Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Branding: How to Name a Sports Car
Tarin or Parin?
You’ve just designed a spectacular, high-performance sports car. It’s beautiful. It handles like a dream. It turns heads. And it’s faster than anything else on the road. Now what do you name it?
Let’s assume that you want to emphasize the car’s speed in the name. Which name sounds faster to you: Tarin or Parin? Think about it for a moment and then read on.
According to researchers at Lexicon, a naming company in California, Tarin implies speed but less luxury. Parin, on the other hand, implies luxury rather than speed. The differences have to do with the pronunciation of the first letter. The initial “t” in Tarin is easy to pronounce — it’s quick like a fast car. The “p” in Parin requires more effort to build — like a luxury car.
“Fine”, you may say, “that works in English but the world is globalizing, so what about other languages?” Funny you should ask. The Lexicon researchers also studied the names in Japanese, Polish, Spanish, and Dutch and got essentially the same result. Pronouncing a “t” is easy and fast regardless of your native language.
This example comes from “Famous Names”, a terrific article by John Colapinto that appeared in The New Yorker. (click here). Unlike the old days, naming has become much more of a science. Linguists are studying how sounds evoke emotions and how those sounds might vary across cultures. Some tidbits from the article:
- Short brand names are better than long ones.
- Pronounceability is important. An unpronounceable name simply puts off prospective buyers. The easiest words to pronounce follow a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern like Amazon or Lipitor or Lexicon.
- Alliteration and assonance help a name sound more likable.
- The letters “c”, “v”, and “p” imply vigor and well-being. This is why the Lexicon researchers love the name of Honda’s Civic.
- The letter “b” is the most “reliable” in virtually any language. Hence the BlackBerry (which Lexicon named).
- The name shouldn’t focus on the product features but rather the story you want to tell about the product.
So here’s a fun game: take these guidelines and start inventing your own names. I often do this when I’m out for a walk. I just play with different letter combinations and, when I come up with something that sounds interesting, I write it down. I now have about 80 names on my “potentially useful” list. Some day, they may come in handy.
Brand Names: Offense
My clients often ask me to help them name things. They’re hoping that we can develop a name that plays equally well to logic and emotion and that states a compelling benefit in 15 letters or less. A lot of brains have been damaged this way.
Great brand names often trigger emotional responses. But we often get the cause and effect backward. The name doesn’t put the emotion in us. We put the emotion in the name.
I worked in college and scraped together enough money to buy a beat-up Pontiac Tempest. The original Pontiac was a great Indian leader in the midwestern United States. The town of Pontiac, Michigan was named after him. General Motors opened a factory there and named the car after the town. Originally, the name Pontiac didn’t mean anything more to me than, say, the name Cotopaxi. It’s just a name. Then I bought the car and enjoyed driving it. Now Pontiac has a special meaning to me, some sentimental value. The name didn’t do anything to me. I did something to the name. That’s why naming is so difficult. The name doesn’t trigger anything until customers add emotion to it.
As Kevin Lane Keller and many other branding experts have pointed out, you can play offense or defense with a name — but it’s hard to do both. Consider three variables for offense:
- Memorability — anything you can do to make your name memorable will help build your brand. This may mean playing off a well-known word — as in Lincoln cars or Winston cigarettes. Be sure to link to something that has positive connotations. Repetition also builds memorability which is why marketers repeat themselves so often.
- Meaningfulness — a good name may identify a product category, or some key product features, or a major product benefit. Be aware that changes in perception may require you to change your name. When fried food came to be viewed as unhealthful, Kentucky Fried Chicken decided to change its name to KFC.
- Likability — it’s hard to know what makes a name likable. You may pick a popular person’s name. Animals often provide better names than people do. It’s hard to hate an animal whereas it’s not so hard to dislike some people. The more abstract a product or service is, the more important it is to focus on a likable name.
It’s exceedingly hard to pick a name that has all three criteria. The trick is to not worry too much about it. Remember that a great name doesn’t create a great product. A great product creates a great name. Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to defend a great name.
(This article is based largely on Kevin Lane Keller’s book, Strategic Brand Management).
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