Prime time for the science of naming

Check out a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article about the importance of scientifically designed company names and the bright prospects of the name consulting industry that follows the rise in demand. This article raises great points about the fact that there are now more unique registered names of businesses than there are words in the Oxford English language dictionary. Therefore, if you think you have a perfect name for your company from existing vocabulary, chances are it is already taken and you have to concoct a fictional word that would describe your company. Besides, with today's international economy and companies establishing presence in multiple cultures, they need to make sure their name does not mean anything unacceptable in a different language. The article gives a hilarious, yet alarming, example of Gazprom and Nigerian company merger which has chosen a name NiGaz. Another classic example is Chevrolet "Nova" ("doesn't go" in Spanish) which saw a fiasco in Latin America. And a more recent and less known example is Windows "Vista" ("chicken" in Latvian), which I imagine did not see much success in Latvia. All these examples of disastrous naming point to the fact that names do matter and it is necessary to treat naming with a degree of seriousness and not just rely on chance.

Another point raised by the article is that right now the world is waiting for the next "weird, but not too weird" tech company name that will join Google and Twitter in the alley of internet fame. While these two epochal names were chosen pretty much at random, right now dozens of name consulting companies offer you to take no chances and seek professional help. They can help you figure out which combinations of sounds are best received by your audience and which ones express the essence of your product. No matter how silly this may sound, those details do matter. I still remember the discussion of experiments from my Consumer Behavior class where people rated a fictional car "Bromley" as having more leg space and being more powerful than an equivalent fictional car "Brimley" and that people thought an imaginary cell phone "Strawberry" was slower than an equivalent (then imaginary) call phone "Blackberry". So next time you think of picking a name at random, remember that there is a science to every name and do your due diligence before ending up with an oil merger NiGaz or a Chevy "Doesn't Go". And in the meantime, read the article, it is amazing!
"The Twitter Effect" by Eric Spitznagel (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Marketing 101 for Politicians

Three old-as-the-world marketing principles finally find their way into political campaigns. One aspiring senator used 3 simple tricks to attract attention:
1). emphasis on him being different
2). distancing himself from any political party (CORFing) and focusing on individual results
3). making his ad authentic.
And voila the bottomline: he got noticed instantly. Here is to the power of marketing!

Check out his ad with comments here:
How to Make an Anti-Politics Campaign Ad by Chris Cillizza

The Wars of the Big 3 of Gaming

Microsoft and Sony throw down the glove to Nintendo: they have built a better motion control system for their consoles and are threatening Wii's leadership position in the marketplace. Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move will soon be available in the marketplace and hope to lure Wii aficionados with games familiar to them. Will they be able to steal ground from under Nintendo's feet? That we shall see. And in the meantime, check out this article for more details:
"As new motion controls arrive, will the Wii become obsolete?" by Chris Morris

Dangerous Fashions

There is a Slavic saying "Beauty commands deprivations." Some of the recent popular trends take this saying too literally: it is reported that trendy sky-high heels may alter women's foot and ankle mechanics and a popular teenage trend of constantly listening to the iPod is connected by scientists to hearing loss. Of course the direct cause-effect relationship yet needs to be proven, but the connection itself is disturbing. Here are the original articles to assist in making educated fashion decisions:
Editorial: Now hear this. It's time to turn down the volume by The Republican Editorials 
Dangerous high heels: Women's shoes reach hazardous heights during the recession by Joanna Douglas, Shine

Fashions Trends of This Fall

This article outlines very well the cutting-edge fashions of this fall: What Do Girls Want? by Cathy Horyn, New York Times. In a couple of words, this fall are hot: "wearable colors" - sophisticated greens and peaches, refined grunge (chunky knits, faux fur coats), Americana (polos and dark rolled up denim), longer skirts and high-waist winter shorts with thigh-high socks. An interesting agglomeration!

But what I liked best about this article is some amazing insight it gives on today's generation of young shoppers and their shopping preferences. Here are two most powerful excerpts which give a great update on the theory and hint on direct practical implications.

On today's shopper:
"There is plenty of research about the so-called Millennials — people ages 18 to 29 — to suggest you can’t lump them all together. Not only is this group likely to become the most educated generation in American history, according to a Pew Research Center survey this year, it is also the most racially and ethnically diverse. At the same time, this generation’s 37 percent unemployment rate is certain to affect taste. It may explain an underlying conservatism in fall fashion — penny loafers, camel coats, longer hemlines — that goes beyond “Mad Men” hype."

On the power of the Web and the importance of great shopping experience:
"Women like Ms. Byun, or Lauren Wynns, a 27-year-old law student in Washington, who works for a business consulting firm, or Nicky Deam, a 25-year-old publicist in New York, do much of their shopping online. Ms. Wynns, for one, said she now gets most of her fashion information from online retailers like Lagarconne.com, Revolveclothing.com and Shopbop, and from blogs rather than magazines. And because a lot of high-end apparel is hard to find online — compared with the amount shown on runways — it’s not surprising that young women now seem to gauge their interest in a brand not in terms of its prestige or craft but rather in terms of its accessibility. Even if Ms. Wynns could afford their products, she said, “their Web sites aren’t really tailored to a great shopping experience.”
You can understand why brands like Chanel want to limit their Web exposure, but what happens to interest if the immediate outlet is blocked? “This is not a generation that will wait to get a number for admission,” said Candace Corlett, a partner at WSL Strategic Retail in New York, a retail consultant. “They’ll find another way to get what they want.”"

Store vs Name Brands Face-off

As a subscriber to McKinsey Quarterly Newsletters, I received an article on the state of economy from them several months ago which touched upon the issues of changing consumer behavior in tough economic times. I still clearly remember the first line of the article: "During the recession, consumers have tried cheaper brands... and loved them!"

Now this article by Consumer Reports goes along with the overarching idea of changing spending trends among U.S. consumers and elaborates on the fact that oftentimes cheaper store brands are at least as good as their more expensive brand name counterparts. Check it out: Taste Test: Store Brands vs. Name Brands by consumerreports.org from Yahoo! Shopping.

Recurring reports of increasing consumer frugality and value seeking put long-standing brands under pressure to justify their higher prices and create value for consumers without decreasing the price or at least not decreasing it too much. That's where branding comes into play more than at any other time. It creates intangible value for consumers which suddenly justifies a higher price tag. For instance, how is one brand of cola better than any other? Some would argue it's about taste, but the results of taste tests constantly prove otherwise. It is just that by buying Coca-Cola at Christmas people are not simply buying soda to drink, they are taking home a piece of the holiday season. Can one even imagine getting a bottle of store-brand cola to put on the holiday table because it is cheaper? The costs in ruined atmosphere would be way higher than the dollar you saved on your purchase... Whatever who might say, but a good Marketing Department supports the bottomline like nobody else in tough economic times and beyond - no matter how hard it is to digest for Finance majors.

When brands become part of language

I ran into this article a couple of days ago about words newly added to the dictionary. Here it is: New Words for the Dictionary by Mike Krumboltz from Yahoo! Buzz. These words mostly pertain to urban lingo, with the exception of vuvuzela which has become notoriously famous after the World Cup, and have little to do with marketing. But this article got me thinking: what does it mean for the company when the name of their brand enters every-day language and gets transformed from a proper name into a general one?

Really, how many times a day do we "GOOGLE" something to find out information? Or how often do we promise to "FACEBOOK" a friend? Not sure if it is mainstream yet, but I personally also frequently say that I "WIKIPEDIA'ED" a concept ... Funny how natural these words sound and what specific a meaning they carry. Yet, they all started out as names of companies who created a product that became an integral part of our lives, so integral that their names got perpetuated in our language. For us, consumers, using "google" as a verb is just an easy way to say "perform an Internet search on something." But for Google and its competitors, this fact has a huge influence on their business. Both Yahoo! and Bing would kill to have their brands used as words for electronic search. Every time we say we should "google" stuff, we condition ourselves and everybody around us which search engine to use to find out the needed information. That is why Google comes out as unshaken market leader over and over again: it's not only about a superior product any more, it's about unrivaled brand visibility and recall. And that's why no matter which kind of a super-duper product Google's competitors ever unveil, they'll always be in for a tough ride in their attempts to dethrone the king.

Some other brands from the top of my head that have succeeded in penetrating into the language are "Post-its", “Q-tips,” and "iPods": does anyone even say "sticky notes", “cotton swabs” and "MP3 players" anymore?! In Eastern Europe, similar cases of perpetuated brands are Xerox and Scotch: the word "xerox" is synonymous to a "carbon copy" and the word "scotch" stands for "clear duct tape" in colloquial language. This is a real gift of destiny for these companies as the levels of constant advertisement their brands get for free through WOM (word of mouth) cannot be beaten by even the most expensive ad campaigns.

Other alternatives to full-word brand names are signature parts of the brand name that take on a specific meaning in everyday language. Some cases that come to mind are the "i-" popularized by Apple products and the "Mc-" made famous by McDonald's. However, in these particular examples, the association the brand gets is controversial and not necessarily the one a brand wants. This is especially clear for McDonald's: derivative terms like "McJob" and "McMansion" have a rather negative connotation to them, which reflects badly on the brand that served as a parent word for these newly formed terms. With Apple the case is not so clear cut: the nation is split on their attitudes towards the company – there are true Apple lovers who evangelize about iPads and iPhones and their associations with the famous "i-" may be only positive, but there is also the other half of the nation whose attitudes towards the "i-" are not that great. For instance, I once heard a friend say, "I'll invent a special kind of beer and I'll make it overpriced, overglorified, and will sell it to rich snobs. I already have a perfect name for it - the iBeer". While this is open for discussion, I feel like it is not exactly the image Apple wants to be associated with…

So the bottomline is: brand names that become terms of general usage are a powerful vehicle for companies who own these brands, as they get an unlimited amount of FREE, voluntary, and credible ads for their product at all times. However, this association had better be a good one because once the word crawls into Webster Dictionary, it is set in stone. Well, unless, you make it a point to find every single copy ever sold and black out your brand name with your sharpie… I mean, um, a thin marker :)