The name is the hook that hangs the brand on the product ladder in the prospect’s mind. In the positioning era, the single most important marketing decision you can make is what to name the product.
Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name would not smell as sweet. Not only do you see what you want to see, you also smell what you want to smell. Which is why the single most important decision in the marketing of perfume is the name you decide to put on the brand.
Would “Alfred” have sold as well as “Charlie?” Don’t bet on it.
And Hog Island in the Caribbean was going nowhere until they changed the name to Paradise Island.
Don’t look to the past for guidance and pick the name of a French racing car driver (Chevrolet) or the daughter of your Paris representative (Mercedes).
What worked in the past won’t necessarily work now or in the future. In the past when there were fewer products, when the volume of communication was lower, the name wasn’t nearly as important.
Today, however, a lazy, say-nothing name isn’t good enough to cut into the mind. What you must look for is a name that begins the positioning process, a name that tells the prospect what the product’s major benefit is.
Like Head & Shoulders shampoo, Intensive Care skin lotion, and Close-Up toothpaste.
Or like DieHard for a longer-lasting battery. Shake ’n Bake for a new way to cook chicken. Edge for a shaving cream that lets you shave closer.
A name should not go “over the edge,” though. That is, become so close to the product itself that it becomes generic, a general name for all products of its class rather than a trade name for a specific brand.
“Lite beer from Miller” is a typical product name that went over the line. So now we have Schlitz Light, Coors Light, Bud Light, and a host of other light beers. The public and the press quickly corrupted the name to “Miller Lite,” and so Miller lost its right to exclusive use of “light” or its phonetic equivalent as a trademark for beer.
For years to come, trademark attorneys will be using Lite as an example of the danger of using descriptive words as trademarks. (Lawyers love coined names like Kodak and Xerox.)
Choosing a name is like driving a racing car. To win, you have to take chances. You have to select names that are almost, but not quite, generic. If once in a while you go off the track into generic territory, so be it. No world champion driver has made it to the top without spinning out a few times.
A strong, generic-like, descriptive name will block your me-too competitors from muscling their way into your territory. A good name is the best insurance for long-term success. People is a brilliant name for the gossip-column magazine. It’s a runaway success. The me-too copy, Us magazine, is in trouble.
On the other hand. Time is not as good a name for a newsweekly as the more generic Newsweek.
Time was the first into the newsweekly pool and is an obvious success. But Newsweek isn’t far behind. (As a matter of fact, Newsweek sells more pages of advertising each year than does Time.)
Many people think Time is a great name for a magazine. And in a way, it is. Short, catchy, memorable. But it’s also subtle and tricky. (Time could be a trade magazine for the watch industry.)
Fortune is another name cut out of the same cloth. (Fortune could be a magazine for stockbrokers, commodity traders, or gamblers. It’s not clear.) Business Week is a much better name. Also a more successful magazine.
Names also get out of date, opening up creneaus for alert competitors.
Esquire was a great name for a magazine for the young-man-about-town. When young-men-about-town used to sign their names John J. Smith, Esq. But Esquire lost its leadership to Playboy. Everybody knows what a playboy is and what he’s interested in. Girls, right? But what’s an esquire? And what’s he interested in?
For many years, Yachting has been the leading publication in the marine field. But today how many esquires own yachts? So every year Sail Magazine keeps getting closer in sales to Yachting.
When virtually all advertising was in newspapers and magazines, Printer’s Ink was a good name for a magazine directed to the advertising field. But today radio and television are just as important as print. So Printer’s Ink is dead and Advertising Age reigns supreme.
One of the strongest publications in the world today is The Wall Street Journal. It has no real competitors. But The Wall Street Journal is a weak name for a daily business newspaper. The name implies a narrow, financial orientation. But the publication covers business generally.
Of such observations are opportunities fashioned.
Engineers and scientists in love with their own creations are responsible for some of the really bad names. Names like XD-12, for example. (Presumably standing for “experimental design number 12.”) These are inside jokes that have no meaning in the mind of the prospect.
Take Mennen E, for example. People are literal and they take things literally. Mennen E deodorant was doomed to failure in spite of a $10 million advertising launch. The trouble was the name on the can. The introductory ad even admitted that the idea was a little unusual. “Vitamin E, incredibly, is a deodorant.”
It is incredible. That is, unless they were appealing to people who want the strongest, best-fed, healthiest armpits in the country. Mennen E didn’t last very long.
And what about Breck One and Colgate 100? Brand names like these are meaningless.
With marginal differences in many product categories, a better name can mean millions of dollars difference in sales.
What about the obvious success of companies with coined names like Coca-Cola, Kodak, and Xerox?
One of the things that makes positioning thinking difficult for many people is the failure to understand the role of timing.
The first company into the mind with a new product or new idea is going to become famous. Whether the name is Lindbergh or Smith or Rumplestiltskin.
Coca-Cola was first with a cola drink. Kodak was first with low-cost photography. Xerox was first with the plain-paper copier.
Take the word “Coke.” Because of the success of Coca-Cola, the nickname Coke has acquired what the semanticists call a secondary meaning.
Would you name a soft drink after the word for “the residue of coal burned in the absence of air”? Or the street name for a narcotic cocaine?
So strong is the secondary meaning of the word Coke that the Coca-Cola Company has nothing to fear from these negative connotations.
But choosing a coined name like Keds, Kleenex, and Kotex for a new product is dangerous, to say the least. Only when you are first in the mind with an absolutely new product that millions of people are certain to want can you afford the luxury of a mean-nothing name.
Then, of course, any name would work.
So stick with common descriptive words (Spray ’n Wash) and avoid the coined words (Qyx).
As a guide, the five most common initial letters are S, C, P, A, and T. The five least common are X, Z, Y, Q, and K. One out of eight English words starts with an S. One out of 3000 starts with an X.
Technology continues to create new and improved products. Yet they often are scarred at birth with second-class imitation names.
Take margarine, for example. Even though the product has been around for decades, it is still perceived as imitation butter. (It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.)
A better choice of name at the beginning would have helped. What should margarine have been called? Why “soy butter,” of course—a name in the peanut butter tradition.
The psychological problem with a name like “margarine” is that it is deceptive. It hides the origin of the product.
Everyone knows that butter is made from milk. But what’s margarine made from? Because the origin of the product is hidden, the prospect assumes there must be something basically wrong with margarine.
The first step in overcoming negative reactions is to bring the product out of the closet. To deliberately polarize the situation by using a negative name like soy butter.
Once this is done, it allows the development of a long-term program to sell the advantages of soy butter vs. cow butter. An essential ingredient of such a program is “pride of origin” which the soy name connotes.
The same principle is involved in the shift from colored to Negro to black.
“Negro” is a margarine name, forever relating Negroes to second-class citizenship. “Colored” doesn’t sufficiently polarize the situation. The implication is, the less colored the better.
“Black” is a much better choice. It allows the development of “pride of blackness,” an essential first step to long-term equality. (You might prefer to be white, but I prefer to be black.)
In naming people or products, you should not let your competitors unfairly preempt words that you need to describe your own products. Like butter in the case of margarine. Or like sugar in the case of corn syrup.
A number of years ago, scientists found a way to make sweeteners out of corn starch. Result: products called dextrose, corn syrup, and high-fructose corn syrup.
With names like “high-fructose corn syrup,” it’s no wonder that even in the trade the products were considered imitation or second-class in comparison with sucrose or “real sugar.” So Corn Products, one of the major suppliers of corn syrups, decided to call its sweeteners “corn sugars.” This move allowed the company to put corn on an equal footing with cane and beet.
“Consider all three types of sugar,” say the ads. “Cane, beet, and corn.”
Marketing people should know that the Federal Trade Commission is the keeper of the generics for many industries. But the FTC can be persuaded. “If we can’t call it sugar, can we put corn syrup in a soft drink and call the product ‘sugar-free’?”
Special-interest groups recognize the power of a good name. The “Right to Life” movement and “fair trade” laws are two examples.
And what senator or representative would dare oppose a bill called the “Clean Air Act?”
In working against an established concept like “fair trade,” it’s important not to try to rename the competition. All you cause is confusion among your audience.
To counter the widespread consumer acceptance of fair trade laws, the opposition tried to call it “price maintenance” legislation. It was many, many years before fair trade laws were repealed by the many states that had enacted them.
A better tactic is to turn the name around. That is to reposition the concept by using the same words to turn the meaning inside out. “Fair to the trade, but unfair to the consumer” is an example of this tactic.
Even better is to rename the opposition before the powerful name takes root. “Price manitenance” would probably have worked as a blocking strategy, but only early in the game. Another example of the importance of being first.
In spite of the common belief that it’s “only a name,” there is a growing body of evidence that a person’s name plays a significant role in the game of life.
Two psychology professors, Dr. Herbert Harari and Dr. John W. McDavid, were trying to find out why elementary school students made fun of classmates with unusual names.
So they experimented with different names attributed to compositions supposedly written by fourth and fifth graders. Two sets of names, in particular, illustrate the principle.
There were two popular names (David and Michael) and two unpopular names (Hubert and Elmer) on some of the compositions. Each composition was given to a different group of elementary school teachers to grade. (The teachers that participated in the experiment had no reason to believe they weren’t grading ordinary school papers.)
Would you believe that compositions bearing the names of David and Michael averaged a letter grade higher than the same compositions attributed to Elmer and Hubert? “Teachers know from past experience,” say the professors, “that a Hubert or an Elmer is generally a loser.”
What about famous people with odd first names? Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson, for example. Both losers to men with the popular names of Richard and Dwight.
What if Richard Humphrey had run against Hubert Nixon? Would America have elected a Hubert Nixon?
Jimmy, Jerry, Richard, Lyndon, John, Dwight, Harry, Franklin. Not since Herbert have we had a “loser” name in the White House.
And who did Herbert Hoover beat in 1928? Another man with a loser name, Alfred.
In 1932, when Herbert ran against a “winner” name like Franklin, he lost. And he lost big.
What would you expect from someone named Edsel? Edsel was a loser name before Ford introduced the Edsel car. And the name contributed to the marketing disaster.
Take Cyril and John. According to psychologist David Sheppard, people who don’t know anyone with these names nevertheless expect a Cyril to be sneaky and a John to be trustworthy.
You see what you expect to see. And a bad or inappropriate name sets up a chain reaction that only serves to confirm your initial unfavorable opinion.
Elmer is a loser. See, he’s not doing that job very well. I told you, Elmer is a loser.
A true story. An account officer at a New York bank was named Young J. Boozer. Once when a customer asked to speak to “Young Boozer,” he was told by the switchboard operator, “We have a lot of them around here. Which one do you want to talk to?”
The name is the first point of contact between the message and the mind.
It’s not the goodness or badness of the name in an esthetic sense that determines the effectiveness of the message. It’s the appropriateness of the name.
Take the airline industry, for example. The four largest domestic carriers are United, American, Delta and …
Well, do you know the name of the “second largest passenger carrier of all the airlines in the free world,” to use one of the airline’s advertising slogans?
That’s right. Eastern Airlines.
Like all airlines, Eastern has had its ups and downs. Unfortunately, more downs than ups. Among the four largest domestic airlines, Eastern consistently ranks fourth on passenger surveys.
Why? Eastern has a regional name that puts it in a different category in the prospect’s mind than big nationwide names like American and United.
The name Eastern puts the airline in the same category with Piedmont, Ozark, and Southern.
You see what you expect to see. The passenger who has a bad experience on American or United says, “It was just one of those things.” An exception to the good service he or she was expecting.
The passenger who has a bad experience on Eastern says, “It’s that Eastern Airlines again.” A continuation of the bad service he or she was expecting.
It’s not that Eastern hasn’t tried. A number of years ago, Eastern brought in some big-league marketing people and pulled out the throttle. Eastern was among the first to “paint the planes,” “improve the food,” and “dress up the flight attendants” in an effort to improve its reputation.
And Eastern hasn’t been bashful when it comes to spending money. Year after year, it has one of the biggest advertising budgets in the industry. In a recent year, Eastern spent more than $70 million on advertising.
For all the money, what do you think of Eastern? Where do you think they fly? Up and down the East Coast, to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, right?
Well, Eastern also goes to St. Louis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Acapulco, Mexico City.
You can’t hang “the wings of man” on a regional name. When prospects are given a choice, they are going to prefer the national airline, not the regional one.
The airline’s problem is typical of the difficulty people have in separating reality from perception. Many experienced marketing people look at the Eastern situation and say, “It’s not the name that gets Eastern into trouble. It’s the poor service, the food, the baggage handling, the surly flight attendants.” The perception is the reality.
What do you think of Piedmont Airlines? How about Ozark Airlines? And what about Allegheny?
Allegheny, of course, has thrown in the towel and become USAir. Even North Central and Southern gave up and merged to become Republic Airlines. Both airlines are doing quite well.
Another common name problem is represented by two companies headquartered in Akron, Ohio.
What does a company do when its name (Goodrich) is similar to the name of a larger company in the same field (Goodyear)?
Goodrich has problems. Research indicates that they could reinvent the wheel and Goodyear would get most of the credit.
Not surprisingly, B. F. Goodrich recognizes the problem. This is how they expressed it a number of years ago in an advertisement:
The curse of Benjamin Franklin Goodrich. His name. It’s one of fate’s cruel accidents that our biggest competitor’s name turns out to be almost identical to our founder’s. Goodyear. Goodrich. Awfully confusing.
At the bottom of the ad, it says: “If you want Goodrich, you’ll just have to remember Goodrich.”
In other words, it’s not Goodrich’s problem at all. It’s your problem.
B. F. Goodrich was the first domestic company to market steel-belted radial-ply tires in the United States. Yet several years later when tire buyers were asked which company makes steel-belted radials, 56 percent named Goodyear, which didn’t make them for the domestic market. Only 47 percent said Goodrich, which did.
As they say in Akron, “Goodrich invents it. Firestone develops it. Goodyear sells it.”
Every year Goodyear increases its lead. Today it outsells Goodrich 3 to 1. So the rich get richer. Fair enough.
But what is odd is that the loser’s advertising continues to get all the publicity. “We’re the other guys” got a lot of favorable attention in the press. But not a lot of favorable attention from the tire-buying public. Its name alone forever condemns Goodrich to eat the dust of its bigger competitor.
If the Akron twins seem confusing, consider the predicament of the Toledo triplets. Owens-Illinois, Owens-Corning Fiberglas and Libbey-Owens-Ford.
These are not small outfits either. Owens-Illinois is a $3.5 billion company. Owens-Corning Fiberglas is a $3 billion company. And Libbey-Owens-Ford is a $1.75 billion company.
Look at the confusion problem from the point of view of Owens-Corning Fiberglas.
Owens, of course, is usually connected with Illinois. Owens-Illinois is a larger company with a stronger claim to the Owens name.
And Corning is usually linked with glass. In nearby Corning, New York, is the Corning Glass Works, a $1.7 billion company. It has succeeded in firmly linking the Corning name to the glass concept.
So what’s left for Owens-Corning Fiberglas?
Fiberglas.
Which is probably why the company runs ads that say “Owens-Corning is Fiberglas.” In other words, if you want Fiberglas, you’ll just have to remember Owens-Corning.
It would be a lot easier if the company changed its name to the Fiberglas Corporation. Then if you want fiberglass (with a lowercase “f”), all you have to remember is Fiberglas (with an uppercase “F”). This step would help focus the attention on the company’s primary objective, to turn fiberglass from a generic name back into a brand name.
What should you do if your name is Hubert or Elmer or Eastern or Goodrich or Owens-Corning Fiberglas? Change it.
But name changing is rare, in spite of the logic. Most companies are convinced they have too much equity in their present name. “Our customers and employees would never accept a new name.”
What about Olin and Mobil and Uniroyal and Xerox? And how about Exxon Corporation? It was only a few years ago that Exxon changed its name from.…
Well, do you even remember what Exxon’s old name was? No, it wasn’t Esso and it wasn’t Humble Oil or Enjay, although the company did use these names in its marketing operations.
The old name of Exxon Corporation was Standard Oil of New Jersey. Amazing what a few years and a few dollars can do.
There is only negative equity in a bad name. When the name is bad, things tend to get worse. When the name is good, things tend to get better.
Do you know the difference between a $4.6 billion company called The Continental Group, Inc., and a $4 billion company called The Continental Corporation? Not too many people do until they find out that The Continental Group is the world’s largest maker of cans and Continental Corporation is the big insurance company.
“Ah, yes. Continental Can and Continental Insurance. Now I know the companies you meant.”
Why would a company drop “can” and “insurance” in favor of the anonymity of “group” and “corporation”? The obvious answer is that these two companies sell more than cans and insurance.
But is it possible to build an identity on a nothing name? Unlikely, especially when you consider the existence of other companies with claims on the Continental name. There is Continental Oil, Continental Telephone, Continental Grain, and Continental Illinois Corp. (All billion dollar companies, by the way.)
Or how about the secretary whose boss says, “Get me Continental on the phone.” In Manhattan alone, there are 235 listings in the telephone directory starting with Continental.