What's in a Name?

A name can help a brand to enter the public consciousness (think Google) or disappear quickly (haven't heard of Ultraviolet Man Summer Pop cologne, have you?)

by Douglas MacMillan

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In 1997, Google (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to dump their fledgling search engine's working name—BackRub—for something shorter and simpler. "We spent a lot of time on the name…because we figured that it would be important for people to be able to remember it," recalled Page in Designing Interactions (MIT Press, 2006). They eventually settled on "googol" (a math term for 10 to the 100th power), but misspelled the word while checking to see whether that Internet domain was unregistered. "It turned out [google.com] was available, and [googol.com] was not," says Page. A decade later, the Google name has the cultural cachet of such iconic brands as Coca-Cola (KO), Microsoft (MSFT), and McDonald's (MCD).

New York branding consultancy TippingSprung wanted to find out what fledgling brand could be the next Google. In May and June, the firm conducted a survey (in conjunction with the Nielsen Co.'s Brandweek) to learn what new brand names are hitting the mark. More than 1,300 marketing professionals and industry observers were polled to pick the "most memorable, appropriate, or distinctive" new brand name from a list of five to seven choices. The 11 quirky categories included "Most Consumer-Friendly Drug Name" and "Worst Fragrance Name." (Disclosure: This writer participated in the survey.)

For Simplicity's Sake

When the results came in, one consensus was certain: The best new brand names are clear and simple. Easy-to-associate names like aloft, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's (HOT) new hotel brand, stole the spotlight from more abstract monikers like Andaz, the new luxury hotel chain from Global Hyatt. "This year there was a tendency for marketers to play it safe," says Martyn Tipping, president of TippingSprung. Gone are the days of the dot-com boom when, he says, "the more unusual, the more distinctive, and crazier the name the better."

Simplicity is now king, confirms Anthony Shore, creative director of the naming and writing division at branding agency Landor Associates. "People like real words. People [prefer] names that derive from real-world associations," he says.

More Than a Name

Perhaps taking a lesson from Google's founders, many of the winning brands in the survey are reworkings of ordinary words. In the category for "Best New Spirits or Cocktail-Mix Name," Spykes, a line of flavored malt beverages launched by Anheuser-Busch (BUD) in January, beat out Kajmir, Modmix, Lichido, Navan, and Perique to garner about a third of the votes. Survey respondents made the connection between the name and the product's purpose: a potent, alcoholic "spike" for a beer, cocktail, or unassuming punch bowl.

But during the fielding of the survey, Anheuser-Busch pulled Spykes from store shelves. The product's name and its kid-friendly marketing campaign led critics from the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Marin Institute to pressure the alcohol company to discontinue it.