What's up brand builders! Stephen Houraghan here of BrandMasterAcademy.com and in this
video you're gonna learn nine critical brand naming principals that you can use
when naming your brand your business your product or your service so you can
avoid the mistakes that most business owners make and plant a strategic seed
in the mind of your audience from the very first touchpoint.
now if you're new to the channel and you want actionable brand strategy tips and techniques to
grow your business well then hit that subscribe button and the notification
bell and you'll be well on your way now my experience I would say over
90% of brand names are selected long before any kind of strategic brand
development processes are put into place usually the business owner comes up with
the idea for the business and soon after comes up with a name for that
business based on nothing other than the fact that they believe it sounds good
they believe it sounds catchy or even worse one of their family members has
come up with this idea and now they've got an element of sentimentality attached to it
and they don't want to let it go but either way any business or brand that is
named in this manner is at a massive disadvantage because the brand name is
actually a strategic tool that the brand strategist can use to plant a seed in
the mind of the audience as to why that brand should be remembered so if it is
named early on in the business development stage and not the brand
development stage well then this business and this future brand is at a
massive disadvantage now let me give you an example here let's say you have a new
neighbor move in next door and you meet this neighbor at the gate at your front
lawn and you get chatting to your neighbor and they tell you that they
have a dog and you ask ok what's your dog's name
and they say fluffy now immediately you're going to paint a picture in your
mind as to what kind of dog this is without any other information other than
the name now let's say you ask them what the name of the dog is and they say
killer now you are gonna have a completely
different picture as to what kind of dog that is going to be and that's gonna
impact immediately how you feel about that dog now I know that's a very broad
example and a very very basic example but how our brain works doesn't change
we are always painting pictures as to how we perceive something based on the
information at hand and that's exactly what we do with brands as well so when
it comes to the name of your brand there's some subtle nuances going on
here with how your audience paints a picture of your brand in their mind
based purely on the name so whether you're building a brand for your own
business or whether you're building a brand for a client it's really important
that you understand the strategic relevance of the brand names so you can
either make those decisions yourself or to have a conversation with your client
about the impact and the strategic viability of the brand name so I'm gonna
run through nine key principals that you can take into your brand naming
processes so you can start to name the brands that you build more
strategically principal number one the brand name is a strategic tool now a
strategic brand is made up of multiple elements all coming together to play
individual roles in the building of a brand the brand awareness the brand
recognition each one of those elements all plays their own role in making that
brand memorable to who that audience is and helping to shape the perceptions in
their mind as to what that brand means and when it comes to the brand name
memorability and contextual memorability is key so what is contextual
memorability well it's getting your audience to remember your brand based on
the context and the idea that you want them to remember your brand for so
really you want them to have a certain type of image and a certain type of
picture of what your brand should mean to them and your name plays a really
important role in that principal number two your brand name should frame the big
idea now at the core of any brand strategy is the positioning strategy and
the differentiator of that brand and these two elements really
define what the difference is between your brand versus your competitor's
brands and if you are able to develop a name that helps to frame that position
and that idea as to again why your audience should remember your brand and
the context in which your audience should remember your brand well then
your brand name will help to solidify that position in the mind of your
audience principal number three your brand name should have meaning now if
you're able to develop a brand name with a meaning that's tied into why the brand
exists what the purpose is what it believes in and the transformation that
your brand is taking your customers on the outcome that they're going to
achieve if you can tie the brand name into any of those things then it's far
more likely to be emotionally adopted by the internal brand representatives as
well as the audience I really think about what your brand is going to
achieve what's it going out into the marketplace to do what is the purpose
why does it exist and what mission is it on what vision does it have for the
future what transition is your audience going
to really experience from your brand being in existence if you're able to
develop the brand if you're able to tap into any of those ideas it really gives
that name extra weight and extra meaning and as I said if it does have meaning
then it's far more likely to be emotionally adopted principal number
four aim for clarity now the role and goal of any brand is to bring an
audience and a business closer together essentially making it as easy as
possible for that audience to do business with that brand now if there is
any confusion whatsoever in any form of communication from that brand whether
it's through the message or the story or the visuals whether something's
misaligned then that works against the end goal of the brand which is to bring
the audience and the business closer together and that goes for the name as
well if there's any sort of confusion whatsoever is if there's something that
the audience just doesn't get about the name then that's gonna work against the
end goal of the brand so avoid any confusing sounding names or any name
that would make the audience think well what does that mean or what's that all about
and one of the major culprits here are acronyms so famous brands using acronym
names will be HSBC AT&T or ING now all of these brands are very successful
brands but they're not successful because of the name in fact they're
successful in spite of the fact that they have a confusing name so again
going back to what the brand is there to do it's to make things easy and to make
sure that everything is clear and understandable so avoid any kind of
confusing name and if you can avoid acronyms then do principal number five
memorability is critical now when you do have business owners coming up with
their brand names they usually choose descriptive names because they want
their audience to know what it is that they do and that's a fair assumption
really that you know you want to come up with a name that describes what it is
that the brand does but the role of the brand name is not to describe what the
business does you have many other tools for that including the tagline or the
slogan or even your messaging but the role of the brand name is to make sure
that the audience can recall the brand easily so if you're coming up with a
brand name you don't want to be describing what it is that the business
does you want to be providing a name that is easy to store in memory and be
able to easily recall that name so really go for that memorability and not
those descriptive names principal number six the name facilitates the brand now
the name is not gonna be what makes your brand successful or not successful
now I'm not downplaying the importance of the brand name the brand name is very
very important when it comes to brand recall and memorability and getting your
audience to really remember who your brand is and what your brand does but I
can't tell you how many entrepreneurs or business owners have come to me and said
I want a name like Apple and the word pear has been thrown into the
conversation that's it's happening more times than you would believe but when we
think about Apple we're not really thinking of the name we're thinking of
the experience that we understand that we've come to know and love
about Apple and that's the same for any brand when we recall a brand we're
recalling the experiences that we have with that brand and the name is not what
gives us those experiences the name leads us back to those experiences now
there's a famous entrepreneur by the name of Phil Knight and when he was
coming up with a brand name for a shoe company he thought that Dimension Six
was a great name but he was advised against it by some of his employees and
he eventually went with the name Nike even though he didn't like it now the
name Nike is not the reason that brand went on to become the success that it
did but it facilitated that growth and made it possible far more than the name
Dimension Six would have principal number seven your name should be
available so when you come up with your unique name for your brand you want to
run it through a series of checks to make sure that you can actually use it
so making sure that there is no trademark on the name certainly not
within your class if there is a trademark at all then you should really
look into the classes that that brand is trademarked in before you decide to use
it for yourself and then obviously when it comes to the domain as well now most
short .coms are already taken so if you do have a short and memorable catchy
name that you want to use and the .com is taken then just come up with an
alternative domain or if it really is a deal-breaker that you can't get your
hands on that .com domain then you should look to an alternative name for
the brand principal number eight choose your name slowly now the brand identity
design process and the brand naming process are actually quite similar in
nature because they are both creative and when you sit down to go through this
process usually what happens is the most obvious options jump out at you straight
away and it's quite easy to get stuck on any one of those options thinking that
it is the best one but often the most obvious solutions are not the best
solutions so quickly move on from those obvious solutions and really take the
time to exhaust out the list of possibilities so again just take your
time with choosing a name and take your time with the development
of that name and make sure that you really exhaust every single angle and
principal number nine strategic naming is a process so understand that the
perfect name is probably not gonna jump out at you straight away you really need
to take the time and go through the processes go through the motions and as
I said before in the previous point really exhaust those possibilities take
your time with it and go through those processes and trust that if you give
enough time and attention and care to the actual process itself then more
often than not a perfect name really does reveal itself so take assurance and
take confidence in knowing that coming up with a strategic name coming up with
the perfect name for your brand is a process it doesn't always jump out at you
straight away but if you do take the time and effort and follow the
principals in this video then you're far more likely to come up with a suitable
brand name now my experience the naming of a brand is taken far too lightly in
most corners as I said before you have so many business owners that just pick a
name at the drop of a hat they don't really consider all of the strategic
elements at play and they don't really consider the role of the name in the
overall brand building exercise so when you understand that when you understand
that branding the role of brands is to really bring a business and an audience
closer together and the way that you do that is by influencing the perceptions
of your brand in the mind of your audience well then that really puts into
context the role and the importance and the relevance of the brand name in
shaping that perception if you liked this video please give it a thumbs up
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love to hear from you what your experiences are what your challenges are
around naming brands or the brand naming process let me know in the comments box
below let me know any questions I'll do my best to answer all of those until
next time brand like a master and I will see you in the next video!