BRAND MARKETING
OCTOBER, 1999

Brand Marketing, October 1999, p. 52

James Dettore

"Branding"

When Colgate toothpaste was launched in Latin America, consumers found it strange. The brand name literally means "hung yourself." Imagine vacationing in Switzerland and reaching for a roll of Charmin, only to find a roll of Krapp. How confident would you feel using a skin cream called "don't even look"? That is the Spanish translation of Nivea. All these brand names may be fine in the United States, but they don't translate well in other countries.

The emotional and cultural associations derived from a brand name strategy distinguish it from its competitors. As a company competes globally, an important element enters into the branding criteria: linguistics.

Naming a Product

Using linguistic screening in the brand-naming process serves a threefold purpose: It ensures that the proposed brand name will convey a powerful message in all target markets, it ensures that the brand name is free from negative connotations, and it ensures that the brand name is universally pronounceable.

Potential brand names do not necessarily have to convey negative or offensive messages to be considered poor brand name candidates. Difficulty in pronunciation can discount an otherwise effective brand name. Likewise, simple phonetic approximations of English words can backfire as well. Consider the following example. The Coca-Cola brand name was translated phonetically as "ke-kou-ke-la" for the Chinese market. Depending on the dialect, this can be read as either "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax." After extensive research, the characters with the phonetic equivalent "ko-kou-ko-le" were found, which translates as "happiness in the mouth."
Naming a Product

But an intelligent linguistic screening cannot consist of a mere dictionary search. This issue extends to logos as well. In some countries with high illiteracy rates, local companies use illustrations in place of text in their packaging to indicate the contents. This would cause a problem, for example, in the marketing of Gerber baby food with its current logo, a baby's face.

It may seem that branding a product can become a cumbersome task, but approached correctly, it can reap great rewards.
Naming a Product