This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Josh Williams writes a fun and interesting article on the Four Concentric Circles of a Web 2.0 Name (hat tip to Andy). In it, he lists four types of names and gives examples for each one. Here’s his list along with some of his examples:
1. The Literal Name – e.g. DropSend, CityFeed, MapBuilder, Meetup
2. The Metaphor Name – e.g. BackPack, Mint, Digg, Feedburner
3. The Pseudo Abstract Name – e.g. Odeo, Rollyo, Riffs, del.icio.us
4. The Cab Calloway – e.g. Meebo, Squidoo, Skype, Google
As I said, it’s a fun and interesting article, and it begs the question: how do naming and branding fit together? Or more specifically, how much does a name influence your brand image (what customers think, feel and expect about you, your product or company)? And by the way, I’d say Josh has the naming thing pretty well nailed. After all, he and his team created Blinksale, "the easiest way to send invoices online."
Here are my thoughts on naming and branding:
You have to decide how important your company name is going to be. Will the company name primarily carry the brand image or will the names of your products and services carry the brand image? Burning Door Syndication Services, Inc. is a company name that is bad from a branding perspective. It’s too long and ambiguous to really sink into the mind. Although just Burning Door is kinda cool. Fortunately, this company created a nice product called Feedburner, which is a great name for helping to brand that product.
CareerJoy, on the other hand, is a company name that carries the brand image for the company and it’s offerings. And it does a wonderful job. It’s short, memorable and probably very meaningful to anyone who may be looking for more joy in their career (who isn’t?). The company name also does double duty for branding their service offerings, so they can get away with long and generic sounding names like:
- MBA Transition Program
- Employee to Entrepreneur Program
- Biographical Career Report
- Career Transition Program
The drawback, of course, is that the company is pretty much locked into offering products and services related to career support and guidance, and that’s probably okay with company founder Alan Kearns. You just have to decide if it’s okay for you and your company.
The company name and product name(s) can both carry their own brand images, and that’s perhaps the ideal you want to shoot for. 37signals is a company name that’s well-known and respected among the tech-savvy, Web 2.0 crowd. Likewise are the names of most of its products – e.g. Basecamp and Backpack. And keep in mind, the name "37signals" is ambiguous enough (like Google or Yahoo) that it could mean any number of things. Recently, it means "cool, Web 2.0 design and development company" or something like that. So they have plenty of latitude in creating different products.
Ultimately, I think the thing to keep in mind is the name of a company or product is only the tip of the brand iceberg. It’s not always the case, but usually it’s the first thing people experience about your company or product, followed closely by some visual stimulus such as a logo, some form of packaging or a website, etc.
Staying with the iceberg metaphor, the name and visual stimulus are the part of the iceberg that’s above the water line. Yes, they’re important from a branding perspective, but they aren’t critical to building your brand image. What is critical exists below the water line – things like the benefit(s) promised; the benefit(s) delivered; and the thoughts and feelings all that evokes in people.
I realize I’m leaving a lot out of this discussion, and hopefully that’s a good thing. There are way too many variables and what-ifs we cold throw in here. If you want some further reading on naming and branding, check out James Archer’s Top Ten Tips for Corporate Naming and/or the very extensive Naming Guide by Igor, a naming and branding agency.
I’ll leave you with one single should when it comes to company or product names. You should keep it short. Remember the name is simply a short-hand symbol that holds a place in the mind of your customer. It’s a little like the "run" command of a computer. If the name "Apple," for example, enters your mind somehow, it sets off a whole series of thoughts and (maybe) feelings. It’s those thoughts and feelings that are the real brand image.