The Name Game

My dear marketing friend…if you had a chance to go back in time like Michael J. Fox did in Back to the Future and could change just one thing that you or someone concerned with your brand had done to it, which one would that be?

While you are still thinking on that, let me share with you what most of my marketing and advertising friends replied when I posed the same question to them.

“I would change the name of the brand that I am handling. I am goddamn stuck with this stupid name.”

Why would one want to change the brand name of all the things?

Simple. You could always reposition, albeit difficult, your brand; target a different set of target audience half way through; even change the pricing strategy and alter the course of your brand any time. But it’s close to impossible to successfully change your brand name mid way through, and also live to tell the tale.

Put otherwise, you can’t change the brand name mid way though the life of the brand without improving the chances of its demise. You better get the branding right before you launch the brand. Or else you might have to seek the help of Christopher Lloyd to travel back in time to get it right later.

What is this thing about naming brands?

How do you get your branding strategy right?

I am not sure about all these myself but let’s together take a ride down the market place and look at the good, bad and ugly names and figure the answers for ourselves.

First, what is so critical about naming brands? The answer for this would probably set the context for our search. Of all the descriptions that I have seen for brand name the one by Al Ries and Jack Trout beats every other textbook description hollow.

“Brand name is a knife which cuts the consumer’s mind to let the brand message inside.”

Simple set of words but coveys brilliantly the power of a good brand name.

Fair & Lovely, a name that clearly conveys what the product would do to the consumer. Or how about Krack – the cure for cracked heels – a well-crafted brand name that sets the tone for the brand message that follows.

That’s the other benefit of good brand names – the good ones connote the category in which they operate and appropriate the generic benefits all for themselves. When Satyam Infoway launched its unlimited Internet connectivity pack, their advertising agency named it (actually I was involved in this, so I guess I could say ‘we’) UnLtd… - a brand name that owns the category and also appropriates all generic advertising of its competitors in that category. Every time a competitor advertises its unlimited pack, Satyam’s UnLtd… rides the free mileage.

Getting an apt name for your brand is winning half the battle. And there are different ways of getting the branding right. One way is to have the Brand name be a synopsis of the brand’s positioning. If you have done your homework well and positioned your brand properly, all you need is a brand name that just aptly summarises it. Dermicool – a name that tells what the brand’s benefit is and also what the brand would do to you. Or how about the brand name Ceasefire – the fire extinguisher.

Head & Shoulders, a brand name that clearly highlights that it is an anti-dandruff solution. Where else does the problem manifest but in those two places! Now, that is another lesson in branding. It is not the goodness or the badness of the brand name, in an aesthetic sense that determines effectiveness. It is the appropriateness of the same!

And there are names that reflect the target audience. Close-up is a classic example of a name that summarises whom the brand targets – smell fresh when you get up close to your sweetheart.

But, hey, what about all those stupid sounding names that have made it big – Pond’s, Videocon, Surf, Ariel et al – They mean almost nothing but they all got away with such inaneness because of competition or rather the lack of it. What was competing with Videocon? BPL, Philips and more such inane names.

Naming brands, in pre-competition days was more or less similar to the way people were named. Go back in time and recall the names of your high school friends. There were hardly any special names floating around. You probably had at least three Sureshs, a couple of Rameshs, and a host of Kumars while in school. Naming people, and for that matter brands too, was just a ritual and needed no thought or intelligence.

Not any more.

Why? For the first time in consumer India, we are staring at something called competition. Too many brands vying for attention. Too many brands for the consumers to remember. The stakes are high and so is the need to have a name that would cut the consumer’s mind to let the brand message inside.

Talking about names, Al Ries and Jack Trout talk about people’s names and their bearing on the success of the people who have it. Their theory is simple - “There is a growing body of evidence that a person’s name plays a significant role in the game of life.” In other words, a person with a unique name has more chances of making it big in a field than a guy whose name is just like anybody else’s.

This theory translated in Indian context makes fascinating reading. Most, if not all, people, who have made it big in whatever field they have made it in, have names that are unique or rather names that are not run of the mill. Tell me, how many Rajinikanths do you know of? Or for that matter, how many Vajpayees? Can you recall more than one Amitabh Bachchan?

Did you know that Rajinikanth’s original name was an ordinary sounding ‘Shivaji Rao’? And do you think he would have made it big with his original name? I don’t think so. Nor do Al Ries and Jack Trout.

A simple name like Raja makes it big in music when he renames himself Ilayaraja and rules the South Indian music industry for more than two decades. If he had not changed his name, do you think he would have reached dizzy heights? Perish the thought.

So what do you do if you have an ordinary name like, say Sachin? Just add your last name to it if it’s unique. Sachin Tendulkar. There you go again.

M.G. Ramachandran sounds quite ordinary huh? That’s why he called himself M.G.R – now, that’s unique - to rule the Tamil film industry and its political field for decades, till he died.

Put otherwise, an ordinary name hardly succeeds. Is there an extremely successful Kumar that you know of? Or for that matter, Sunil, Chandra, Geetha, Raju? There might be a few exceptions, as is the case with everything in life but rarely will you find a successful person with an ordinary sounding name. Believe me, I have even gone through the telephone directory myself to verify it.

The same holds true for brand names. Sony, Pepsi, McDonalds, Lexus – brands that make it big have names that are unique and not plain run of the mill.

Having said all this it is also critical to understand that a brand name is also what the marketer makes it to be over a period of time through persuasive positioning and powerful marketing. Without these even a great name becomes meaningless!

Before we part, the brilliance of branding in vivid action was amply evident among the 630 odd wine shop that dotted the city of Madras a few years ago. Amma has since closed all private wine shops and let her Government retail liquor instead under a boring ‘TASMAC’ brand name. Talking about names, Madras is still popular and in vogue and not the renamed Chennai.

Anyway, talking about branding of wine shops then, some shop names connoted the benefit – Joy Wines, Jolly Wines, Sorgalogam Wines (Read ‘Heavenly wines’ my dear non-Tamil brethren). But the one that would have won an Oscar for brilliant names, if there were ever a category for brand names, would have been the wine shop in Adyar, an upmarket neighbourhood - a brand name that induced increased usage and promoted loyalty.

It was named ‘Daily Wines’.

The man who owned that shop should have ideally written this column. He sure knows a thing or two about branding!