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Choosing a name -
04-08-2004, 11:57 AM
This is something that I read in one good book + my own observations.
The name of a company and its trademarks can be truly considered the company’s biggest assets. Today companies launch more trademarks than three years ago, find more ways of supporting them and face much more difficulties. Today the problem #1 is a name’s accessibility. Only in the USA there are 1.6 mln trademarks registered. In Europe it’s 3 mln. Nine of ten names are already taken. We just don’t have enough words and word combinations for everyone!
Some companies take the easy way: abbreviations. But this is just a trap, one of the worst enemies of successful positioning. Ordinary words or even made-up words are much easier to remember than an illogical combination of letters.
Names should not only look good, but also sound good. (pronounce and compare: UNUM and Union Mutual).
One of the ways out when looking for a name might be buying a name. Yves St.Laurent bought the name for it’s famous perfume “Opium” from a couple of elderly perfumers only for 200$. And this is not the only example of a name’s second life.
One more thing to consider when choosing a name for a product is its meaning in other languages. One Chinese company named their dried milk “creap” and in Russia there’s a restaurant “Fart”(sorry for the examples, but it’s true).
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