Brand naming is an important part of modern corporate marketing strategy. A good brand name is not a simple mark. It can strengthen positioning, participate in competition, and also enable a certain brand to gain a lasting market advantage with its possible implicit image value. On the contrary, if the brand name is improper, it will bring many disadvantages to future marketing. A well-known American survey agency conducted a survey on the relationship between brands and sales in the United States and found that only 12% of the brands can help sales in the market, while 36% of the brands are harming sales. Therefore, it is necessary for us to summarize the precautions in brand naming in order to attract the attention of the industry.
1. Pay attention to whether the brand name can be protected
Whether it can be protected legally is the first issue to consider when naming a brand. If it cannot be protected, the brand name cannot truly belong to you and cannot be used. The English name of the world-famous Acer computer was Multitech when it was founded in 1976. After ten years of hard work, Multitech had just become famous in the international market, but an American computer factory accused Acer of infringing the company's trademark rights. Acer had no choice but to start over, spending nearly $1 million to change the brand name.
2. Don’t be similar to other brands
If two brands are too similar, consumers often cannot tell them apart. If their own brand is famous, the other party will often benefit, and the other party’s bad brand will also Will cause harm to your own products. To avoid the misunderstanding of similar names, you must be new and unique, try to make the brand name difficult for others to imitate, and avoid "collision" with other brands' names.
3. The name should be simple, easy to remember, and catchy
The brand name should not be too complex, lengthy, or obscure, but should be simple and easy to remember. Some successful brand names, such as Qingdao, 999, Wahaha, etc., are very simple, easy to remember and easy to recite. IBM is one of the top ten brands in the world. Its full name is "International Business Machines", which is difficult to write, difficult to remember, and difficult to spread. Later, the company designed a simple IBM external communication and achieved success. We have also seen that some brands are called "Cell Vitality" and "Dong Guan 180", which makes people confused.
4. Don’t advertise yourself
Some companies like to pursue “big names” in brand naming, such as “dragon”, “superman”, “overlord”, etc., but consumers do not They won't identify with you because of your self-bragging. If you only have a "loud" name but no good quality and service, consumers will eventually leave you. Therefore, it would be better to have a plain and simple name. The name "Microsoft" is small and weak, but it does not prevent it from becoming a real powerhouse.
5. Avoid negative associations
Brand association is a very important link in determining whether a product can sell well. For example, Little Nurse gives people the image of "professional cosmetics", and Blue Moon hand sanitizer gives people a very clean feeling. A good name should give people a positive association and allow consumers to quickly identify with it. However, some brands give people a bad association. For example, "Lux", as a female product, gives people a stronger masculine taste. "Iron Egg" dumplings, when you hear this name, do you think these dumplings are delicious?
6. Use abbreviations with caution
Enterprises should use English abbreviations as little as possible because there are only 26 letters and there are tens of thousands of English names around the world. , it is easy to "crash". Don't try to imitate the naming methods of IBM, RCA, and GE. As everyone knows, such naming must have certain conditions: your product must have a high reputation and have achieved greater success. success. Moreover, using English abbreviations requires a lot of advertising costs to patiently tell consumers what "W" stands for and what "E" stands for. This kind of communication is very complicated and easily confusing.
7. Have an international perspective
With the development of global economic integration and transnational marketing, brand naming must consider global strategies and try to get rid of regionalization. If you blindly customize the brand based on the base of the enterprise, it is tantamount to drawing the ground as a prison. The reason why many brands do not succeed is because their brand regional characteristics are too obvious. Today, major multinational companies around the world are beginning to do everything possible to get rid of regional colors. Wherever their brands develop, they will integrate into the lives of local people. Chinese brands are also preparing for globalization. "Qingdao TV" was renamed to "Hisense" and "Xiaxin" to "Xiaxin" to take into account the needs of future brand development.
8. Leave room for future development
Some brand names imply product attributes, that is, you can tell what type of product it is from its name, such as melatonin, Wuliangye, Band-Aid, etc., but it should be pointed out that most of these brands that are closely related to product attributes implement professional strategies. If a brand may implement a diversification strategy in the future, it must be considered that if the company becomes bigger in the future and wants to expand into other areas, will the current name still be suitable? Many domestic companies have not done enough in this regard. For example, "Wahaha", "999", "Sun God", etc. have all suffered in this regard. Therefore, when naming a corporate brand, we must also consider "reserving pipelines" for future development. Usually, a name with no specific meaning and no negative impact is more suitable for future brand extension. For example, Sony (SONY), whether it is a Chinese name or an English name, has no specific connotation. We will not compare it with Link a certain type of product so that it can be expanded to any field.
9. Be careful when changing a brand name
Once a company feels that the original name is not good, most of them have been operating in the market for a period of time. At this time, the company changes its name, which will cause immeasurable consequences. Loss, not only will it cost huge amounts of money to re-brand, but it will also cause the loss of consumers. For example, ESS Company spent US$200 million on changing its name to "EXXON". Article source: China Naming Network