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| "When
you have no money, your name is your advertising." ...
Robert Stevens. Founder - The Geek Squad |
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Professionals agree that these are the top 10 characteristics
of a good name:
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1
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Short,
sweet and easily pronounced
The
ideal name for customers to remember, and for you to use
to cut through the industry noise, is probably short and
sweet and easily pronounced. This means it will have two
or three syllables (or even one), and it will work on the
phone or internet even if people have never seen or heard
it before. If they have to be told how to spell it once,
that is OK (and may even help with recall). But if they
have to be told a second time, that is a problem. One of
the sticky consonants (k,q,x,z) can help with recall.
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2
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Unique
within its industry
Your
name doesn't need to be weird or clunky, but it does need
to not sound like all the rest of your direct competitors.
HotJobs.com, BAJobs.com, Careers.com, CareerJunction.com,
LocalJobs.com are all easily lost in the crowd. But Monster.com
stands out dramatically - even though it does not describe
what they do! In practice, it has become brand shorthand
for job searches, just like Starbucks has become shorthand
for coffee.
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3
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Legally
available and defensible
Your
lawyers think this should be item one of course. Regardless,
what is the point of starting any company or marketing campaign
if you cannot have full rights in the name? Your best defense
is always a magic ® - which only can be issued by the USPTO
(or equivalent agency in other countries). If the USPTO
won't issue a registration certificate because they judge
it to be generic, then you have problem (2) above anyway.
Common law trademark searches are also critically important.
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4
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Good
alliteration, especially if a longer name
Sometimes
a longer name does have a place in marketing. After all,
the most famous brand in the world, Coca Cola, is four syllables.
But notice how smoothly it rolls off the tongue. Linguists
will tell you it has good alliteration.
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5
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Does
not lend itself to abbreviations
If
you have a long descriptive name, people will abbreviate
it quickly. OK, we know it worked for IBM, AT&T, CBS etc.,
but how many years and how many branding dollars do you
have? For a small company, this means you quickly become
YASI (Yet Another Set of Initials) and drown in the initial
bit bucket. At least make sure the trademark part (brand
part) of your tradename is a name and not initials. E.g.
Ford is the trademark for Ford Motor Car Company. Leave
FMCC etc. to the legal documents only. But who or what are
AMA, CCI, etc.?
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6
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Flexible
and expandable
Too
many people try to describe their company rather than name
it. Copyland, Copydata, Copyshop, QuickCopy all define what
they do - and are barely distinguishable from one another.
But Kinkos stands out dramatically and did not pigeonhole
them into only copy services. Today, of course, they are
Fedex Kinkos, and can offer a raft of services without needing
to update their name, unlike Texas Instruments that doesn't
even make instruments.
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7
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Linguistically
clean
What
are the root origins of the name? How is it pronounced by
a Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese or French native
speaker? What does it mean in these languages? You need
to support these languages just to do business in North
America nowadays, especially in the populous areas of California,
New York, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Canada.
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8
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Will
not age quickly
Is
your name hip and topical? If you are in the fashion trend
business this might be fine. But otherwise, be very careful
of "in" words or expressions. They will be superseded sooner
or later. They may also not play well across all demographics.
Many markets have their own "industry-speak" and slang.
The worst of these are in "geekdom"! Names with classical
roots tend to endure more easily.
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9
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Embraces
company personality
Two
competitors, entering the same market at the same time with
directly competing products, will pick different names because
every company and management team has its own personality.
This means the executives must be involved in the decision
making process. Your agency can tell you if the name fits,
not if you are comfortable with it.
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10
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Fits
within company's brand portfolio
The
company name, division names and product names are all part
of your brand portfolio. Do these sound like they all come
from the same family? While this is a specific problem with
merged companies, everyone's naming architecture needs to
be properly managed to maximize your brand power and intellectual
property portfolio.
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