What’s in a name?

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

So says Juliet to Romeo. But is she right? Is it true that names are irrelevant and don’t influence our attitudes? Would the rose be a symbol of love and beauty if it was called hogweed?

With all due respect to Shakespeare, experience shows that Juliet’s comment is wishful-thinking. Names do matter, especially in business.

The 2005 film Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger, got good reviews from audiences and the critics, but, despite that, box-office takings were low. Some claim that the name of the film was to blame; the film is about a boxer, yet the name Cinderella is seen as ‘girly’. Think of the completely different image the title of another boxing film – Raging Bull – conjures up.

In 2008 Broadmoor Primary School in Crowthorne, Berkshire, was forced to change its name. The school had good Ofsted reports – but many local parents judged the school by its name alone and refused to send their children there – Broadmoor is also the name of a high-security hospital where many of Britain’s most violent criminals are held.

Imagine two dress shops, one called Maureen Fashions and the other Roxie’s Rags. If you couldn’t look in their windows or peek at their websites, would you expect them to stock similar styles of clothes? Probably not. Would you, like most people, expect Maureen Fashions to appeal to an older age group than Roxie’s Rags? That impression is all down to the shops’ names.

If you were looking for a kitchen design company in Yellow Pages, which of these two would you expect to be more expensive – Budget Kitchens or Bespoke Kitchens? Whichever you selected, your choice was based on name alone.

A clever name won’t compensate for poor products or shoddy service. Customers are not that easily fooled! Nor will you necessarily fail because others don’t like your name; many successful companies have bland, boring or just plain odd names. The names McDonald’s and HSBC are neither exciting nor memorable, but remember, these companies spend millions of pounds or dollars making sure we, the general public, don’t forget their names or their products. They employ an army of sales, PR and branding experts to keep their name in the public’s consciousness. You haven’t got the resources available to McDonald’s, HSBC and other monolithic corporations so your name has to work a lot harder. Why not invest some time in thinking up a good one?

Names matter

The financial value ascribed to a brand name is known in economic circles as brand equity. It boils down to one thing – trust, the trust that customers have in the brand. It is estimated that the name Coca-Cola alone is worth around $70 billion. If all of Coca-Cola’s factories burnt down, and all its machinery, vehicles and other tangible assets were completely destroyed, the company could build new factories, buy new machinery and carry on trading. But if the name Coca-Cola were tainted by scandal or became associated with failure, the company would be damaged beyond repair. That’s how important a name is!

The UK television channel Dave, which shows sport and other male-oriented programming, saw its audience triple within eight months after it changed its name from UKTV G2. Moreover, awareness of the channel’s existence increased from 1% to 32% within just one week of the rebranding. The channel’s output hadn’t changed at all; the success was primarily down to the name change. UKTV G2 sounds as if it is an impersonal EU directive, whereas Dave sounds ‘blokey’ and like one of your friends. Dave is also a lot easier to remember.

If you’ve seen the BBC TV series Mary, Queen of Shops, you’ll know that retailing guru Mary Portas often advises failing fashion stores to change their name if they want to change their fortunes. Business owners like to think that people look beyond the name before they judge the company or product, but reality shows otherwise.

In a 2006 study Yell, publisher of Yellow Pages, found that 11% of consumers said they wouldn’t do business with a company if they didn’t like the name, and 10% of respondents said that the name was the most important factor in choosing who to do business with.

Some of the most successful brand names around – BlackBerry, Pentium, Prozac – were thought up by specialist naming or branding companies. These companies charge tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of dollars for their services. They follow certain guidelines and principles as part of the naming process. These guidelines and principles are set out in this book. Follow these guidelines, put them into practice and you, too, will come up with a winning name for your business.

Names are for life

Out of all the different features that make up your business’ marketing and branding mix, the name is the one that you are least likely to change. If your logo, packaging or office stationery begins to look dated, you can change it easily enough. If an advertising campaign doesn’t work, you can adopt a different strategy next time. If your sales team aren’t having much luck selling your products, you can retrain them, try a different approach or hire new people – the worst that will happen is that you might suffer a temporary blip in sales. It’s not quite so easy to change your name. There are legal and bureaucratic implications, for one thing, and it will be costly – you’ll have to start again from square one to build up awareness among the public.

Many business owners questioned in the Yell study mentioned earlier originally felt that the name of their business was less important than other factors, such as service. Some later regretted choosing a name without much thought and 37% admitted they would choose a name with more impact, if they were starting again.

Your name is going to be with you for the long haul, so it makes sense to choose it carefully in the first place. We’re running out of names. In the UK alone around 700,000 new businesses start up each year, according to the National Audit Office. Yet there are only about 300,000 words in the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. Chances are, if you want to trademark a name that is an ordinary English word, you won’t be allowed to – someone else will already have done so. That is why so many businesses these days, like Axa, Google, Squidoo and Starbucks, invent names.

There is a skill to thinking up names – and there are many traps for unpractised business owners to fall into. But don’t worry! Choosing a Winning Name for Your Business will help you navigate your way through the name-choosing process so that you end up with a winning name. To continue reading [... ]

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