How to name a brand better?

Super eight rules that can help you give your brand a popular name

Introduction

Market practitioners are always unavoidable to encounter a difficult problem, how to name the brand? A competitive name is not only easy for consumers to remember, but also conducive to a smoother process of product promotion and marketing.

For example, "WARSTEINER" is the Chinese name of the famous German beer brand "WARSTEINER" that just entered the Chinese market, which made the product's promotion in the Chinese market difficult, and the company almost withdrew from the market. Through consumer interviews and research, they found that the reason for low sales is due to the pronunciation of "WARSTEINER" is very similar to "I'm dead", and has always emphasized the "lucky", caring for It does not fit in with Chinese values, which have always emphasized "good luck" and caring for "life.

Coca-Cola, now a familiar name, was also caught in a naming fiasco. "When Coca-Cola entered Shanghai in 1920, it wasn't called that, but was named "Tad Tad Wax", which ended up in the same situation as "Worthle". The result was the same as "Worthle", and the sales of the product were very poor. The reason was that "Tadpole Wax" made consumers feel that the product was related to tadpoles, and since Coca-Cola belonged to the category of beverages, consumers naturally associated it with "tadpole-infested dirty water". Fortunately, Coca-Cola held a prize collection for Chinese names, and a Shanghai man named Jiang Yi, who was studying in the UK at the time, gave them the name "Coca-Cola", which was adopted in one fell swoop, and changed Coca-Cola's destiny in the Chinese market from then on.

Both of these examples violate the seventh of the eight principles of brand naming -- attention to brand association (see below). Overall, a good brand name that walks by itself will go a long way. A good name, half the effort; a bad name, halfway. So, what exactly is the principle or method of naming?

Here is a summary of the eight framework principles of brand naming, for the need to name the brand for the reference of marketers:

1. ensure that you can register 2. imply the category and services 3. easy to understand 4. user perspective, in line with the consumer's temperament 5. visualization, imagery 6. have a story, sentiments 7. pay attention to the brand associations 8. the impact of age, gender can not be underestimated

1. Make sure it can be registered

The most important principle of brand naming is registrability.20 years ago we registered a brand, which can be said to be hassle-free. However, 20 years later, it is difficult to register a brand today. Not because the registration fee is high (in the Chinese Trademark Office registration is only a few kilograms), but because you think of the name, others may also think of, and registered before you. Generally, forward-thinking companies will register all the names in the same category, so as to prevent competitors from playing a side game afterward. This is a very real problem. No matter how great an idea you come up with, it's a waste of time if someone registers it first.

"So whenever you come up with a superb idea, immediately check it on the China Trademark Network and the China Industry and Commerce Network, and confirm that it can be registered before you proceed with further optimization, including text design."

2. Suggest category and service

A good brand name should ideally suggest category and service. That is, what industry you are in and what category you are in, your brand name should ideally relate.

For example, Easy Car means it is easy to call a car; Call a Duck, it is easy to think of a brand that sells ducks for delivery; Procter & Gamble, it is easy to associate the product with consumer goods; Alipay, it is easy to think of it as being related to money; WeChat, it is easy to think of it as being related to communicating with other people (messaging); and BrainPlatinum, it is easy to associate it with a brain-related comparison. The product is precious (platinum is a precious metal).

3. Easy to understand

Every marketer hopes that the success of the brand name can be widely spread. Whether it's the Internet or offline word-of-mouth.

Try to think about it, a consumer wants to introduce your products to friends, but because your brand name is too difficult to remember the mouth, can not express, but also let the dissemination of the interruption. Similarly, the same goes for people's names. Some people are called Liu Huan, while others are called Yi Xuan. The second name "Yi" is something that most people have never seen before. Therefore, it is very important to make it easy to understand. Many advertisers (especially newcomers) are obsessed with names that are too literary, and realize that not all consumers are great writers and university professors, but most are just ordinary people.

For example, I once ran into a client who wanted to do tea, and came up with a name like "Ti (ti) Rhyme Tea Road" and "Cloud Lane Tea Guests", which was confusing. Many restaurants, in order to reflect the elegance, often with "Xin", "River", "畾" and other complex strokes, not easy to recognize the word, which is to show off, the consumer is invalid. Imagine, I want to reserve a seat in advance, even the name of your store I can not read, how can I tell my friends what kind of store. On the other hand, the names of "Eagle Beef Brisket", "Bridge Rice Noodle", "Northeast Dumpling House", "Longjiang Pork Feet Rice", etc. are easy to remember. The first time you hear it, you remember it, and it makes you want to go there.

To achieve easy to understand, we need to do four "easy": easy to recognize, easy to write, easy to read, easy to remember. This requires us, in the brand naming, to avoid the use of some uncommon words or vocabulary. And, on the premise of being able to change words, it is best to find some words with fewer strokes.

For example, when Mengniu launched its high-end milk "Terensu", the "Lun" in it could have been written as "Lun" or "Lun "and so on. However, they adopted the simplest stroke "Lun". The purpose is to make the brand name easy to recognize and easy to write. In addition, it is also important that the brand name is pronounced loudly. Because loud pronunciation is not only easy to read, but also easy to remember. Wanglaoji, Huangtaiji, Gadobao all use Chinese characters that primary and secondary school students understand to name their brands, and now they have become household names. Fondo, DDT, RenRen, a lot of use of stacked characters, readable and catchy.

4. User perspective, in line with consumer tone

Take the user perspective, analyze the consumer tone. The brand tone should be consistent with the consumer tone.

The same Q&A community, it is not called "XX know", it made a crepe name called "Zhihu", the former stops at the answer, the latter began to explore the problem, the target user high-end, the name and the tone of his target users are The name and the tone of his target users are in line with each other.

Ofo and Mobay are also *** enjoy bicycle, Mobay embodies a literary atmosphere, its users are relatively literary high-end type; and ofo embodies a civilian public feeling. Imagine a dress literary youth in oFo and Mobay two cars before, will not hesitate to choose Mobay bike.

5. Visualization, image

According to research on the human brain, people tend to be able to remember visual things at once, but can't remember some shy and difficult concepts.

For example, the same two brands selling black tea leaves, a Jaeger-LeCoultre and a brand called Three Tea Makers. Obviously the latter is immediately remembered by consumers because the latter can quickly make consumers' cerebral cortex to present the character image of three tea makers. Similarly, three squirrels (Internet nut brand), three dads, Apple, BlackBerry (cell phone brand), elephant (condom brand), ants can quickly let consumers remember on this principle.

6. Have a story, have feelings

If the product in the process of building a story has feelings, it may be worthwhile to use it as a basis for naming, both in favor of the marketing promotion afterward, touching the fan economy. A product with a story and feelings, always more than cold products to the consumers like.

Three dads, with this name, and air purifiers and air purifiers have not yet been a handful, but to attract a large number of fans. Because "three dads" is created by three dads who love their children, they are in order to children's future health, dedicated research, and ultimately developed the air outlet PM2.5 can reach 0 air purifiers, it is a sentimental product. In the minds of fans three dads is a good name? Three dads is not a good name? That doesn't matter, it started with a story, became a symbol of that product, with an indestructible sentiment, because feelings are often the most able to enlist consumers.

Similarly, Chu oranges. Consumers who do not understand the story behind it feel that they thought it was a new orange variety, but in fact, Chu Orange is an extension of the name of Chu Shijian. In the opinion of fans, "Chu orange, is a realm." "Taste is the spirit of ah!" "Which is to eat orange, is to taste life." "Taste Chu orange, Renping life." Behind the Chu orange is an inspirational story of entrepreneurship. Chu Shijian from the king of cigarettes to jail, and then 75 years old re-entrepreneurship, its never give up the spirit of countless fans in tears.

7. Pay attention to brand association

Brand association refers to the consumer to see your brand, will be associated with other things, and this kind of thing is good or bad directly affect the brand sales. The cause of this association is often "deep-rooted", it is thousands of years of text, dialect, colloquialisms on the formation of the results of qualitative thinking. This kind of association is often able to greatly influence the consumer's buying mood.

For example, a strange phenomenon occurred after Shenzhen airport named Huangtian International Airport, despite the first-class management and service, but many foreign passengers, especially Taiwan passengers are not willing to patronize the airport, but rather to travel to Hong Kong or Guangzhou Baiyun Airport to take a flight. The reason for this is the name of the airport, because "Huangtian" and "Huangquan" sound alike in Minnan language, and passengers tend to associate "going to Huangtian Airport" with the words "The road to the Yellow Springs!" So the airport was renamed Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport, which is a homonym of "Bao'an" and "security", meaning "to ensure peace and security". Bao'an" is a homonym of "security", which means "keep safe". After the name change, the number of overseas passengers increased significantly.

An example of the successful use of brand association is the "Fulinmen" brand. "Fulinmen" cooking oil in just a few years on the second chair of the bottled oil, in the East China market also exceeded the "Golden Dragon Fish" sales. The reason for this, in addition to its successful sales strategy, "Fulinmen", a brand name that caters to the housewives (over 30 years old) "praying" mentality. It has great sales guidance.

8. The influence of age and gender should not be underestimated

Like human names, most brand names have obvious gender and age characteristics. These characteristics allow consumers to know whether a product is for men or women, and whether it is suitable for older or younger people, without having to read the description, shortening the transaction time.

For example, brand names such as "Nursing Care", "Accenture" and "Estee Lauder" have obvious female characteristics, while "Gillette" and "Viagra" have obvious female characteristics. ", "Viagra", "Flying Dragon" and other brand names have obvious male characteristics. Customarily, brand names with the word "Tang" (e.g. Tongrentang, Yangshengtang) and "Ci" (e.g. Haci, Jici) are naturally categorized as products for the elderly, whereas brand names with the word "Good boy" (e.g. Bunny) are categorized as products for the elderly, whereas brand names with the word "Bunny" (e.g. Bunny) are categorized as products for the elderly. The brand names with the characters " 乖" (e.g. Little Rabbit, Good Tiger), "眯" (e.g. Mamma Mia Le, Mimi Bear), "郎" (Xizhilang), "儿" (Kool), etc. will be judged as products for the elderly. ) and other brand names will be judged as children's products.