A brand name can make a huge difference to the success of a brand.
Don’t get me wrong, the product has to be good or none of it matters – but the brand name does have an impact on performance.
Maybe this is why I have seen so many companies talk about their ‘naming strategy’ process … even though most of them then come back and say their first stage of the process has resulted in 10,000+ names.
TEN THOUSAND!!!
What sort of strategy – a process designed to ultimately create sacrifice – delivers 10,000 options?
But I digress.
While names can evoke all manner of feelings and emotions, there is a whole host that shows the imagination of a dead badger.
I wrote about how Singapore in particular is good/bad with their ‘say what you see’ approach to naming brands, products and stores … but there is a type of brand name that drives me even more crazy than the obviousness favoured in Asia and it’s the crash-together name.
Crash Together?
Yeah … where a brand takes 2 separate words roughly associated with the category and smashes them together.
There’s a bunch of these, such as Playtex, but I saw one recently that was bottom-of-the-barrel scraping …
Pregnacare.
PREGNACARE!!!
Christ, is that really the best they could do?
I get being pregnant is both wonderful and fearful, but Pregnacare is the most clinical name you could get.
It captures none of the wonderful and just hints of the fearful.
Plus it doesn’t – in any way – explain what it actually is, which given they’ve decided to go all mechanical in name choice, seems a rather ridiciulous situation.
I get naming is hard.
I get naming isn’t the be-all and end-all of a brands success.
But if you want to be seen as some sort of friend to anyone who is pregnant – which, judging by the photo, Pregnacare do – then you might want to choose 2 words that when smashed together, don’t sound like a visit to an upmarket gynecologist.