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Posted
Jan 3, 2005
Major
corporations are facing new naming challenges
with the growth in mergers and the growing impact
of e-business. E-business touches every corner
of the globe controlling access to the entire
corporation image.
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By Mr. Naseem Javed
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With
growth in mergers, the realignment of newly stirred
corporate philosophies must be properly captured and
correctly projected through their new corporate name
personas. During this time, it's essential to ensure
long-term investor's confidence and have a trustworthy
corporate image in the global marketplace.
These
are some major naming issues that executives must tackle
in order to cope with the new challenges and prepare
for this new name-economy.
Pitfalls
in Current Naming Approaches
First,
we must know precisely how corporations and their big
branding tackles new name germination. The following
are the three main principles often applied, sometimes
at great costs, which often result in more questionable
looks than they originally started with. The real big
question is not how, rather why?
Principle
One - Naming isn't as important as branding. Pick
a name out of a hat-branding, advertising and media
spending will take care of the rest. Why?
There
is no longer surplus money available to buy every billboard
or television spot in the country. Bottomless budgets
are the utopian dreams of advertising agencies. The
concept that any name will effectively win business
is a recipe for bankruptcy. Naïve executives sometimes
ignore naming altogether, choosing a name in a panic
often hours before they announce it in a press conference.
A
recent study showed that 97 percent of names are selected
on the day of the announcement, frequently only hours
before the press conference. For proof just open any
old magazine and behold the cemetery of big-time names,
now mostly dead.
Principle
Two - Creative, even ridiculous names will win the
customers' hearts. Catchy, funny and silly names will
attract attention and increase sales. Why?
Hit-and-run
naming has left a bad taste among companies, customers
and the media. With hundreds of high profile naming
failures all over the world, there is an urgent need
to repair the lost credibility of naming and branding
agencies. Names must be more than a fad-they must have
sustainable power over time. Nowhere is the issue of
naming more critical than on the Web. E-commerce has
opened the gates to hundreds of new ideas, markets,
and competitors from all over the globe. Corporations
must reinvent themselves to gain the attention of customers
worldwide.
Contrary
to common belief, naming is not a creative exercise,
but a black and white empirical process. Naming involves
the application of highly strategic and tactical skills,
demanding authoritative knowledge of global marketing,
languages, perceptions, connotations, trademark laws
and cyber rules of domain care. Graphic design skills
are also critical and must follow a name over a long
period. Not in reverse.
Principle
Three - When merging with another company, simply
merge the two names. Capitalize on the established brands
of the two companies by merging their names. Why?
It's
true that it can be difficult to find better names than
those of the original and perhaps legendary companies.
Is there a correct naming process in place? If you're
trying to pick from a list of 10,000 names compiled
by a sub-contracted freelancer, then you're probably
going to end up sticking with the original names. The
prudent and astute boards of the two merged giants have
virtually no other choice but to reject such ad hoc
choices.
Join
the names, and as they say, end of story. However, this
is frequently the wrong approach. The merged corporations
suffer in their marketing efforts by trying to graft
two corporate personalities together, which can result
in a diluted and vague impression on the public. This
is especially true when the companies are perceived
to have very different identities.
Some
corporations believe all the star-quality names have
been taken, and therefore have no choice but to accept
a silly or strange name. This impression is patently
incorrect, and arose partly from the use of large agencies
in the naming process. The same big agencies that delivered
world-class logos and great commercials often failed
in naming. A false myth was created to cover a lack
of skills. There is a big difference between a massive
branding exercise and a highly specialized naming expertise.
Three
types of names
Today
less than 5 percent business names can pass the true
acid test of global suitability and registrability,
while the rest have serious faults restricting them
from a free flow of global usage.
Long
geographic names-This can seriously hurt national and
international marketing. The same long names get initialized,
causing massive confusion with strange companies worldwide
and become impossible to find on the Internet.
Words
on a string-All kinds of names of things combined either
accidentally or through M&A or for some other strange
reason, make no connections to the business at all.
Customers hate them, yet the institutions ignore them
and keep pushing.
Initials-That
comes about because the customers refuse to call out
long names. Financial services have the strangest and
most unusual collection of initials. Often, initials
were simply collected and appended as a proof of their
long history while somehow, their customers are living
in the present, and never care about the role of the
institution in the previous century.
Diagnosis-The
Five Star Standard of corporate image & name identities:
Apply
these professional procedures which measure the effectiveness
of a name as being Healthy, Injured, or on Life Support.
It makes no difference whether these names are for products,
services, divisions or the main corporate name. To a
customer, a name is a name, no matter how it is offered.
Healthy
Five-Star Quality Name has the following qualities:
1) Extremely easy, 2) absolutely unique, 3) highly related
to business, 4) carry global trademark protection, and
5) include an identical dot-com URL. This provides simplicity
and easy access. When a name passes all of the above
five critical issues, then it is a Five-Star Quality
Name. Anything less than Five Stars and the name will
never survive while losing all branding efforts.
Injured
names are long, confusing, diluted or initialized.
Simple dictionary words also cause a lot of confusion.
There are too many Firsts, Uniteds, Nationals, and too
many names with compass directions in them-Eastern,
Western, North, South and so on.
Life-Support
names are tangled in serious trademark or obvious confusion
problems. Names without identical dot-coms or with no
apparent connection to the product or service are constantly
in need of oxygen. Spelling difficulties will also kill
a name.
Only
star quality names are capable of taking you to the
top of the search page, and it is easy to have a global
name with trademark and matching URL. All you need is
the right expertise. Check the Web for corporate image
and naming and bring "Webinars" into your corporation
so you have an internal understanding of cyber-branding
issues.
Names
on e-commerce are now the key. It is the only device
that controls the access to the portal and the entire
Web site of a corporation. Nothing else matters: no
logos, no designs and no fancy colors. It is still early
in the Internet age and a lot can be fixed, modified
and adjusted before it is too late.
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Mr.
Naseem Javed is the author of Naming for Power,
and is recognized as a world authority on global name
identities and domain issues. He introduced The Laws
of Corporate Naming in the 80s and is the founder
of ABC Namebank, a naming consultancy he established
in Toronto, a quarter century ago. Mr. Javed lectures
and conduct executive workshops on global corporate
image and name identity issues. For more information,
contact Mr. Javed at: ask@njabc.com. www.abcnamebank.com
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