However, somehow in the midst of ‘doing’, firms often can’t define or emphasise their competency in such ways that it would give them competitive advantage in the market. To improve the competitive advantage, we suggest to clients to look into three areas of strategic planning. The firms’ core competencies need to be identified, Market trends to be scouted for and competitor intelligence need to gathered to arrive at meaningful strategic planning outcomes.

This is where we ask- who is doing it? In smaller firms, marketing is often understaffed or not at all present. Increasing organisational capability is becoming vital if any firm wants to grow or expand. How would you know that your invested dollars are giving you return? The role of marketing in your organisation needs to be seen clearly. We encounter very different types of marketing personnel in organisations, not always with the set of skills required to identify competitive advantage for the company. In our upcoming posts, we will discuss some of the different ‘marketer types’ we think of.

Very often, people are skirmish about naming because it involves thinking out of their comfort zone and maybe saying something in front of people that gets culled down with cynicism. In recent years it has become very difficult to name a company and trademark it without a due diligence process.

The ‘obvious’ names are taken or unavailable as domains. Simply going through the dictionary is not enough. Resorting to fantasy names is not often a clever idea if it is too impossible to pronounce the names. I know there are people who seriously use name generators on the net, but they are the equivalent to buying instant coffee..or trusting Babelfish for business translations…

That’s when specialist naming companies are called in (like Consensio for example, hint, hint).

The tasks of the naming specialist are to facilitate the process and doing the due diligence on the name. It is a difficult process because we don’t only have to come up with something durable, exciting and suitable, but also something that holds up to legal and commercial aspects. Sometimes you fall in love with a name too early, only to find somebody else has had the same idea and protected it already.

We have to ask:

• Is it legal? Can we trademark the name in our market, in our industry, in our country, globally?

• Commercial? Can we get the URL that matches our name?

As a rule of thumb, generic words that are in the common language domain cannot be trademarked for your commercial interests- as they would disadvantage your competitors. For example, if you had the rights to the word ‘Engineering” a whole industry would be excluded from using the word. However, you could call yourself “Berti Beetle Engineering”, if there is no other Berti Beetle in the IP register trademark registered in your country.

Consensio, like many other naming companies, use a process, whereby we utilise a naming work sheet to involve clients in the naming brainstorm. With a point system we check it against the IP register, Domain availability and the name categories. After a thorough check, whereby as as many stakeholders as possible have contributed to the list and gave points to the variable selection, we are very clear what ‘cuts the mustard’ with the market and our client.

I love this part of brand positioning, because we witness the birth of a new identity. After all, good brand names go from good to great by being durable. (Read PART 1 here or PART 2)

The best names capture the core essence of the business- what you stand for. And this means not necessarily a descriptive name. People tend to think that once you put “what you do” in it, it’s taken care of- but we know, that APPLE, YAHOO and other big brand names are not descriptive of what they do- they are descriptive of “how they make you feel”. That means there are different categories for names.

Here are the common name categories:

Functional Names: either named after a person, purely descriptive of what the company or product does, or a reference to functionality. (Joe’s Metal Roofing, Joseph Archer Architecture)

Experiential Names: Bound in reality, familiar. Usually literally, but presented with a touch of imagination. (Firefox, Playstation, GoPC)

Invented Names: a made-up name or non-English name that is not widely known (Consensio).

Evocative Names: evoking association, memories or stories that are not directly associated with the usage of the service or product.

Some Naming companies (yes, there are naming specialists!) use also “Metaphorical” “Conjoined”, “Acronyms” and “Playful” as categories. (For an excellent book on brand process see “Logo Savvy”, by WOW Branding. In my opinion the best brand naming agency presented on the net is IGOR International).

For the process (the bit you actually need to do the brand name process) please read PART 3!.. or find PART 1.

So how do you do it (without a beer drenched night and a birthday names book or Dictionary on your knees)?

In professional brand terms you are going through a process which is described as part of “positioning a company in a market.” At this stage you may have a good idea what the company can and won’t do and what you want it do (apart from earning a million bucks) and what your business objectives are.

In this case you are miles ahead (congratulations, if you have already a written business plan that’s bigger than the serviette you scribbled it on yesterday during lunch time).

I know these things are hard work and usually are ONGOING. So let’s say you have done research and you are in the know about

1. your company structure and culture
2. your customers/clients
3. the business environment/market you enter
4. your competitors
5. your pricing strategy
6. your service/product distribution

Meanwhile, I know, that as a start-up, things don’t usually pan out this linear. However, for the neatness of this, bear with me and let’s imagine this ideal path, where the above mentioned is in place. Larger firms and people from in-house departments may look at their plans now and hopefully find above mentioned. Otherwise, please do one of the following:

• dial ext. for your marketing department and call an immediate meeting to FIND the information
• if you ARE the marketing department, burn the midnight oil and document the information before you embark on a naming strategy either on your company division or product
• OR email me so we can work out a brand audit

Either way, let’s further pretend we have all this information from 1-7 (I got sidetracked, didn’t I?), and you want to go ahead with finding the name of your new company or service… now continue to Read here PART 2)!