I keep referring to the writings of Al Ries because the guy really is a marketing genius.
And he has a lot to say about names.
One point he makes over and over is that a name can doom a product or company.
If your name means or stands for one thing, but you are selling something else, you have no hope of getting people to buy into that.
We went through this with one client, handling a major situation by establishing a second name. They needed to retain their original name because that was still a huge part of their business, plus they were extremely well known in their immediate geographical area. The new, second name was related to the first, which made sense in this case.
Most of the time, where you have a going concern, and another, related business area or product to establish, the new name should be completely distinct from the first. People think they can translate the familiarity and popularity of the one product or business area into the other. It usually isn’t true.
This is something that really needs to be carefully thought out. Ries gives numerous examples of disasters that have happened that way – and the successes are few. We applied this with a new, related venture for a client with an established business. The new name is unique, based on positioning surveys, and says what the product does.
The third type of situation is illustrated by another real company we know of. That company’s name gives people (by survey, over 90%) a wrong impression of what the company is and does, but they have very little brand equity (less than 10% awareness in their target market).
There’s no reason why they simply shouldn’t abandon the current name and establish a new one that is more appropriate to what they do. Or, come up with a name that doesn’t mean anything (“Smith and Associates”) and use a tagline to say what they do. Either one would be better.
If you’re marketing’s a flop, you might start by looking at the name.