21.01.10 GIUSEPPE CASTELLI

Corporate Naming

As a company who cares about crafting its brand presence to connect with your market, you spend lots of time and effort creating the perfect logo, tagline, design language and tone of voice for your marketing vehicles. But perhaps more important than the content of any of those pieces is your corporate naming.

Think of corporate naming as the seed of your brand. All other aspects of your company branding are expressions of that name. Your corporate naming sets the tone for both your company’s short-term appeal and long-term credibility in the market place. It can differentiate what would otherwise be just another flower shop in town as an expert in creating special arrangements for customers who care about quality and details.

The right corporate naming strategy involves not only choosing something that rolls off the tongue and is catchy and memorable. It must also reach deep into the emotional gut of your market and connect with something your competitor’s haven’t.

Take a flower shop example. “Jen’s Flower Shop” doesn’t evoke nearly the same kind of instant impression as “Exquisite Creations Floral Boutique.” The latter says, “this must be a special shop that does better arrangements and has fresher flowers than these other shops around here.” Yes, sure, that was the perception. The reality is up to the flower shop owner. But the name has done its job of elevating the brand of the flower shop above the competitors immediately, from the start.

That’s the power of a name. In just one or a few words, a brand image can be clearly communicated to the market. Why is this good? A few reasons:

Less is more

In an era when people are bombarded by countless messages trying to get their attention and money, a simple, catchy name that conveys a clear and unmistakable statement about who a company is and what it does can cut through the clutter. A solid corporate name can do that and set the tone for the entire branding strategy.

Easier and cheaper to explain

Especially for companies who are just starting out, or haven’t nailed their brand image, a corporate naming strategy that “says it all” can be one of the best marketing investments they can make. This is especially true for businesses in service sectors. Since a service is somewhat intangible, like luxury goods, it’s the name of the company behind that service that matters.

Invest upon your name

Over time, corporate naming lends instant credibility to whatever product a company comes out with. A fantastic example of this is the Nike Company. Nike set out to make durable and comfortable high performance sport shoes.

For a while, that shoes was all Nike made, but everyone knew that Nike’s shoes were extremely reliable. So Nike was building his name into a brand. The Nike name became known for quality construction and comfort, and Nike eventually leveraged that brand image into numerous other kinds of equipment: clothing, underwear, bags, backpacks… and the story still goes on.

Communicating brand strategy is key to a great brand name

Words project both meaning and feeling. Your brand name should communicate in a way that fits your overall brand strategy, whether that’s straightforward functionality (PowerBook) or more emotional (Carnival Cruise lines and their “FunShips”). If it does, every time somebody mentions the name, it’s an advertisement – one you didn’t have to pay for.

Great brand names roll off the tongue

The sound of the spoken name, regardless of what it means, is a big consideration for brand names. An easy-tounderstand pronunciation translates across languages and is more likely to be remembered. Can be pronounced easily? Is it acceptable? A native-born person fluent in the language and slang of each country where you expect to do business should evaluate your name.

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Creativity is not just important it’s a necessity

Creativity, unfortunately, gives way to practicality and feasibility. Consider this: over 260,000 trademark applications were filed in the United States in 2003 and over 98 percent of the dictionary is registered as a “dot com.” What does that tell you? That all the obvious names are taken, and that it’s going to take some real creative muscle to come up with something no one else has thought of.

Types of naming

Creativity has to be amplified by a rich mix of linguistic approaches to creating names, including the use of real words and derivations. Metaphors and themes. Mimetics and morpheme combinations. Foreign languages and metonymy. Puns.

Wordplays. Rhymes. Alliteration. Coined words. Compounds. And on and on.

Types of naming and branding including:

• product naming

• company naming

• corporate naming

• service naming

• feature naming

• ingredient brand naming

• sub-brand naming

• corporate rebranding/renaming

• sub-brand naming

• corporate rebranding/renaming

• product rebranding/renaming

• line-extension naming

• umbrella brand naming

• master brand naming

• descriptive product naming

You can’t know where you’ll go - Languages List (from www.catchwordbranding.com)

Naming that comes with headache – Pharmaceutical naming

Pharmaceutical naming is the complexity in two words. Drug names must meet stringent regulatory requirements set by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) to eliminate misleading messaging and to minimize the potential for confusion and errors in the prescription chain.

To ensure that your pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients clear the heightened legal and regulatory obstacles unique to their industry, you have to utilize a anticipatory approach to drug name development that incorporates regulatory and legal analysis into the drug name development process to consistently optimize the likelihood of drug name acceptability. A good process usually includes the following steps:

• Discovery

• Name Creation

• Legal Assessment

• Name Safety Research

• Quantitative and qualitative modules

• Market Testing

• Linguistic Appropriateness and Brand Appeal

• Management Summary and Recommendation

Worldwide successful case histories in a word

JOHNNY LAMBS’ wear brand is a jokey but successful naming because it was the literally translation in English of Giovanni Agnelli, the formerly owner of Fiat Group.

Guerlain SHALIMAR is the type of naming that can resist to the future, because it comes from the past. Jacques Guerlain created it in 1925, thinking at the Shalimar gardens in Lahore, Pakistan. So is for the SAMSARA perfume, which name comes from the cycle of reincarnation or rebirth in the far eastern religions. They are pure sound for the western people. Bvlgari Aqva is a very good example of effective “family feeling” name. Look at the ancient Latin “U” – that was write as “V” – in both the names. Directly from the brand… to the product.

Be humble. One of my naming is GIOELIA. It is the name of a jewels and costume jewellery shop. It comes from the names of its Italian owners, Giorgia and Eliana, daughter and mother. OK, it’s definitely not a worldwide example…

Unsuccessful case histories

How important is research in Naming? You’ll be the judge...

The Volkswagen JETTA is an automobile produced by German automaker Volkswagen since 1979. Positioned to fill an upscale saloon/sedan niche above the firm's compact/small family car Golf offering, it has been marketed over five generations and became the best-selling European car in the USA, Canada and Mexico. But absolutely not in Italy, where its name sounds like the Italian word “iettatore”, a jinx.

In 2004 Fiat was nearly to release the brand new GINGO car, until Renault replied they build a completely different car – but with a too much similar name – since 1993, the Twingo… So Fiat had to change all the nameplates on the first built Gingo production renaming them Panda.

The 1978 Fiat Ritmo car had changed its name in UK in Fiat Strada, because “ritmo” in English means menstruation or period too.

Ford had a problem in Brazil when the PINTO car flopped. The company found out that Pinto was Brazilian slang for "penis". Ford pried all the nameplates off and substituted the name Corcel, which means "horse” and it was pretty successful after being rebranded.

In Asia, Mitsubishi’s sports utility vehicle named the PAJERO drew laughter from Spanish-speaking consumers. In Spanish, pajero means “one who masturbates.”

A couple of very practical suggestions

Dreaming up a new name works better when you involve others and look at the business or product focus. Many

successful businesses and products, have names that don't tell you anything about what they do. Consider doing these two things when searching for the perfect name:

1. Match the name with the business or product

2. Involve others to brainstorm

TOOLS

1 - Use this More Words tool (http://www.morewords.com) and search for any words that contain every part of letter combination that you want. You can search for anything – search for words that contain "top," or words that have a double"e." Virtually any sound or letter combo you want to find in a word, this site will do it for you.

Word Lab (http://www.wordlab.com) and specifically this page: Word Lab Tools

(http://www.wordlab.com/tools/t_index.cfm).

This Web site is one of the single most powerful naming tools out there. With an absolutely massive list of company names, a morpheme name creator, name builder, and so on, this site is the juggernaut of idea generators. Every time you’ve have to naming something new, you must use this site.

3 - Web 2.0 name generators. Honestly, they're generally crap. I've used this one, Web 2.0 Name Generator

(benjamin.hu/w2namegen.php), but found that, for the most part, they return relatively useless unintelligible or

meaningless.

If you have a few extra minutes, though, try popping some of your synonyms into the interface and see what it comes up with. At the very least, it might give you some ideas and get your brain’s wheels turning.

4 – Name rhyming. Rhymed names are memorable and can work (though they are not considered “elegant”) as long as they're not too cute or overboard. Rhyme Zone (http://www.rhymezone.com) is fantastic for finding words that rhyme. More Words can also be good for this.

5 – Pop your words into a word combiner like My Tool (http://www.my-tool.com/word-domain/word-picker/), tweak its settings to reflect what you want it to show, and combine.

6 – Check it out in the Web*. Every nation comes with their domain name search sites. One of the most powerful domain name search engine I know is Domains Bot (http://www.domainsbot.com). There you can get domain suggestions, name spinner, expired and expiring domain name search, for sale domains, whois lookup and registration.

*And remember that, since brands are less protected on the Internet, you can also develop a stronger presence in Web search engines, to minimize the opportunity of competitors to diminish your brand identity or capitalize on it.

Talking Ied

“Openness - Creatività, Cooperazione e Condivisione”

Arturo Di Corinto è un esperto di comunicazione online, protagonista storico della telematica italiana, dal 1994 collabora con Avana BBS, una delle prime BBS italiane, fonda nel 1995 l'associazione culturale Forthnet per la cablatura dei 13 ettari del centro sociale Forte Prenestino con materiali di scarto e trashware realizzando punti di accesso liberi e gratuiti per i visitatori.

Tra i primi ad aver contribuito al processo di alfabetizzazione informatica e libera diffusione della cultura di rete, ha insegnato e fatto ricerca all’Università di Stanfordin California e all’Università La Sapienza di Roma.

E' stato Direttore della rivista di cultura tecnologica ISDR - Il Secolo della Rete, oggi collabora con l’Espresso, Il Sole24ore, PeaceReporter, Punto-Informatico e Wired.it.

Attualmente lavora per l’Istituto di Ricerche Economico Sociali - IRES-CGIL ed è responsabile dei Progetti Open Source del CATTID, Centro per le Applicazioni della Televisione e delle Tecnologie per l’Innovazione Digitale dell’Università La Sapienza di Roma. È membro del Comitato Scientifico dell’Osservatorio Regionale della Cultura del Lazio.

In Talking IED About Future, Arturo di Corinto terrà un intervento dal titolo “Openness - Creatività, Cooperazione e Condivisione”.
L’incontro abbraccerà diverse tematiche attuali che vanno dall’analisi della figura del prosumer, un utente desideroso di esprimersi, che si produce in una mole imponente di user generated content, alla condivisione dei contenuti in rete.