Omnichannel consumer, legal proceedings, 91,000 names registered per year in France, time compression through digital & smartphones: a name and its creation must be registerable, agile, and globally oriented. Discover Business Hacking Naming!
We keep reading about it in the media and experiencing it firsthand... what should theoretically save time has actually compressed it. Digital tools and continuous news channels compress time. They have fundamentally changed our connection with the visibility slots for brands and their memorability. We are in the era of immediacy, of instantaneity. Everything is fast, very fast.
As a result, the concept of recognition and attribution of a strong brand becomes increasingly significant.
Why is name creation essential?
At the very beginning of an entrepreneurial project (new business, service, product); the brand name serves as a projection tool. In the name search process, these few letters together form a whole, embodying a business project, product benefit, consumer insight. This name allows a shared vision to be synthesized (brand platform) by all the stakeholders (executives, marketing, innovation, sales, employees...) gathered around the table.
Once launched, this name serves emotionally to convey a sense of belonging in strong association with its identity and visual territory...
Then, at the end of its journey, it becomes an integral component of the intangible value of the brand, and contributes to its financial valuation (notoriety, affection, attribution...).
Thus, the name becomes a marketing, symbolic, and financial benchmark.
So how can we create names that save you time?
The days are over when an agency received a brief, thought about it, presented names 10 days later, then returned, waited for various approvals, and suggested another selection, losing a month and a half in this "tunnel effect" for its client, who then had to "brief" for visual identity, website, and commercial concept. As in many areas, the methodology of name creation becomes 'agile' and must adapt to the challenges of responsiveness and cross-functionality.
We have to organize ourselves like our consumers. They are multi, even omnichannel. Consequently, creation must be as well, immediately, strongly, desperately. An "agile" name design must gather all sensibilities (consultant, linguist, semiologist, graphic designer, digital expert, architect, legal expert...) to propose names that are efficient at 360°, but also involve the advertiser's stakeholders (marketing, communication, sales, innovation, legal department...).
It's based on design thinking and agile methods that Business Hacking® Naming was born!
How to create impactful and registerable names? A beautiful name is a creator of values.
In France alone, 91,000 new names are registered annually with the INPI. Therefore, one must emerge and step away from the "beaten paths" or traditional nominal clichés presented 10 times to different clients. Today, if an oil company wanted to register the name "TOTAL," it couldn’t do so due to its simplicity or obviousness.
A decade ago, we could create more meaningful names, directly facilitating comprehension by everyone. That’s no longer the case. The profession of name creator has evolved and reinvented itself.
The creative openness and cross-functionality mentioned above are fundamental to the success of this mission. The name is a constituent part of the brand, along with its logo, slogan, website, advertising campaigns...
Moreover, by realizing that a brand name conveys meaning at its launch and is then "desemanticized" after a few months, it becomes essential to rely as much on what it inspires as on what it signifies. The meaning thus gives way to evocation.
Our expertise in name creation ensures that we understand from inception what is culturally and legally registerable. Thus, our partner lawyers and our network of cultural and linguistic validation in 140 countries and more than 250 languages come into play. They help you save time by devising registration strategies, identifying tension points, thereby avoiding "accidents" or cultural "risks." Common examples include Toyota's MR2, the Alcatel brand in spoken Arabic meaning "killer," and Asus's CHI computer.
Listen to my name, and I’ll tell you who I am.
Indeed, ultimately the brand name becomes a sound… A beautiful name is one that stays in memory by being sung.
Who realizes they're working on an apple (Apple), buying their appliances along with their baguettes (Boulanger), crossing monkeys when purchasing jeans (Bonobo), or eating paint while writing with their dessert while painting their apartment (Montblanc), not to mention their bathrooms shaped like female underwear (Aubade). Schizophrenic, right?
Contact points with the brand have multiplied but are more accelerated, shorter; thus, the brand has less time to establish itself. The memorization process relies as much on visuals as on sound.
Therefore, more emphasis is placed on emotion, musicality, rhythm (vowel/consonant - liquid/whistling - strong/weak - nasal/pure...).
Listen to these names: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Shazam, Zanzicar... they are primarily musical names, entering our minds more effortlessly without us truly knowing their meaning.
What makes a good name? It’s a registerable, culturally acceptable, quickly memorable, musical name that translates the brand’s ambition in a transversal and multichannel way.
