Just like your name is your whole identity, your brand’s name is your brand’s identity. Brand naming is how you make sure that your products become recognizable. It’s how all your products become familiar to your consumers and many other people.
This sense of familiarity comes with the name that has a meaning behind it. This means: it either represents the products of the company or it represents their vision. What’s more, is that a good name also helps brands in building a reputation among the people.
You’d notice that one bad product brings much backlash to the company’s name. In the same manner, an excellent product brings more praise to the brand’s name. The more awareness there is about your brand, the more your brand will grow. Gradually, many people across different states will gain trust in you.
Earlier, many brands used to capitalize all the alphabets in the brand’s name. These days, brands are using the technique of BiCapitalization. For instance, YouTube, iPod, HotWired, etc. The purpose of BiCapitalization is to add more emphasis to your brand’s name.
Many years ago, brand naming was just limited to signing off your name to your product. In the modern era, it has become so much more than that. Today, brands have to find a psychological connection that will help a consumer associate a product with a brand name.
With psychology, brands also use creative linguistic tools to create their names. These literary tools may include puns, wordplays, or rhymes of some sort. When you pay attention to both these aspects, you’ll build a memorable name for your brand.
In this article, we have mentioned some tools you can use to set your brand name. Also discussed are some best strategies and tips for brand naming.
In pochi punti:
What is Brand Naming?
Brand naming or trade naming is the process wherein a business enterprise or an organization applies a name for its brand. A brand name may be kept after the names of the founders. Many people in the past had the practice of doing so.
In recent years, however, brands are carefully using their marketing tactics to come up with unique names. By these tactics, they’re aiming to have more consumer awareness and build their brand loyalty.
People these days are intrigued by the unique names of brands. They want to find out the story behind such names. While some names have a sentiment attached to them, some are purely humorous.
There are some purposes of brand naming. First, it helps in brand identification. It helps people in identifying your products and then further differentiating them from other similar products. Second, it helps in the verification of the product. People, upon looking at your brand name, can tell that the product is genuine and not fake.
Brand names further help the consumers to see the authenticity of a product. For instance, you may find a third-party app similar to Instagram on Google Play Store. However, you’d know that the real application is Instagram. You’d know because of the brand name and knowing its unique identity.
Besides the purpose, you should know how you can have a good brand name for your products. A good brand name is visual, meaning that you can represent it through logos and arts. It should also be meaningful so that people can build an emotional connection with it.
Many people go after unique names and forget about their accessibility. Here, accessibility means that people should be able to search for your brand’s name. Find a balance and create a name that is easily accessible for people.
The Best Brand Naming Strategies
When you’re trying to come up with a brand name, use some strategies. You’ll need to have some information with you before you begin the process. There’s a reason that brands do some thinking before finalizing the name.
Hurrying through this process can get you into trouble. You may end up choosing a name that doesn’t resonate with your brand identity. You have to be unique with the brand name, with that, you also have to be logical.
Following are some of the best strategies to help you with your brand naming process.
- Do some brainstorming: When you sit with your creative team to brainstorm ideas, you can get your creative juices flowing. When you’re brainstorming ideas, you’ve to consider your brand identity.
The name doesn’t have to be something that has no connection with what you do. Making or finding this connection for the name is not a straightforward process. But you can think of your values and mission to come up with a name.
- Make lists of names and words: Again, think of your brand. Here, you don’t have to make a list of whatever comes to your mind. Until and unless it’s in some way identifying with you or your brand.
You can use a common quality of your products to find names. If you’re making night glasses, then think of clear vision or comfort as a quality. Then, you can go about making your list of names.
- Be creative with puns: Puns are witty and people like puns. Many brands have used puns in their brand names. When you’re brainstorming the ideas, you can come up with some puns for your brand name. If by the end, such a name serves the brand’s purpose, then you can keep it and trademark it.
The Best Brand Naming Tools
Here are some tools you can use to make your brand’s unique name.
- Oberlo: Here, all you’ve to do is just add the keyword that’s relevant to your brand’s core concept. Then you’ll see a list of many names that you can pick from. You can get the name that you desire and also register for its domain name.
- Name Mesh: Name Mesh is a name generating tool that gives you separate categories of names for your brand. These categories give you fun and unique names according to the keywords that you enter. You can find many available names on Name Mesh. Plus, there’s an option where you can also hide the already registered names.
- Freshbooks: On Freshbooks, all you need is to click on a button that says, “Let’s get started”. After that, you’d have to choose your industry, like home services, or marketing. Once you’ve chosen, you can search for a name by entering keywords.
- Namesmith: With the help of Namesmith, you can use up to 5 keywords to get your domain name. When you enter these keywords, you’ll be shown a list of names with rhymes, literally modifications and combinations of prefixes and suffixes.
- Name Station: This is a brand name generator that’s free to use. Name Station has many great names in its software. All you’ve to do is just find these names by entering keywords. These keywords should be related to your brand.
Best Brand Naming Examples
These are some creative and successful examples of brand names:
- Apple: Apple did it very well with its brand naming. Apple has no relation to the fruit, the brand is a tech company that sells mobiles and laptops. The name of this brand was built around the logo of the company. The name is also easily memorable for people. Plus, because it’s not about the fruit but about teaching, people will always remember it.
- Amazon.com: Amazon with its name and its logo truly says that “You’ll find everything here”. The name was kept after the largest river in the world. The reason behind it was that Bezos wanted Amazon to be the biggest store in the world. It has essentially become a store that has everything for everyone’s needs.
- BlackBerry: The BlackBerry brand was kept by its creators because the keyboard of the BlackBerry phone looked like a blackberry. Here, the creative team looked at the product to find the unique name of the brand. This brand naming strategy was so successful that many people resisted going to other mobile devices.
- Google: Google was first going to be named as “Googol”. Googol is a mathematical term that represents ten raised to the power of a hundred. It went from Googol to Google because the domain name was misspelt. But, the idea behind the name remained the same. It was to provide people with loads of information available online.
- Twitter: When Jack Dorsey came up with the name of Twitter, he knew the concept of this social media platform. So, he began with one of the first ideas. He and his team looked around in a dictionary to come up with the word Twitter. The name resonates with the sound of the bird, which is what the brand is.
Tips and Best Practices
For effective brand naming, there are some best practices that you’ll have to keep in mind. Your brand name should become a memory for your consumers.
By memory, it means that the name should be recognizable to them. Moreover, this memory should also be emotional for them. Hearing your name should elevate some positive feelings in their mind.
Following are some tips that you should follow for making a good brand name.
- Be truthful: When you’re creating the brand name, be truthful about it. The brand name of your products and services should represent what you’re giving to people. You can use your mission and vision to come up with the brand name. You never know that it might just save you a lot of energy and time too.
- Wordplay: Everyone likes fun and creative brand names. It gives a “Wow” factor to the brand. To come up with a creative name, use wordplay. It can be related to what you do. You can use inspiration from your products or from anything that says, nothing but, unique.
- Parallel processing: Parallel processing refers to that activity wherein you do multiple tasks at once. You have a big task at hand, and you divide it into smaller units. Parallel processing at the time of brand naming would speed up the creative process. This would also provide you with many potential names.
- Use colours: Brand naming isn’t only about naming. As mentioned earlier, the brand name is visual too. So, when you’re creating your brand name, use colours. These aren’t some random colours. Look at what the different colours represent. Align these meanings with your brand identity.
- Acronyms: Sometimes, instead of the whole brand name, people remember it by an acronym. Therefore, you should also think of a short-form name for your brand.
In Conclusion
Brand naming is a task for the brand that requires all creativity. Long gone are those days when people just used their names as the brand name.
If a brand has to have a bigger impact in today’s time, then they’ve to come up with extraordinary names.
You need to build a brand name by preparing a list of as many names as you can think of. You can also use some online tools for this. However, don’t doubt your creativity, either.
Use all the resources that you’ve to get that name across the world. Do you need help? Mailsenpai is ready to give you the right advices.