Brand naming strategy
Before the first brand name is created, it has to be clear what it should achieve. Naming strategy creates that foundation.
Strategy is not a preliminary stage of creation. Strategy is its compass.
Naming strategy defines what a new brand name has to achieve – functionally, emotionally, legally, internationally.
It translates the findings from the analysis into a requirements profile that guides creation and makes the later assessment objective. Without that profile, name creation is a matter of taste. With it, it becomes a reasoned decision.
At INCREON Naming, we develop the naming strategy together with the client: in structured workshops, based on the positioning, and with a clear view of the brand context the name will sit in.
What naming strategy defines.
Every naming project brings different requirements. It makes a difference whether a single company name is needed or a product name that has to work within an existing portfolio. Whether two companies are merging and have to decide which name stays; or whether neither does. Whether a new technology is being named that no customer knows yet, or an established product is being repositioned in the market.
Naming strategy is where the course is set, before creation begins:
Naming approach: which type of name fits the task?
A central element of naming strategy is the question of the degree of encoding: how much should the name explain, and how much should it leave open? The answer defines the creative corridor and influences the name’s protectability, its international usability and its capacity to carry the brand into the future.
Four basic types can be distinguished – with fluid transitions between them:
Descriptive names
They say directly what something is about: apt, easy to understand, quickly learned. The downside: limited protectability, restricted international usability and the risk that the name becomes constraining as the product or company evolves.
Symbolic names
They work with analogies and images, with an implied “is like …”. Well chosen, they are internationally usable and protectable. But symbolism is culturally bound: what signals strength in one market can come across as alien or misleading in another.
Associative names
They draw on familiar terms, recombine them and attract attention through the creative break. The high creative input usually makes them distinctive and readily protectable. Linguistic and cross-cultural screening remains indispensable nonetheless.
Artificial names
Pure coinages with no semantic baggage. They are relatively easy to protect and internationally usable, because they mean nothing unintended in any language. The price: they have to be charged with meaning entirely through communication. The name alone explains nothing.
“Every brand name calls for its own strategy. The process can be standardized, the solution cannot.”
Why strategy accelerates the process.
In practice, the strategic phase is sometimes seen as a delay, as a detour ahead of the real creative work. The opposite is true. A clear requirements profile accelerates creation, because it gives direction. It reduces iterations, because the assessment criteria are in place. And it creates acceptance, because the naming decision is ultimately traceable and reasoned – towards leadership, the board, stakeholders. And internally, towards employees in general and sales in particular.
Naming strategy is not a document for the drawer. It is the tool that turns an opinion into a decision.
Further reading
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