Branding: What’s in a Name?
A strong brand identity is paramount to any successful business and establishing a brand name with significant impact is an enormous part of that.
Something seemingly as simple as the choice of words or letters and the sounds or images these convey can dramatically impact their reception. Mere letters or words carry the profound ability to persuade or dissuade an audience instantly. Choice of brand name can influence the consumer to engage or disengage entirely with a product or company emotionally. The simple sight of a particular brand name might make you opposed to their product despite knowing nothing about it. Or, you might find yourself partial to a specific brand because its cute, colloquial name gives you a fuzzy feeling inside or reminds you of being a kid.
This is because of associations.
Brand associations are those attributes of a brand which spring to the consumer’s mind when that brand is mentioned. The more positive the associations made with a particular brand, the longer-lasting and more memorable the impact will be.
This makes your brand name one of your most effective tools and absolutely crucial to focus on if you’re looking to be a success.
You know you’ve got a strong brand when even the first letter of your company name is instantly recognised.
This burger popping bad boy needs no further introduction. Bet you heard the song in your head too.
Or when your brand goes from being a full length name to being all about the acronym.
In fact, a brand name can have such significant impact that it can even manipulate the entire way the world spells a particular word, as was the case with US chain Dunkin’ Donuts, who first opened in 1950. Google Books data heavily suggests that a significant rise in the use of the spelling “donut” rather than “doughnut” occurred parallel to the 1950s opening and subsequent of the store.
So with this in mind, how do you pick a good brand name?
Score high on the scrabble board
This is a tip notably used by Richard Barton, Founder of Expedia, Glassdoor and Zillow. It’s also a great excuse to challenge someone to a game of Scrabble. When choosing your brand name, lean toward letters like Z, Q, X, J, K. These are the highest scoring on the Scrabble board and incidentally the most memorable and seldom used letters of the alphabet. Use them strategically to score a brand name that sticks.
That said, don’t get carried away. Pepsi, for example, is still a successful brand name despite featuring none of these. So, focus on getting the name that works. If you strike gold with a high score on the Scrabble board then great but don’t worry if you suss yourself a brand name that sounds better without. More top scoring letters might be an advantage, but they aren’t essential to win the game.
Don’t be Afraid to be “Wrong”
As is true of most conceptual copywriting, being deliberately incorrect can sometimes be the smartest approach.
One of the earliest examples of this can be seen in the use of the letter K in branding.
K is the 22nd most common letter in the alphabet, boasts a whopping 5 points on the Scrabble board, and it’s angular edges carry striking, unfamiliar appeal.
Other successful names that break the standard rules of English include:
Which?
MORE TH>N
FCUK
Quik by GoPro
Sleep-Eze
“Lite” and “nite” (Both used by many brands)
Keep in mind that knowing what’s right is essential to getting it wrong the right way. There’s a fine line between looking smart and stupid. Know the rules. Break them well.
Check for domain availability
When building your brand (link) and figuring out the best name for it, make sure you check for domain availability. Chances are, you want some sort of web presence. Hell, you may only be present online! So you’ll need a URL. There are plenty of free domain checkers online:
www.ionos.co.uk
names.co.uk
www.instantdomainsearch.com
or if you’re building a website through a site such as Squarespace (link), you can find out if your domain name is available through there.
Once you’ve found it, it’s usually wise to reserve it just to be on the safe side, even if your site or brand isn’t fully built yet.
What happens if your domain name isn’t available? Don’t panic!
While in the perfect world your domain name would match, there’s really no need to despair if your chosen brand name isn’t available as “.com”. Just tweak it to a slightly different name. Keep your excellent brand name and have a slightly altered domain name. Your brand name matters far more than having the same domain name.
Pay Attention to Brand Verbification
Verbification is more technically referred to as “anthimeria” by etymologists. Anthi..wha? Yeah, I know. It hardly swirls off on the tongue.
Anthimeria is the name given when a word switches function or is used in a new grammatical form. This typically occurs when an adjective (all trademarks are adjectives) or noun starts being used as a verb. The advantage to anthimeria is that if your trademarked name goes onto to become an everyday verb or a generic trademark, you can usually take it as a serious indication of success.
Some examples of brands that have become everyday verbs:
Google (“Google it”)
Rollerblade (“Wanna go rollerblading?”)
Jet-ski (“Let’s go jet-skiing!”)
Whatsapp (“Whatsapp me”)
Skype (“Let’s Skype”)
Bubblewrap (“I’ll bubblewrap that.”)
Velcro (“You can velcro it together!”)
Just to name a few of the many that have come to exist. Mad, isn’t it?
While it can be exciting to imagine your own brand name having the potential to become an everyday word, the advice here is tread carefully. Anthimeria can also lead to trademark issues or a loss of trademark power or what some have termed “genericide” leading to legal battles to retain your trademark. Trying too hard to verbify your brand can also backfire as well. Yahoo once asked everyone the question “Do you Yahoo?”… Let’s just say, I’ve never heard the answer, they soon stopped asking the question and several years on Yahoo appears to have stuck to its career as a noun.
The advice here is not to hunt out the next best potential verb for your brand name but to consider whether you would want your brand to become used as a verb or a generic term at all. Sometimes, this is sought after. Often, it is not. Either way, it’s important to consider when creating your brand name which you’re looking to achieve. If the former, it usually works best if you’re a particular service such as an app or online service. If the latter, then capitalise on your mark and steer clear of the goods or services it applies to.
Tap into the Power of Synaesthesia
Particular letters or words and their sounds or the symbolism they evoke are more likely to be experienced positively and be liked, shared and remembered.
I didn’t realise until I was 21 that my whole life I’d been experiencing what’s known as grapheme synaesthesia (letters and numbers seen in specific colours), personification synaesthesia (letters, numbers, days of the week and in my case also names, adverts, music etc. take on distinct personalities) and Chromesthesia (where music and voices trigger vivid colours).
Grapheme Synaesthesia: Example of the colours I see for letters and numbers.
The generally agreed theory behind synaesthesia is that it’s a result of multiple senses which are bridged in childhood to facilitate learning. These senses should, but sometimes don’t break apart as people get older. As it turns out this is probably a more common experience than we think, and all of us to some extent have elements of this.
Synaesthesia is nothing new in the world of advertising either. Advertisers have long been taking advantage of synaesthetic associations and have focused their attention on creating adverts that hit a multitude of senses at the same time.
When it comes to your brand name, you can take advantage of this too. Consider how each word sounds, how it appears, how it would feel if it were a texture, how it would smell or how it might taste. A brand specialising in a particular craft might focus more on the “texture” of their brand name while a brand specialising in food may focus more on how a word would “taste”.
Personification can also be useful. Who would the word be if it were a person or animal? How do they move? How do they behave? How do they think? What do they feel? It may sound far-fetched (perhaps even bonkers!) but attempting to personify your potential brand name can help to breathe personality into your brand name and altogether begin to enhance your overall brand identity. It can also feed over into the design process, helping to bring your brand name or logo to life on the page once your name has been established.
Think back to Primary School
Remember the days of learning all about alliteration, how to rhyme, or dreading the teacher would pick on you to spell “onomatopoeia” to the rest of the class?
Turns out these techniques can come in handy if you’re looking to create a catchy, creative brand name and many successful brand names use them.
Brand names with alliteration:
PayPal
Krispy Kreme
Coca Cola
Dunkin’ Donuts
Tetley Tea
Burt’s Bees
KitKat
TicTacs
Ted Talks
Linguistics really do have the potential to give your brand name that successful edge.