A brand is a complex organism. This is part five in a series of articles in which we examine a successful brand's component parts.

Elements of a Successful Brand 5: The Name

If you could light a Bunsen burner under a great brand and distill it down to its most basic substance, you'd be left with the brand's most valuable asset — its name. Even after other critical elements have evaporated away, a brand's name still packs a punch. If American Express, IBM, or Coca-Cola were to shut down their businesses today (assuming nothing had tainted their reputations), these brands could be revived a few years from now and still be leading contenders in their categories. Such is the power of the brand name.

More and more, companies are recognizing that their name can help them stand out in a competitive environment and contribute to long-term customer loyalty. Over the past four decades a whole industry has emerged to help entrepreneurs and corporations name their businesses and products. Larger naming firms employ linguists and proprietary computer programs to develop hundreds or thousands of potential names and name fragments (called morphemes). Smaller firms rely on their experience, wit, and brainstorming techniques to build lists for their clients.

Names can be broken into several categories. A few years ago, names coined from Greek and Latin roots were all the rage, and they still pop up with some regularity today. From Accenture to Zonagen, coined names are imbued with latent meaning and are easy to trademark. Trouble is, these names have little meaning to ordinary people unfamiliar with classical languages, and their resultant blandness makes these names often difficult to remember.

Many names are descriptive of their services. Computer Associates, General Mills, Pre-Paid Legal Services are examples of business whose names reflect what they do. On the upside, people will understand what these businesses do. On the downside, these names can be very generic, making them difficult to trademark. Generic names tend to make poor long-term brand names because they have little traction in our minds.

Other names are pure abstractions, like Amazon, Blackberry, Google, and Yahoo. While many of these are real words, they have little obvious connection to their businesses. Their value comes from their quirkiness, not their connotations. What these abstract names lack in seriousness, they more than make up for in the attention they command. They are difficult to forget.

Another popular choice are acronyms — IBM, CVS, and CBS are well-known examples. The problems with acronyms, however, are legion: they are usually impossible to trademark, they have no meaning or emotional appeal, and they are easily transposed and confused with similar-sounding company names.

Many companies, particularly in the professional services, are named for their founders or partners (and in larger firms, this can be a real mouthful). This tradition, which goes back for centuries, makes sense in an industry in which personal connections are all-important. The long-term implications, however, can be problematic. When a named principal dies or leaves the firm, those personal connections are lost. In many cases, as these companies evolve over time, so do their names. This can create confusion in the marketplace and makes it difficult to establish a widely-known brand name.

This tradition of naming firms for their principals, however, is unlikely to go away any time soon. But firms with an eye to the future, would be well advised to choose a name that makes sense from a marketing perspective — one that is short, fairly differentiated from competitors, and unlikely to metamorphose over time — select a single distinctive-sounding founder's name, for instance, and stick with it for the long haul.

Most experts agree that choosing a good name can be critical to a brand's prospects. A name encapsulates all of the content — intellectual and emotional — that people associate with a product or service. Some names make this process of association easier than others. With all of the challenges business owners face, it makes sense to use every advantage at their disposal. Word is, a great name is a great start.

For a wry but fascinating look inside the naming industry, read The Name Game in Salon magazine . To learn more about naming strategies, check out this Pivot article.

6 Ways a Good Name Can Improve Your Brand

1. Differentiate you; contrast you against competitors
2. Aid recall of your brand name
3. Engage your audience
4. Support your positioning
5. Establish your business' personality
6. Stand for something more universal than your product or service

WordCraft:
The Art of Turning Little Words into Big Business
by Alex Frankel

There aren't a lot of books out there on corporate naming. And few of those are as insightful and entertaining as Wordcraft, Alex Frankel's exploration of the naming industry and its abstract product. Frankel — a San Francisco-based writer and brand strategist — interweaves his experiences as a professional namer with stories of the creation of five well-known brand names: the Blackberry, IBM's e-business, Porche's Cayenne, Accenture, and Viagra. Along the way, he relates the rationale and history behind brand naming.

Whether you're considering a new name for your business or are just interested in how the process works, Wordcraft provides a great introduction to the mysterious practice of naming companies and products. You'll follow Frankel to the offices of the world's largest naming firm and into corporate boardrooms. Along the way, you'll learn why naming is more art than science — and why businesses take it so seriously.

Frankel's story of naming is irresistible and smart. And by the book's end, you'll begin to understand why words and brands are inextricably linked.
 

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Elements of a Successful Brand 6: The Logo

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