Tips for Naming or rebranding your business
Here at Gorilla Design Manchester we nurture new brands, and reinvigorate tired ones. Coming up with the perfect name is often the most challenging part of this and can be particularly daunting if you are new to business.
A great name can set your new venture on the road to success. It fires up the imaginations of your customers, cuts through the daily bombardment of information and embeds into their subconscious. A poorly considered name does the exact opposite, it blends in and worse- it can weigh you down with ever widening costs, we’ll go into this more over this mini series of posts.
Often clients come to us adamant that they have already found the perfect name, they have fallen in love with it and nothing could ever sway their decision. After all it is there entrepreneurial right to name their own business, yes?
Well, No. Not if you, as a design professional truly care about doing a great job. At Gorilla we always start a project by listening to our clients ideas. It is our duty to cultivate the good ones and suggest alternatives to the not so good ones. The name of the company is no exception- In fact we always check proposed names against our tried and tested recipe for success. A solid ‘future proof’ name should tick 7 boxes
For this weeks post I’ll share the first two of these, ‘Simple’ and ‘Satisfying’. I’ll follow up next week with two more
No.1 Simple
People love slang, whether you like it or not it makes talking less effort, therefore it will never die. Always make sure your new business name is less than 4 syllables or it’s probably going to be abbreviated. You could be lucky and end up with a nice snappy nickname like ‘FedEx’. Or you might not be so lucky- hello ‘U CUM.’ the unfortunate University of Cumbria moniker (not strictly a business but you get the idea)
Even worse picture a scenario where you start a cutting edge tech company but using absolutely zero imagination you decide to call the business ‘Integrated Technology Group’ (we know you wouldn’t be so dull but it happens). Despite the name the quality of your products mean your business is a huge success, all your clients call you ITG for short. Now a challenger comes along and sees your success. They set up shop selling equally brilliant products under the name ‘Integrated Technology Engineering’ everyone knows them as ITE. Now you have a serious competition who provide the same services as you- not ideal. More worryingly they even look and sound like you, some new customers even mistake them for you! It seems your business identity has been stolen.
At Gorilla we always put in the time to be creative and strive for simplicity. If you do the same this nightmare scenario is easily avoided.
No.2 Satisfying
By this we mean your business name should be satisfying to pronounce. You know the type of names we mean, those that just roll of the tongue, they normally have a strong vowel sound. Think about it- Goooogle, Youuu tube or Yaaaahoo- (They don’t call us Gorilla for nothing)
We think this factor is often undervalued when choosing the perfect name. We spend countless hours sounding out potential names for our children but not for our businesses, your business is your new baby, give it the love and attention it needs it’s it formative years and it will go far.
We’ll follow up this post next week with two more items from our future proof naming checklist ‘No.3 Marketable’ and ‘No.4 Unique’.
If you need help branding your new business then get in touch with Gorilla and our team will be happy to share our expertise.
We have honed our skills through years of market experience we also owe a great deal of our thinking to the brand genius that is Marty Neumeier, if you would like to learn more on the subject of branding his books are well worth a read.
