The B.S.-Free Zone

Insight #1: Shakespeare was wrong.
by Barry Callen

A rose is not a rose is not a rose. You don't believe me? Consider this quick quiz: Which rose smells better? A) The Bus Seat Rose; or b) The Gym Socks Rose; or c) The Eau de Parfum' Rose. If you answered anything but C, there may be a forbidden website or seven-step group in your future.

The fact is, the name of your company, product, service, technology, program, or flavor is the single most powerful piece of creative communication you will ever invest in. It literally appears in every marketing communication you do, from answering the phone to running an ad. It is the first thing prospects see in the Yellow Pages or on Google.

An internationally famous beverage brand once asked my (former) agency to change the name of the flavor descriptor on the side of its bottle. Nothing else changed. Confidentiality prevents sharing the actual example, but it was the equivalent of changing "Watermelon Strawberry" to "Strawmelon Madness."

The flavor went from being the company's worst-seller to one of its best. Two little words earned millions.

Think this example doesn't apply to you because you are a law firm or an individual, or you manufacture high-pressure natural gas pumps? Here's an industry secret: Intent-to-purchase research suggests that a great name alone can enable your company to charge up to 10% more — because the prospective customer perceives that you offer more value. In the area of hard goods, perhaps up to 20% more. Imagine that.

Here are some time-tested characteristics of most great names. A great name is easy to say and pronounce (Sprite); is short and sweet (Tide); has concrete imagery (Apple Computers). It answers one or more positioning questions — Who is it for? (Playboy) What does it do? (TurboTax) How is it different? (Southwest Airlines). It creates a strong distinct feeling (Yahoo); has more positive than negative associations (Bud Lite, Golden Books). It is unusual (Amazon); uses rhyme (Piggly-Wiggly); or uses opposition (Stop-N-Go).

Here are some classic naming mistakes: Don't imitate the conventions of your category (First Affiliated United Federal Bank & Trust of Wisconsin). Don't use initials (C.R.P.T.M. Corporation). [Hint - only your customers can shorten your name. I.B.M. was International Business Machines for years before it gained its acronym.] Don't use numbers by themselves (The 1000 Series). And don't use abstractions in the name (Solutions, Quality, Professional, Technology).

Names like these are leaky buckets into which you pour your marketing communication dollars. They are easy to ignore and even easier to forget. Be name-game smart and test your name for positive and negative cues before you use it.

Here is the big challenge in naming: Like men, all the good ones are taken. In fact, 94% of all the words in The American Heritage Dictionary are now legally "owned" by someone, and the words that aren't owned are words you would not want me to list here (Caca Computers?).

This means that in order to create an ownable and legally defensible name, you must invent language. You must create words that don't exist but evoke the right meanings. And don't pick one fave name to test and clear legally — pick 10 or 20 or 50, because it's likely that over half of them will already by taken.

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If you comment on your own column, do you end up in some weird dimension, similar to when John Malkovitch entered his own brain in "Being John Malkovitch?" I'm about to find out. The comment I wanted to ad was an expansion on the cues testing point. Over the years, we have learned that any marketing communication, and especially any name, is powered by cues. Cues are tiny verbal and visual details that are how we know what we know. For example, we don't know for sure if a dog is friendly until we reach over and pet it and it does/does not bite us. So we rely on cues to help us decide whether or not to try and pet the dog. A small, smiling golden retriever with a wagging tail has a lot of positive cues. A large snarling pitt bull with a foaming blood-soaked mouth has a lot of negative cues. Over the years of testing names and ads, it became clear that there are positive cues that must be present, and negative cues that must be absent, in order for any communication or name to work. But here's the catch. The cues are only obvious in retrospect. So it pays to test a wide range of names (including ones you think are dead wrong) by asking which ones are the best at and worst at certain associations. For example, "Which name feels the most refreshing? Which name feels the least refreshing." Don't listen to any creative direction consumers have to offer...very few people can consciously articulate their unconscious motives. Instead, look at the best names to see what they have in common, and look at the worst names to see what they have in common, and look for an underlying connection between best and worst. Then, if you're really smart, you go back to the well, and using the principles you've discovered (say for example, all the best names have a certain kind of rhythm or imagery) and generate more names to test. I have been astonished at the tremendous gain in the power of the names that are then created. This kind of research is worth its weight in gold, since you will likely be living with this name the rest of your life. Good luck with your naming! – Barry Callen (2008-05-21 13:25)