9 Critical Brand Naming Principals

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 and hit that subscribe button and the notification bell as well it really does help the channel grow if you want more actionable tips and techniques around brand strategy like this well then head on over to BrandMasterAcademy. com and get yourself sign up for the list it is free and I will drop those tips and techniques right into your inbox but I'd love to hand that over to you now I'd 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!