real distraction to important conversations. The name is important for discoverability, whether in Google searches (10% to 50%+ of site traffic, depending on the category), the App Store (especially painful in iOS6) and other text-based discovery channels. If it’s too hard to spell, or too similar to something that already exists, chances are that people won’t find you, and you’ll lose a good chunk of your potential business. The name is also a conduit to an emotional connection with your users. Good names — like good logos — evoke strong passion for your brand, while bad names elicit distaste and indifference. Using the former can be a competitive advantage for your company, especially when feature sets are roughly the same.
• #6: The new Pepsi logo was designed by the Arnell Group in 2008. The listed prices include a complete branding package unless otherwise noted.
• #7: The new Accenture logo was designed by Landor Associates in 2000. When Andersen Consulting broke contractual ties with the accounting group Andersen in 2000, the consulting firm was forced to change its signature name. In an effort to find a new moniker, an internal competition was held; an employee in Oslo submitted Accenture, meant to be a derivative of "accent on the future." When the name was adopted on Jan. 1, 2001, it was blasted as a generic corporate nonsense word only a management consultant could have come up with (which, essentially, was true). The change cost Andersen/Accenture an estimated $100 million to execute and was regarded as one of the worst rebrandings in corporate history. The new title turned out to be a blessing in disguise, however, when the Enron scandal erupted in October of that same year — permanently tainting the name of its accountants, Arthur Andersen. James Murphy, Andersen Consulting's global managing director of marketing and communications, says his firm test-marketed the name Accenture ("accent on the future") to about 600 companies to get their input without revealing that the word was a potential replacement for the Andersen Consulting name.
• #8: BMW , BMX
• #16: “TED doesn’t convey “Best and Brightest”” “TED” skews too masculine; its a man’s name. The name needs to be gender neutral to appeal to both sexes”
• #17: This legendary US original was literally named for selected ingredients: coca leaves and kola nuts. Kola was later altered to ‘cola’ for the alliterative effect.
• #18: Yes, people still say this to me on occasion. But fear not! Latin is not dead! Ask any language scholar and they will effectively say the same thing when you look at things in the right context. Latin did not die, it simply evolved. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it doesn’t mean that the caterpillar died. But the argument here is not just to prove that Latin isn’t dead, it’s to make the case that knowing Latin can prove useful in mastering several other languages. This statistic helps to illustrate Latin’s pervasiveness in other languages, even non-Romance languages: Nearly 60% of all English words are derived from Latin.
• #20: Limit between 2-4 syllables
• #27: Simple logos are often easily recognized, incredibly memorable and the most effective in conveying the requirements of the client.
• #33: Microsoft has no distinctive tagline. But Apple has “Think Different”.
• #34: Appearance – Simply how the name looks as a visual signifier, in a logo, an ad, on a billboard, etc. The name will always be seen in context, but it will be seen, so looks are important. Distinctive – How differentiated is a given name from its competition. Being distinctive is only one element that goes into making a name memorable, but it is a required element, since if a name is not distinct from a sea of similar names it will not be memorable. It’s important, when judging distinctiveness, to always consider the name in the context of the product it will serve, and among the competition it will spar with for the consumer’s attention. Depth – Layer upon layer of meaning and association. Names with great depth never reveal all they have to offer all at once, but keep surprising you with new ideas Energy – How vital and full of life is the name? Does it have buzz? Can it carry an ad campaign on its shoulders? Is it a force to be reckoned with? These are all aspects of a name’s energy level. Humanity – A measure of a name’s warmth, its "humanness," as opposed to names that are cold, clinical, unemotional. Another – though not foolproof – way to think about this category is to imagine each of the names as a nickname for one of your children. Positioning – How relevant the name is to the positioning of the product or company being named, the service offered, or to the industry served. Further, how many relevant messages does the name map to? Sound – Again, while always existing in a context of some sort or another, the name WILL be heard, in radio or television commercials, being presented at a trade show, or simply being discussed in a cocktail party conversation. Sound is twofold – not only how a name sounds, but how easily it is spoken by those who matter most: the potential customer. Word of mouth is a big part of the marketing of a company, product or service with a great name, but if people aren’t comfortable saying the name, the word won’t get out. "33" – The force of brand magic, and the word-of-mouth buzz that a name is likely to generate. Refers to the mysterious "33" printed on the back of Rolling Rock beer bottles from decades that everybody talks about because nobody is really sure what it means. "33" is that certain something that makes people lean forward and want to learn more about a brand, and to want to share the brand with others. The "33" angle is different for each name. Trademark – As in the ugly, meat hook reality of trademark availability. Scoring is easy here, as there are only three options, and nothing is subjective: 10 = likely available for trademark; 5 = may be available for trademark; and 0 = not likely available for trademark. All of the names on this list have been prescreened by a trademarked attorney and have been deemed "likely" for trademark registration.