Creating A Brand Name For Your Company, Products Or Services
 The brand name you give or use for your company, products or services is in many ways the most important marketing decision you can make.
Why? Because that word or phrase is the "handle" that people will know you and remember you by. The connotations of the brand name - what it means to people both consciously or unconsciously - strongly influence their perceptions of your company, product or service as a whole.
However, changing an existing brand name is something that should be considered very carefully. If your company or product is already known in the marketplace by one name, and you stop using that name, you lose what is known as "brand equity." You lose the accumulated value of people's ability to recognize the existing name and associate it with a business, product or service. We'll help you make that decision.
Lawrimore Inc. has helped clients name or rename their companies, products, services and properties for over 25 years. This is a service that we are extremely interested in because we feel it is profoundly important. Over the years we have studied the whole naming process in great detail and learned what works and does not work in today's ever-changing marketplace. We also were fortunate to have studied both Latin and Ancient Greek in school and college, and familiarity with the ancient roots of words and word forms is very helpful in developing appropriate new names.
As a general rule, creating a new name with one or more words from the dictionary is a risky and counter-productive process. There is hardly a word in the English language that someone has not already used for a company, product or service name. There are billions of English-speaking people on this planet, and naming things is as old as Adam and Eve. So just about all of the good common names are already taken. And a large number of them have been trademarked, so they are not available for competing uses.
Then we have the challenge of the Internet. Hundreds of millions of names have already been purchased as dot-coms. Our belief is that every new name we create should be available both as a dot-com and as a trademark. That presents tremendous creative challenges and requires a high level of expertise.
To create a new name for your business, product, service or property, we would begin with a discussion of what you hope to accomplish, your target audiences, existing name(s) if any, and ideas if any for new names. Coming up with a new name is very personal and subjective. It's almost like adopting a baby. The first time you see it, it may not resonate with you, even if it is strategically and creatively on target. For many people it takes time to get comfortable with a new name and to come to "love" it.
Sometimes we have a flash of creativity and the ideal new name pops into our heads immediately. We once had a meeting with a company where the existing owners planned to slowly exit the business and the new owner was buying them out. They wanted a new name that somehow conveyed that transition or combination, but would stand on its own and have just the right ring to it. As we drove back to the office after meeting with them, the ideal name popped into our head. Back at the office we did a thorough check on dot-com and trademark availability. After letting the new name percolate for a few days and not generating anything better, we presented it to our clients, who agreed it was indeed an ideal new name.
Other times it takes longer. We start with generating one or more new names, present them by email, the client responds, we generate some more, and back and forth it goes for maybe a week or more before the client feels that one of these names is just right for him or her. The process works best when there is just one person to make the decision. A name is very personal and reflects personal style and taste, like clothing. If several people or a committee are involved, the naming process can take much longer. You know the story about the horse designed by a committee that looked like a camel. But whatever your internal control or political or management reality is, we will work within it. That's our job.
Depending on the number of approvers involved and the complexity of the challenge, creating a new name that you like can cost from $300 to $3,000 or more. |
