BRAND MARKETING
APRIL, 1999

Brand Marketing, April 1999, p. 29

Jim Dettore

"What's Your Brand Name?"

The process of branding new products has come a long way in recent years. What used to be an informal internal task is now one of the most important aspects in developing new products.

The stakes are high in the proprietary naming and branding game. Branding a new product now involves strategic creative development, international linguistic screening, trademark searching and the marketability of the brand name. Creating a great brand name strategy can reap record-setting profits, for example Viagra from Pfizer.

However, rebranding a product because of poor performance can carry a hefty price tag, as changing the brand name of Boston Chicken to Boston Market.

In our booming economy, consumers are being bombarded with more new products than ever before. Developing a distinctive brand name that differentiates a product from its competitors is becoming more difficult. With greater emphasis being placed on naming and branding, companies have an incentive to invest in the quality, consistency and imagery of their brand names.

Brand name architecture should reflect the imagery and personality of the corporate brand name. Synergies created between the corporate brand name and the product brand names are the result of increased awareness of the strength of the brand name and its ability to reflect positively on the corporation and the other name brands of the corporation.
Brand Naming Service

Without this direction, consumers do not relate the brand names as a family. Consequently, brand names will not perform in harmony, creating better branding and sales results.

Brand Naming Service

Brand names are the most valuable assets for a company. For example, KKR acquired the RJR/Nabisco brands for $26 billion when balance-sheet equity was $5.8 billion. Creating a superior brand takes a well thought-out brand name strategy, a word or portion of a word. A product branded after a real world can only effectively communicate the textbook definition of that word.

Living in a global economy has made linguistic screening and cultural screening a necessity in the brand name development process. There are classic examples of companies that have overlooked this aspect of branding in the past and regret their decision. Chevrolet introduced a new car, the Nova, without realizing that in Spanish it translates to "No go."

Knowing the complexities of name branding is only half the battle. The fun part is creating safe, available and distinct brand names that fit the image of the company and the new product.
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