History often leads us astray. In the past, some of the most successful companies (and brands) had generic names.
Some companies have even tried to combine two or more of these lofty “all things to all people” names. The American General Life and Accident Insurance Company, for example. (We’re surprised that nobody thought to use “International General American Standard Products Company.”)
In the past, companies thought they needed big, scopy, generic names. And the brand name was almost always the company name. (Today such an approach might produce the General Global Corp.) And yet, this naming strategy clearly worked. Why?
Years ago the market was flooded with commodities produced by thousands of small companies operating in a single town or region. The big, scopy, generic names put these small competitors in their place.
Many of these General, Standard, American, National, and International companies are still operating (and are still successful) today. Some of them are among the largest and best-known brands in the world.
The fact is, these brands/companies are successful in spite of their names.
We believe the primary reason for these corporate successes is the strategy and not the name.
Being first in the marketplace gave these companies such a head start and such a powerful presence in the market that it overcame the liability of their generic names.
Witness the shift from generic (or general) names to specific names: Nabisco, Alcoa, NBC, GE, ABC, IBM.
There are many national biscuit companies, but only one Nabisco. There are many aluminum companies in America, but only one Alcoa. There are many national broadcasting companies, but only one NBC.
Of course, we’re sure that NBC always considered itself the National Broadcasting Company rather than a “national broadcasting company.”
And therein lies the biggest mistake made when picking brand names. The process proceeds visually rather than verbally.
Executives often pass around the boardroom logotypes of prospective brand names, set in type and mounted on foamcore.
But the vast majority of brand communication takes place verbally, not visually. The average person spends nine times as much time listening to radio and television than he or she does reading magazines and newspapers.
Furthermore, in order to give meaning to the printed word, the mind processes sounds. The printed word is secondary to the sound that it generates in the reader’s mind. So how can a reader differentiate the sound of the word “general” from the word “General”? With great difficulty.
The problem with a generic brand name is its inability to differentiate the brand from the competition. In the food supplement field, for example, a brand called Nature’s Resource is spending $5 million a year to break into this growing market.
On the shelves of your local GNC store you’ll also find the following products:
| •Nature’s Answer | •Nature’s Best |
| •Nature’s Bounty | •Nature’s Gate |
| •Nature’s Herb | •Nature’s Plus |
| •Nature’s Secret | •Nature’s Sunshine Products |
| •Nature’s Way | •Nature’s Works |
Will any of these generic brands break into the mind and become a major brand? Unlikely.
Even the legendary Lee Iacocca, father of the Mustang and former CEO of Chrysler Corporation (two powerful name brands), took the generic road when he launched his own company, EV Global Motors. EV, for electric vehicle, is introducing a $995 electric bicycle. We can’t see customers asking for an “EV Global bike.”
What about a brand name, Lee? Like Schwinn or Trek or Cannondale?
The high-tech field is loaded with generic names that are unlikely to generate much in the way of brand identity. Security Software Systems, Power and Data Technology, Server Technology. Compare those names to Microsoft, Dell, and Intel, and you can see the power of a brand name over a generic name.
McAfee Associates, the leading maker of antivirus software, recently bought Network General for $1.3 billion. Guess what it chose for a new name?
It dropped McAfee, the only “name name” it owned in favor of two generics: Network Associates. It knew it had a name problem so it spent $10 million on the company’s first television campaign, including more than a million for a Super Bowl spot.
As those thirty seconds flew by, did the viewer hear the words “network associates” or “Network Associates”? Generic names disappear into the ether. Only brand names register in the mind.
Just for Men hair coloring is also spending a fortune trying to build its brand. After watching a television commercial, the gray haired-man might think to himself, “What is the name of that hair-coloring product that’s just for men?”
Nobody is saying that you should always invent a new name for an established brand, although that’s often a good strategy for a product or service that is truly revolutionary and unlikely to be copied for some time. Kodak and Xerox are the usual suspects.
What you should generally do is take a regular word and use it out of context to connote the primary attribute of your brand.
Blockbuster Video is a powerful brand name. General Video Rental is not.
Hollywood brags about its “blockbusters,” so Blockbuster Video borrowed the term to suggest it rents the best movies.
Budget is a powerful brand name for a car-rental service. The word suggests that it rents cars at low prices. Low-Cost Car Rental is not a good brand name.
Service Merchandise is a $4 billion company with a General Video name. It’s too bad. The company’s concept is compelling, but its generic name dooms the brand to relative obscurity.
The Luxury Car Company would have gone nowhere, in our opinion. But Toyota took the word “luxury,” tweaked a few letters, and came up with Lexus, a superb brand name for a Japanese luxury car.
Some genius took the name of a specific office product and used it out of context to come up with Staples, an effective brand name for an office-supplies company. The double entendre is particularly powerful. “Buy your office staples from Staples.”
Sometimes you can carve out a brand name by cutting a generic in half. This often has the further advantage of creating a short, distinctive, easy-to-remember brand name. Intelligent Chip Company is a lousy brand name, but Intel Corp. is terrific.
“Intelligent Chip inside” is a lousy advertising slogan. All computers have intelligent chips inside, but only the top-of-the-line products have “Intel inside.”
One reason that line extensions fare so poorly in the marketplace is that they generally combine a brand name with a generic name. The weak generic name fails to create the separate identity that is the essence of the branding process. “Michelob Light” is perceived in the mind as “Michelob light,” a watered-down version of the regular beer.
The mind doesn’t deal in letters or words. It deals in sounds. You can capitalize all you want, but a generic word is a generic word in the mind, no matter how you spell it.
Sometimes a company gets lucky. The line extension Vaseline Intensive Care skin lotion became the number-one hand lotion brand because the customer inadvertently treated Intensive Care as a brand name, not a descriptive generic name.
How do we know this to be true? Because customers call the product Intensive Care. “Hand me the Intensive Care.”
Customers don’t say, “Hand me the Vaseline.” Unless, of course, they want the Vaseline.
On the other hand, if Vaseline had followed conventional line-extension thinking, it would have called the brand Vaseline Heavy-Duty skin lotion. “Hand me the Heavy Duty” is not something people are likely to say. “Heavy duty” is a generic term.
So why didn’t Chesebrough-Pond’s just call the brand Intensive Care in the first place? Good question and good thinking. You’re ready for the next law.