Rick Bragdon
- 18 years of naming products - clients include: Kraft, General Mills, Tropicana, Nestlé, Quaker Oats, Fujitsu, GE, HP, Intel, AT&T, Electronic Arts, Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer
- President, Addison Design Consultants
- Advertising Manager - Pepsi-Cola Company - for Pepsi Challenge; marketing Manager for Pepsi Free and Slice
- All 9 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
Brand & Product Name Development
Key Trends
- Companies are creating and adopting "family" brands used to identify more than one product, therefore saving money and building brand equity more quickly.
Building brand name equity and value requires that the name's target audience is aware of the name, comprehends it (for example, knows and understands the product for which it stands) and has a positive perception of it.
This is accomplished by repeatedly exposing the target audience to the name. If a single name is used to identify more than one product, it is reasonable to assume that target audiences will see, hear and experience that name more often than if different names are used for related products. This increased use of the name will therefore foster brand name equity and value. I strongly recommend companies use as few brand names as possible and commit to creating and adopting truly unique, memorable names because they require fewer impressions to build their awareness.
- Increased use of names beyond the United States require "world language" naming techniques, international trademark search and language analysis in multiple countries.
Successfully creating names to be used internationally requires familiarity with multiple languages and the idiosyncratic ways in which letters and letter combinations are pronounced by speakers of these languages. Not only that, but some words and names may have meanings that are positive in one language, but pejorative in another. "World language" is a way of naming that significantly increases the likelihood that a name will appeal to and be pronounceable by target audiences in many countries. MiO, for example, is a name created by Idiom to identify a popular new water enhancer from Kraft Foods. "Mio" means "mine" in Italian, but is readily recognized in America and all of the Romance language-speaking countries. So the name helps to communicate the product's position ("my water, my way") while transcending language barriers.
- Companies are adopting less descriptive, more suggestive names composed of coined or compound words due to increasingly difficult trademark and language challenges.
Increasingly, brand names are being used to identify more than one product in various languages and countries where the registration of trademarks is proliferating. Over time, this surely means that names will need to be less functionally and narrowly descriptive.
Most companies prefer suggestive names that convey overarching benefits and personality characteristics because these name types are more able to meet international naming requirements. Similarly, compound-word and coined-words names will replace real-word monikers.
As these new styles of names become common, and as companies and their target customers grow used to them, they will become even more popular – much like the once daring Internet names of the 1990s (Amazon, FogDog, KickFire) have paved the way for a new wave of app names that people now find entirely acceptable.