Today, itís all about Names of corporations and things, products and services and their high visibility on global e-commerce, instant accessibility on the net, quick search-ability on the web, distinct memorability of names by overly strained populace, easy typability by tired fingers, and pleasant vocalization of such names and brand experiences by the customers all over the world. It is now all in the name.
This new name-economy is now the new driver of e-commerce and is the only boost to global cyber-branding and a powerful tool to dominate a market or a region. At this very second, business names are skating at bullet speed on this flat new earth, without borders, passports or time zones. No delays, no barriers, no major costs, just access. The name identity of a business will be the only measure on how a name works in a micro-multi-national-formation in a maze of countries and cultures. Economic power will be defined by the cyber-brand power and their accessibilities in number of countries. Big visuals replaced by small URLs. Under the new rules, a name works like a KEY, being the only thing that can unlock the doors to this net-kingdom.
The competitive fog is so thick, that without this key, a major branding and advertising is simply doomed. The old-fashioned gigantic logos, splashing colors and stripes have nothing to do with this access. This is all about the structure of a name and its impact. Not about its type fonts, logos, and shapes. Just as the sixties were for burning flags and bras, perhaps now is the time to burn most of the old marketing and branding books. Good names have a direct impact on corporate persona and positively affect customers, shareholders, media and influence public opinions at large. Itís time to explore the power of names, new laws of marketing and learn how to play on this sophisticated name game on this, one single flat earth.
Is America Ready for A British Style of Name Branding?
Yes. But it must learn quickly the secret of the trade as right now, in good old England they have big corporate brands like EGG as in ham & eggs, ORANGE as in juice, THUS, the Scottish Telco still having difficulties thus far. GO, as go where? and NOW, as in right now. Etc. {ETC. is also supposed to be a gentlemanís gentlemen type magazine for straight guys}
Now, here comes, TED in USA with only one single peanut? United Airlines so brilliantly chopped the Uni from their name to come to this unique invention of TED as half the airline with half the things chopped but the engines must deserve gold medal in the hall of fame of half naming.
As Blue, Jazz, Tango and Song were all flying, so TED will now do its trampoline routine.
It seems that all over the globe there is a rush to find 4 letter words for the airlines brands...is this revenge of the disgruntled flier? May be. The fact is airlines are on the fast chopping mode. Cut everything into half and than half again, do it slowly and do it painfully. Of course they all are losing money. To frequent flyers it became obvious, way before the 9-11 tragedy; it started with the peanut packets being replaced by a single peanut. Now all you get is a picture of a meal.
The monkey business is almost over, now you even pay for a cracker and dare ask for butter,never dream to demand an extra satin pillow with silky blankets. Today, the stage is nicely set to give a greyhound bus service in the air. Cut the washrooms give them a re-used parachute from I-NAM, Iraq that is. Naming of airlines has taken a major turn, form country-specific to discount-coupon-specific. From first-class to no-class. While Asian airlines are boosting super luxury classes, here in USA, it is time to fly a TOM or a DICK or a HARRY.
Thank you Britannia, we are amused with these yoyo monikers.
In the meanwhile, our good old McDonald in US is unhappy about Mcjobs being included as a word in the OED, The Oxford English Dictionary, mother of all the English words and a slap to the French because their Larousse dictionary is few thousand French words less than the English. Wow, we have more four letters words than the French, merde. To BigMac, the jobs of Flippin Engineers Moppin Mechanics
and Latrine Sentries is not to be laughed at. True, BigMac, does help tens of thousands at entry-level jobs
and helps the students. Some how, they later become very obese and try to sue them, in revenge?
Here is the new twist, the fast, freedom fry, fatty chow maker, now wants to sell childrenís clothing and introduce McKids in a big way... why not go for McCoffin..work,eat and die..complete the life circle. a million dollar tag line on Madison Avenue, indeed. Watch out for the naked kids running around at the golden arches drive-ins exchanging and re-fitting pantalones...French that is.
It is a false rumor that all good names have been taken.
Corporations believed that all the star-quality names were taken, and had no choice but to accept a silly, weird name. Nonsense. The same big ad-agencies, which delivered world-class logos and great commercials somehow seriously, failed in naming. A false myth was created to cover the lack of skills, and serious naming was farmed out to skateboarding freelancers for a ìbuck-a-nameî service. $500 got you 500 names. Where else would names like ìOingaî or ìBoingaî come from? What ever happened to strange names like PurpleFrog or PinkRhino?
Executives all over the Europe are faced with new challenges, because E-commerce demands visibility;
powerful URLs and DotComs. Dotnets, dotinfos, dotbizes are all easily forgotten and marketing suffers. Now, DotCom has become the only gold standard. Today, naming is no longer simple creative exercise, rather a serious strategic discipline where the Rules of Naming and the Laws of Corporate Nomenclatures must be applied. There is a big difference between a massive branding exercise and a highly specialized naming expertise. You can have a star quality and a globally effective name with an identical Dot.com. It is the easiest thing to do provided the proper laws are followed under professional expertise. Big branding has recently taken some big beating, mostly for the abuse and poor campaigns
pushing silly names and to convince customers that those names were too cute to forget.Mega-failures of such projects have corporations to re-configure their branding trees of naming architectures. Serious naming is slowly getting respectability pushing traditional branding out, this trend has created a huge vacuum in the big branding and agencies are scrambling to their act together.
Chasing New Customers for New Products in New Markets with New Names is the New Game. The old Imperialistic names and the hit and run condensed initials are in serious trouble. Now that over spending is a dream, companies are looking for very high quality marketing strategies impacting new revenues and long term name values to build into solid brand equities. Businesses all over the world now needs to re-emerge under new global name icons and this will create big opportunities for intellectual exercises in naming and corporate nomenclature in contrast to spinning logo solutions. While the hunt for new customers for new products in new territories is on the big game is in tackling the fundamental naming issues.
The issue of visibility on the web for online services is critical. Trade Mark Lawyerís often get the bad wrap for unnecessary fights but than these battles are only created by the nave executives who ignore the rules of naming in the first place and go for a seat of the pants name ideas and fly it in a panic often hours before the press-conference. A recent study showed that 97% names are selected on the exact day of the announcement, hours before the press conference.
Three Types of Business Names
Today, all over the world, less than 1% corporate name brands can pass the acid test of global suitability and registrability while the other 99% names have serious faults which often restricts them to a free flow usage on the national and global scene.
Here are the three main types of names..
Long geographic names. This seriously hurt national and international marketing. The same long named get initialized, causing massive confusion with strange companies worldwide, and are impossible to find on the Net.
Words on a string ñ All kinds of names of things combined either accidentally through M&A or for other strange reasons, and sometimes making no connections at all. Customerís hate them, yet the institutions ignore them
Initials - that come about because the customers refuse to call out long names. Old corporations have the strangest and most unusual collection of initials. Initials were simply collected and appended as a proof of their long history while some how
the customer is living in Today and never cares about a corporationís role in the previous century.
DIAGNOSIS
The Five Star Standard of Corporate Image & Name Identities, apply this,15 step by step, logical procedures which measures the effectiveness of a Name in use and declares it as Healthy, fit to run the race, or Injured or on Life-Support.
FirstStep. Institutions must determine whether a name is healthy, injured, or on life support. It makes no difference whether these names are of products, services, divisions, or the main corporate name. To a customer, a name is a name, no matter how it is offered.
Healthy Names are easy, unique, and one of a kind, with global protection, and an identical dot-com name like SONY, TELUS, Panasonic, MicroSoft, ZarLink
Injured Names are long, confusing, diluted or initialized. Simple dictionary words also cause a lot of confusion.
There are too many Firsts, Uniteds, Commerces, Nationals, Dominions and too many banks with compass directions in their names ñ East, West, North, South and so on,
Life-Support Names are tangled in serious trademark or obvious confusion problems. Names without identical dotcoms or with no apparent connection the product or service are constantly in need of oxygen.
Analysis and Treatment
The second step, after a detailed proper general checkup is to get a mandate to formally audit and analyze the name
so management can take specific steps to change or modify them.These names can be for cards, special accounts,
or for various services. Most banks have dozens of different names, and hundreds of domain names, clashing with each other. Itís always better to have a few healthy, strong and protected names; this way long-term brand values are established.
The third step, it is very easy to reevaluate, reposition and rebuild the name identity of a product or service
if you do so using the Laws of Naming. There is a big difference between general branding and specialized naming expertise. Healthy names are always fit to run the race, so they cost less to promote, and promoting them builds huge brand value. Injured names cost 10 times more.
All corporations ,big or small both are facing the impact of names, with e-commerce itís all over the globe and reaching the farthest corners. The old ideas of building brands using expansive billboards, color schemes and logos
with bottomless ad budgets are all now mostly replaced by ever changing fluid web pages. URLs and domain names are now controlling access to the entire corporations. In conclusion, there are major naming issues that banking executives must tackle in order to cope with the new challenges and for the branding executives to fully prepare this new name-economy.
Naseem Javed, introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in early eighties and is the author of Naming for Power and Domain Wars, is recognized as a world authority on corporate nomenclature and on naming standards. Naseem founded ABC Namebank, a quarter century ago in New York and Toronto www.abcnamebank.com A famous speaker on the global circuit and hilarious commentator on Naming issues. Naseem is also available on various webinars.
How Cyber-Branding in general created this new name-economy?
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