Creating a brand name with Lexicon Branding

We all know examples of bad product names. And we also know iconic brand names like Apple, Google, Pentium and Sonos. Everyone agrees that the right name can be invaluable in creating a distinctive and memorable new brand.

Despite the commercial benefits of effective brand names, consistently realizing that goal is hard and getting harder. In particular, developing a new technology brand name is reaching an inflection point. The challenges in creating and trademarking tech brand names are closely followed by developing a new corporate brand name.

Unfortunately, very few companies have departed from the traditional approach to naming which, according to one client, “is brainstorming a few weeks before package and logo design work begins and hiring 1 or 2 freelancers.” 

In a recent survey of CMO’s conducted by Lexicon Branding, fewer than 30% of the CMO’s surveyed were beginning to approach naming differently – even though 90% of all CMO’s surveyed stated that naming was increasingly becoming “an almost impossible challenge.”

The result, as one client recently told Lexicon, “it’s not so much that our brands names are bad, it’s that they underperform.”  There appear to be 3 reasons why brand names underperform. 

The challenge of registering a trademark is underestimated. A number of participants in the survey cited this as a significant problem. As one participant stated, “until you have to develop a trademark you don’t have a clue as to how difficult this is.”

Emphasis on suggestive or descriptive names. Unfortunately, so many brands chose this approach in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that this path is well travelled. Although they are comfortable and often selected by brand teams, they rarely or never break through the noise and register a strong, interesting signal. They just won’t work anymore. 

The overall challenge of creating a new brand name is underestimated.  In the survey Lexicon conducted, one CMO told us that, “naming used to be fun.” Today, it is still one of the most creative and critical endeavors in branding, but it requires a fully integrated approach that involves strategy, a creative process, consumer insights, an experienced trademark team, and, in most cases, a global network of professional linguists. With these elements in place naming becomes not only a strategic activity with high ROI, but it can still be fun.

Developing a strategic approach to naming is what is required. 

Here is the approach that Lexicon uses to develop iconic brand names like Sonos, OnStar, Subaru’s Outback, Intel’s Pentium, BlackBerry and Facebook’s Portal.

Lexicon combines three powerful techniques to create original and memorable brand names.

Our approach applies to both creating a new corporate name or naming a new product. 

1. Small Team Creativity.  Our research tells us that small teams significantly outperform larger groups. In our approach, two and three-person creative teams are charged with developing solutions based on the communication goals for the project.  Our priority is to create names that are distinctive, original to the category and highly memorable. We like the phrase, “it’s unforgettable.”

2. Structural Linguistics.  Our linguists harness 30 years of Lexicon R&D investments to apply our proprietary sound symbolism research to every project and identify the most meaningful word parts (morphemes) and metaphors for use by our creative teams. Our linguists in Sausalito, California and the 90 linguists in our WorldBrand® Network help us to create names that reflect natural language patterns – never awkward hybrids.

3. NeuroCreative Program. Seven years ago, Lexicon Branding began an intensive effort to combine the “engineering layers” of linguistics research, behavioral science insights, and neuroscience-guided analytics with our robust branding services. The result is Lexicon’s proprietary NeuroCreative program, which helps us to identify linguistic strengths like structure, stress and rhythm that we use to create and help clients select names based on memorability and cross-cultural performance.

For a confidential discussion on Lexicon’s verbal identity programs, contact David Placek, Founder directly at info@lexiconbranding.com.