Off the Cuff: What's In a Name? Part 2 of 4: Names to Avoid and What Qualifies As a Dream Name?

BUSINESS

Off the Cuff: What's In a Name? Part 2 of 4: Names to Avoid and What Qualifies As a Dream Name?

March 12, 2010
By Mark L. Venit, MBA, Contributing Writer

In Part 1 of this four-part series, we looked at the realities of thinking about a name change, considerations for determining whether a new name is necessary and a list of 10 categories of variables to help you open your search for your company name — a list to which to refer when you’re brainstorming names.

Now, let’s turn to some of the types of names that you shouldn’t consider: two types of company names that have inherent limitations, evince little creativity or are weak in developing a distinctive, differentiated business name. Then, we’ll discuss the elements of a “dream name.”

1. Overused and Trite Names. Avoid company names that are overused. Even though you probably don’t see industry databases too often, I can tell you two particular forms of company names guarantee your vendors and industry peers will yawn when they see them: names with the words “creative” or “unique’ in the title. Using these terms usually denotes companies that are neither very creative nor unique. Such names might seem attractive to you at first, so my admonition here may seem counterintuitive to you. But trust me on this.

If your business is in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, Tenn., or San Antonio, do you want to join the thousands of other enterprises using "Windy City," "Big Apple," "Motor City," "Emerald," "Big D," "Mile High," "Twin Cities," "Music City" or "Alamo" in their names? If you take these easy cop-out solutions, you can count on getting lost in the shuffle, becoming another gallon of water going over Niagara Falls.

2. Letters, Initials, and Personal Names. Avoid, wherever humanly possible, resorting to using personal names (first and/or last), your initials or contractions of earlier names. It creates no buzz and, in most cases, devalues a company when an owner decides to sell the business. Just because Al and his brother, Frank, go into business does not mandate the company be named A & K or A-K.

Woo-hoooooo ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It also guarantees a mom-and-pop connotation — deserved or not — which becomes an inhibiting factor when trying to sell to Corporate America. Two Brothers Screen Printing isn’t much better. Get my drift?

Letters often are the easy shortcut to trimming existing company names because the name is too long, no longer describes what the company does or has developed negative connotations, such as after a scandal, bankruptcy or crisis stemming from a discrimination lawsuit, pollution violations and the like. Sometimes, abbreviations or letters are chosen in conjunction with a company going public or to conceal ownership, but it’s still unlikely to become a winning marketing asset.

In research done on company names, the findings on those formed with abbreviations, initials or contracted words have shown a range of inherent weaknesses, the biggest of which include the loss of identity and association with the company’s core product or service. There is, however, a huge exception to this general admonition: Using of initials to brand a company works best for those whose earlier and much longer names had broad commercial awareness, positive connotations and economic success.

That’s why using letters proves to be successful for re-branding firms such as Atlantic Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), International Business Machines (IBM), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco).

'Dream Names'
Though an elusive undertaking, try — if you can — to achieve a “dream name.” That’s what I call a name that provides the ultimate flexibility in marketing, but also can work as a company name, product line trademark, label, retail store name, catalog name, domain name and a name that could be extended to brand other businesses and product lines. Finding a dream name isn’t an absolute necessity; I’d rather discover a great name that gives the company and product strength, staying power and other wonderful benefits, than a dream name that’s already taken and cannot be trademarked or made available as a domain name.

Don’t give up. Then again, what’s getting more difficult every day is finding great names and dream names that can merit trademark approval, as well as a domain name that doesn’t cost you as much to secure as a powerful politician.

Does that mean the name solution is sometimes a second name? Or more? Indeed! And we’ll be looking at that possibility in Part 3, along with other mechanisms that will help better position your company name.

By the way, should you happen to come up with a name that's so good and so strong that you’d like to protect your use of it for a long time and throughout North America, consider trademarking the name for your own protection and peace of mind. You’ll need to do some homework here, but to research names and trademarks that may already belong to someone else, look at the resources available through the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

I’ll venture that reading this column, as well as Part 1, has been slow going for you at times, due to the several pauses you made in the course of being stuffed with ideas because one or two of them may have hit home or stimulated further ideas and variations of names you’ve already had in mind. Hopefully you’ve gotten plenty of food for thought so far.

Mark L. Venit, MBA, is president of Apparel Graphics Institute Ltd., Ocean Pines, Md., which provides management and marketing consulting and proprietary research to apparel graphics companies throughout the Americas and Europe. He also is the chairman of ShopWorks Software LLC, a provider of industry-specific business software. Venit teaches pricing, strategic marketing, salesmanship and other business management topics at the Imprinted Sportswear Shows. You can contact him at markvenit@cs.com.

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