A good name is an essential strategic and identity element for organizations that seek to meet their business objectives and thus endure. It is the gateway to the imaginary of any brand and, at the same time, a generator of emotional connections with the people to whom it provides value. Names are everything, said Oscar Wilde. Because they build realities.
As part of our brand creation and management work, we frequently accompany companies that need to work on—or rework—naming and thus modulate their brand image, that subjective perception that emerges in each person when interacting with a business, in the context of a broader and continuous work: strategy, visual and verbal identity and, of course, activation.
Let’s dive into the challenges and opportunities we have identified.
The great challenge of naming
Naming a company, or changing it after years of activity, is usually one of the most challenging phases of branding work because it awakens the imagination that each person carries with them: any name can remind us of an old friendship or a project that went very badly (or very well) in the past. It is difficult to get rid of that backpack made of context, culture, and references.
For this reason, we always say that having a strategic partner on this path is essential, and also that a good naming job must anticipate the biases of this first impression with a solvent technical work. In fact, contrary to what it may seem, naming is more a technical than a creative task in which we try to ensure that the chosen option...
- Describes the business
- Is euphonious (i.e. sound good, without negative connotations)
- Allows differentiation or is unique
- Does not have meanings that work against the organization, both now and in the future
- Is concise, easy to pronounce, and spell
- Is easy to remember
- Is flexible and can grow, a must to ensure scalability
A necessary horizon
Does a name have to meet all the requirements? Ideally, yes, but reality tells us that there are exceptions that work perfectly. Descriptive? Mercedes-Benz. Concise? PricewaterhoseCooper. Easy to pronounce? Haägen-Dazs. Differentiating? Meta. Brand naming is, therefore, ambivalent: on the one hand, it is very broad; on the other hand, it is highly restrictive. It is increasingly difficult to find a winning alternative. Every day, there are new trademark registrations, and domains are very saturated. And let's not forget that we live in a constant barrage of stimuli. In the attention economy, finding a name with solid seams, even if it is unorthodox, is not only necessary but also essential.
Reactions to the context
Faced with the difficulties imposed by the ecosystem, in recent years, various trends have been consolidated in search of nooks and crannies: from neologisms, such as Netflix, Spotify, or Bizum, to resorting to universes created by film and literature, as is the case with The Lord of the Rings and Palantir Technologies, Anduril Industries or Mithril Capital Management Ways of checking these technical requirements by being creative.
There will always be activation
In those cases where it is impossible to meet all the technical requirements—something that occurs in most situations—because we want to maintain a legacy or because there is a compelling option in one of the categories, such as meaning, we must rely even more on brand activation.
We are talking about creating launch campaigns, publishing content or organizing events, for example. Marketing, communication, and much more. Physical or digital, for internal or external audiences.
Everything that makes the name memorable consolidates the positioning to enhance differentiation or even adds nuances to the meaning if new products and services have been born.
A consequence of the strategy
There are no magic formulas in naming work; it is only a search for options and an excellent strategic approach. The goal, at the end of the road, is to overcome the creative and technical barriers imposed by the macro context and also by each particular sector so that the name of your organization is a lever for attracting, retaining, and building customer loyalty.
