MISTAKE #70: You pick a bad brand name

How did you pick your product’s brand name? 

Is there an inside reference or nod to a personal friend?

Was it self-evident pretty much from the start?

Does it have special meaning or symbolism to you?

Did it just come to you in a random moment of inspiration?

Was it provided by "the creative one" in the family?

Or was it the product of a deliberate, iterative process that involved developing and testing a number of brand names to see which performed best on key metrics or had subconscious associations with desirable product equities? 

There is a niche industry that exists with the highly specialized skill of creating memorable, meaningful brand names for new products.

And odds are pretty good that you’re not going to hire one of those firms and pay a 6-figure fee for a few words.

In no way am I bashing these firms.  In fact, I completely agree with the value they place on getting the best possible branding.  And I respect the fact that they probably have combined the art of natural creative talent with the science of a proven process to do what they do and charge what they charge.

But I also realize that 99% of new products need a more reasonable approach that gets something better than what Aunt Gladys came up with after her third martini.

MY BRAND FAIL

I’ve made poor branding decisions myself.

My first LLC was eight14.  That was my company.

"Hi, I’m Tom with eight14."

I thought it was creative…combining the alpha-numeric.  Turns out it was more meaningless.

And it had deep meaning to me.  It represented August 14th, the date that I got married and eight years later had my first son.  Eight14 was supposed to be the constant reminder that I worked to give my family a life; work was not supposed to be my life.  It was a means to another end.

But I also learned that it was completely non-descriptive and forgettable to the prospective clients I was trying to build equity.  It did nothing to set an expectation or association or anticipated equity for my business.

I probably had more people refer to my business as 8-15 or 8-13 or 8-1-4 than the correct name of “eight-fourteen”

It took me several years to accept the need to rebrand to my current company name:  Integrated Insights. 

Perhaps the one bit of good fortune that came of this was the fact that eight14 had failed so miserably as a brand name that I probably lost little or no awareness or equity when I made the switch.

DO YOU NEED TO 86 YOUR BRAND NAME?

 If you haven’t launched your new product’s brand yet, I’d encourage you to revisit the brand name to make sure it will work as hard as possible for you.

If you’re so early in the process that you haven’t developed a brand name yet, I’d encourage you to take an intentional and disciplined approach to develop it.

If you need help, we’ve got relationships with some of those creative people that can create brands from scratch, but not charge you anywhere near six figures.

We also have our own techniques to study the strength of an existing brand, evaluate the relative fit of multiple brand ideas, and figure out how to create a brand that is best differentiated from the competition while supporting the brand’s desired equities. 

If you’ve got no budget to develop or test and refine the strength of your brand, I wish you luck.  

But I’ll also offer you a list of 13 Principles for brand name development to hopefully send you in the right direction and improve the odds that your brand will help you sell more items, not fewer.