One of the metrics of true success for any brand is when its brand name becomes a generic term or a generic verb. For example, brand names like Ziploc, Tupperware, and Thermos have now become generic terms for specific styles of food and beverage containers. On the other hand, brand names like Google, Whatsapp, and Photoshop have become generic verbs over time. For example, instead of saying “Let’s search it on Google”, we say “Let’s Google it”.
While it takes a lot more branding exercises to ensure a brand’s success, having the right brand name also has a great impact. Apart from selecting the type of your brand name from its 9 different categories, it's advisable to ensure certain other factors as well.
When it comes to crafting the right brand name there are a few tried-and-tested factors that truly ensure an effective brand name. Let’s have a look at the 6 important characteristics of a successful brand name.
1. Distinctive
Having uniqueness is one of the most fundamental factors of a brand name. It should be very distinct and as different from the competitors as possible, in order to stand out in its industry.
Having a brand name similar to another business, especially in your own industry, would be a disaster for both businesses. Just like a person’s name, having a different and unique name helps you secure a long-term place in people’s minds.
2. Meaningful
A brand name that has a deep meaning behind it, something that represents the essence of the brand, something that represents the core purpose of the business, definitely intrigues a person.
Meaningful brand names can cause interest in a person’s mind and thereby, make the person remember it or even better, relate to it.
3. Memorable
Usually, memorability goes hand-in-hand with simplicity. In terms of naming, simplicity is when you ensure that the brand name is:
Easy to spell
Easy to pronounce
The idea behind this is to make the name simple enough for your brain to associate it with the feeling of familiarity. And, human brains are already hard-wired to remember familiar things.
4. Modular
Over the course of time, businesses grow. And, the brand name should never be limiting. It’s always advisable to have a name that could expand into multiple future offerings by the business with ease. For example, the name Google is simple, memorable, and neutral enough to be easily adaptable to its various offerings like Google Maps, Google Docs, and Google Chrome, to name a few.
Taking it a step further, highly modular names are those that help build a world or ecosystem around it. For example, imagine this is a world where Twitter was not rebranded to X, and then let’s appreciate how the name Twitter is so modular that it led to the building of a few more dedicated brand-specific terms:
Tweet (the posting of a message on Twitter)
Retweet (sharing the post that was already posted on Twitter)
Twittersphere (a collective term for all the users of Twitter)
Twitterati (the frequent users of Twitter)
5. Positive
Imagine that your business has a name that means something very negative in your target audience’s culture. Do you really think your audience would buy your products? Definitely not.
A brand name should always have either positive connotations or at least be neutral especially, in the markets that it serves. It’s very important to ensure that the name does not have any strong negative interpretations associated with it.
6. Protectable
One of the very important factors to ensure a legally strong brand is to have a brand name that’s easy to protect, in other words, easy to trademark. As the business grows, the brand may or may not get involved in legal matters but, it’s always important to protect the assets associated with the brand.
Moreover, in this digital age, it has become almost the basic nature to have a website for your business. And, for the website, you would need a domain, which is nothing but your website’s URL (for example, www.brandzpree.com). Therefore, it’s preferable to have your brand name as the website domain to ensure consistency.
While it’s easy to check if the domain name is available using an online tool like Namecheckr, it’s better to approach legal advisors to check for the possibility of getting a trademark for it.
Conclusion
To summarize, an effective brand name is distinctive, meaningful, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, modular, has positive connotations, and is protectable. Though there are many other branding and business strategy aspects at play, having a successful brand name is an important asset that makes it possible for the business to grow sustainably and stay active in people’s minds for a long time.
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