The most important marketing decision you can make is what to name the product.
So we said in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, a book published in 1981. So how does the Internet change the role of the brand name?
In the positioning age, the name was important. In the Internet age, the name is critical.
There’s a reason for that. In pre-Internet days, a brand always had a visual component. While the name was the most important element, the visual also influenced the brand’s purchase. The shape of a Coca-Cola bottle, the colors on a box of Kodak film, the typography of an Intel logotype, the look and location of a McDonald’s restaurant.
The Internet wipes out the visual. To tap into a Website, you type in a word. No pictures, no colors, no typography, no look, no location.
If the name is critical, then why are most brand names on the Web so bad? That’s putting it mildly. Most Internet brand names are not bad: They’re terrible.
Some typical Internet brands include Advertising.com, Buy.com, Communities.com, Cooking.com, Cruise.com, Desktop.com, eToys.com, Flower.com, Garden.com, Gear.com, Gifts.com, Hardware.com, Hifi.com, HomePage.com, Images.com, Individual.com, iMotors.com, Ingredients.com, Law.com, Mail.com, Mortgage.com, Office.com, Pets.com, Phone.com, Postcard.com, Sales.com, Songs.com, Sports.com, Tickets.com, Vote.com, Weather.com, Wine.com, Women.com.
None of these are small, insignificant companies. Major corporations or venture capitalists have heavily funded them all. Many also tapped into the stock market. To cite four examples: Pets.com raised $50 million in an initial public offering, Mortgage.com raised $60 million, iMotors raised $137 million, and eToys raised $166 million. All four dotcoms are now bankrupt or have shut down operations.
What’s wrong with these brand names? They’re all common, or generic, names.
A common noun is a word that designates any one of a class of beings or things. Cars is a common noun.
A proper noun is a word that designates a particular being or thing. Mercedes-Benz is a proper noun.
Traditionally, brand names have been proper nouns. (If you were a language purist or work for the U.S. Trademark Department, you would call brand names “proper adjectives,” as in “Mercedes-Benz cars.” But most people use brand names as nouns. They will say, “I drive a Mercedes,” not “I drive a Mercedes car.”)
The best-known, most valuable brand names in the world are all proper nouns, not common or generic names. There are seventy-five worldwide brands worth more than $1 billion each, according to Interbrand, a brand consulting group. And none of these are common or generic names.
Typical brands on the top seventy-five list include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, Disney, Intel, McDonald’s, Marlboro, Nokia, Nescafé, Hewlett-Packard, Gillette, Kodak, and Sony. (Together, the seventy-five brands, according to Interbrand, are worth an incredible $912.1 billion.)
A few years from now are you likely to find Cola.com, Software.com, Cars.com, Kids.com, Chips.com, Hamburgers.com, Cigarettes.com, Cellphones.com, Coffee.com, Computers.com, Razors.com, Photos.com, or Electronics.com on the list of the world’s most valuable names? We think not.
“But the Internet is different” is the cry you hear from thirty-year-old CEOs managing Internet start-ups. You don’t have to wear suits, you don’t have to wear ties, you don’t have to wear shoes, you don’t have to make money, you get stock options worth millions, and you can use generic names for your Websites.
But is it? Is the Internet really different when it comes to brand names? So far it doesn’t seem to be.
As it happens, there are two Internet names on Interbrand’s list of the seventy-five most valuable brands. AOL, worth $4.5 billion, and Yahoo!, worth $4.4 billion. You’ll notice that both AOL and Yahoo! are proper nouns, not common nouns.
In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, why do most Internet executives continue to prefer using common names rather than proper names for their Websites? There are three reasons.
1. When the Internet was new, when there were few sites up and running, when few people knew the names of any Websites, a common name was an advantage. You wanted to look for a site selling shoes, you typed in “shoes.com.”
It was like an old-fashioned grocery store. You wanted crackers, you asked for the crackers. You wanted oatmeal cookies, you asked for the oatmeal cookies. Today, however, there are many brands of cookies and many brands of crackers in a supermarket. You don’t ask for crackers, you ask for Ritz crackers. You don’t ask for oatmeal cookies, you ask for Pepperidge Farm oatmeal cookies.
2. When the Internet was new, many companies jumped on the Internet with common names. After all, a common name was the fastest, most direct way to communicate what the site was all about. The common name also made it easier for users to navigate the Net.
The advantages of a common name lasted for about two weeks as thousands and then hundreds of thousands of Internet sites were set up. Today, with more than five million dotcoms in operation, the advantages of a common name for an Internet site are nil.
3. Now that the Net has been around for a few years, Internet companies are having trouble getting beyond the mind-set of those early days. They still think a common name is the best approach. In some ways, this is a self-reinforcing situation. As everyone launches common name sites, every newcomer thinks this must be the way to go. And so that’s the way they go.
With his Candid Camera, Allen Funt exploited human nature to do what others are doing regardless of whether or not it makes sense. His favorite episode involves an elevator where the first person goes into the car and faces the front. The next three people, all Candid Camera confederates, get into the elevator and face the rear. By the time the fifth person comes in, the first one feels so uncomfortable that he turns around and also faces the rear.
Face the facts. Just because most sites use common names doesn’t mean that a common name is the best strategy for your site. It only means that most Internet operators are under group pressure to conform.
One of the reasons for the dotcom disaster is the almost universal use of common-name Websites. Some samples of this common-noun craziness are as follows:
These are not generic names picked at random from the millions of dotcoms on the Internet. Many of these dotcoms are no longer with us, of course, but all of them were serious sites backed by serious venture capitalists and supported by millions of dollars’ worth of advertising.
These CommonName.coms were just a small sample of the thousands of Internet companies trying to spend their way into the prospect’s mind. For the most part it was money down the rat hole. There’s no way that even a small percentage of these common-name sites could make it.
(It’s a sign of the times that one of the most heavily hyped advertising agencies specializing in the Internet field calls itself Agency.com.)
Will some of these generic names be successful? Sure. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Nobody is going to stop drinking beer because all of the beer brands use generic names. Nobody is going to stop buying on the Web just because all the Internet brands are generic.
In the absence of competition, people will buy from a site with a common name. But as sites are set up with strong “proper” brand names, the common-name sites are going to dry up and blow away.
You have to win in the mind. And the mind treats common or generic names as representative of all the sites in the category. Not just a single site.
In the human mind all automotive sites are “car dotcoms.” How could Cars.com ever establish a singular identity separate from the other car dotcoms?
In the mind all furniture sites are “furniture dotcoms.” How could Furniture.com ever establish a singular identity separate from the rest of the furniture dotcoms?
The vast majority of brand names on the Web are purely generic names. Most of these sites are now bankrupt or out of business.
What’s an eToys? An e-toy is a toy purchased on the Internet. An eToys is a company that sells e-toys on the Internet.
The name eToys is a weak brand name, yet the stock market thinks differently. On the first day that eToys went public, the stock price nearly quadrupled in value, making the company worth $7.7 billion, 35 percent greater than that of its retail rival, Toys “R” Us Inc. (In its last fiscal year eToys lost $73 million on revenues of $34.7 million.)
One of the problems with a common name like eToys is the ability of competition to jump in the marketplace and claim similar names.
Naturally eToys tried to register these and other similar names. But where do you stop? And how much will it cost? And will the legal system allow one company to own all the sites with “toy” in the name?
What’s an E*Trade? An e-trade is a stock purchase or sale made on the Internet. An E*Trade is a company that handles e-trades on the Internet.
A generic name like E*Trade is weak. The mind thinks verbally, not visually. E-trade is the name of the category, not the company. Furthermore, you can’t use an asterisk in the actual site name. In order to reach E*Trade, you have to type in www.etrade.com.
Even though E*Trade has the enormous advantage of being first on the Internet, the company has already fallen to second place in terms of customer-trading volume online. (Charles Schwab is the leader.)
Massive advertising in the mass media is keeping E*Trade in the game. But with stock trading down, E*Trade has been losing money. In a recent year, the company lost $242 million on revenues of $1.3 billion. How long it can continue to expand its services while at the same time losing money is a question that only the future can answer.
How can we be so sure that proper names will prevail over common names as brand names on the Internet? The only proof we can offer you is a hundred years of history. In the past century, how many common names have become successful brands?
Very, very few.
Few categories in the outernet, as opposed to the Internet, are dominated by generic brand names. Invariably they are dominated by proper or “name” names.
But the Internet is different, you might be thinking. There must be a reason for the rash of generic names.
The Internet is different, but the mind of the prospect stays the same. To be successful you have to position your brand name in the mind.
What managers often forget is that the mind treats a generic or common word as the name for a category of things, not as one particular thing or brand.
No automobile dealer would call his or her dealership “Cars.” Why not? Imagine the following conversation.
“Where did you buy your new car?”
“At Cars®.”
“Huh. What did you say? I asked you what dealership you bought your new car from.”
With literally thousands of Websites using generic names, you can expect the same type of dialog to occur.
“What discount broker do you use on the Internet?”
“Mydiscountbroker.”
“I know, but what’s his name?”
“Mydiscountbroker.”
“I already asked you that.”
This is not a laughing matter. It demonstrates the way the mind works. Words get put into categories. A common name gets put into a different category than a proper name.
The comedy team of Abbott and Costello based their classic baseball routine on the confusion that can occur when one class of words is substituted for another.
“Let’s see, we have on the bags, Who’s on first. What’s on second. I Don’t Know is on third.”
“That’s what I want to find out. Who’s on first?”
“Yes.”
“Who.”
“The first baseman?”
“Who.”
“The guy playing first?”
“Who is on first.”
“I’m asking you, who’s on first?”
“That’s the man’s name.”
“That’s who’s name?”
“Yes.”
Many companies in the past hundred years have tried to use common-type nouns as brand names in their categories. Just check the trademark register. There’s a host of brand names that have tried to preempt a category by using a common-sounding name. Some examples:
Tell the truth. Do any of these generic brand names ring a bell with you? Probably not. It’s hard to remember a brand that uses a common name.
One of the best examples of the futility of trying to build a brand with a common name is Lite, the first light beer. When Miller Brewing introduced Lite beer, there was no “Miller” on the can. And no competitor could use the word “Lite” on a beer brand either because Miller owned the trademark.
Miller launched Lite with a massive advertising program and the segment took off. As you might have expected, many competitors jumped in with generic versions of their own. Schlitz Light, Coors Light, Bud Light.
Even though Miller was first with Lite beer, even though Lite had the benefit of tremendous amounts of advertising and publicity, Miller was forced to throw in the towel and rename the product Miller Lite.
You can see the problem. The beer drinker goes into the bar and says, “Give me a Lite beer.” And the bartender says, “Fine. What kind of light beer do you want?”
Some categories, of course, are loaded with mostly generic brand names. (Group pressure at work.) What is interesting is that in these categories, generally no one brand will dominate the category. Breakfast cereals are a good example—brands like Corn Flakes, Bran Flakes, Frosted Flakes, and 100% Granola.
Take the “bran” category. There are dozens of “bran” brands trying to capture the category. Some examples:
As a result of the overwhelming reliance on common names, the cereal category has no clear-cut brand leader. The largest-selling cereal brand has a market share of about 6 percent. (Cheerios is one of the few cereal brands that doesn’t use a common name.)
If common names don’t work on the outernet, why should they work on the Internet? The problem is exactly the same. How do I get the prospect to remember my brand name and associate it with some positive attribute?
When you use a common name as a brand name, you have little chance to do either. First, the prospect can’t differentiate between your site name and the category name. Second, you can’t associate a specific attribute with the name because the name stands for the entire category, not just your site.
Some sites try to solve this problem by combining the attribute with the common noun. Instead of Books.com, the brand name becomes AllBooks4Less.com. Or perhaps Cheaptickets.com or Lowestfare.com.
Ironically, this is a branding strategy that can have a modicum of success in the outernet but not on the Internet. If you’re driving down the road and see a sign that says “All Books 4 Less,” you know what the store is selling and why you might want to shop there. (A chain named “All Books 4 Less,” on the other hand, is still not going to outsell Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, or Borders.)
On the Internet you don’t drive down the road and you don’t see the AllBooks4Less sign. You are going to have to remember the name and that’s not going to be easy.
You ask your mind, “Who sells all books for less on the Net?” And the answer comes back “Amazon.com.”
In the short term, however, many prospects are using search engines to find sites that might interest them. So a name like AllBooks4Less.com could conceivably attract a fair number of hits. But that’s only in the short term.
The whole idea of branding, on the Internet or elsewhere, is to burn your name in the mind. When you can successfully do that, there’s no need for the prospect to use a search engine to find your Website. So in the long run, your Internet brand name will have to stand on its own. And a common name is a very weak foundation to stand on.
“Cars” is not a good name for an automotive dealership. And Cars.com is not a good name for a Website that sells cars. Neither is Mydiscountbroker.com a good name for a stockbroker on the Internet.
And what do you suppose Internet.com is all about? This is a brand that has two strikes against it. Internet.com is a common noun used for a Website that tries to appeal to everybody for everything. (You can hear the shouts of joy in the corridors at Internet.com. “Wow! We were able to register the best name on the Net.” Don’t be too sure.)
What’s your own name? Brown, Jones, Smith? Would you consider changing your name to a generic? If you did, a phone conversation might sound like this:
“Hello, this is Some Person.”
“I know that, but what’s your name?”
In spite of our arguments to the contrary, there will be intense pressure inside most organizations to take the common-name route. It’s the lemming effect. Once the crowd takes off in one direction, everyone just naturally joins in and follows. There’s some psychological satisfaction in following the crowd. In art, in music, in clothing, and in Internet brand names.
“It is better for your reputation to fail conventionally,” John Maynard Keynes once said, “than it is to succeed unconventionally.”