namebase in the news

 

US News and World Report: 6 Coolest Jobs

Fox Business: What's in a Name?

[radio:] NPR: American Public Media: If the Candidates Were Pharmaceuticals

[radio:] ESPN Radio Network: How Not To Name Your Company (eTron Hits The Fan)

Toronto Star: Product Name Can Prevent Red Faces

CNN/Money: Super-Secret Car Name Decoder Story

AdAge: What's in a name?

Seattle Post: Renaming Entails Risk

LA Times: Quest for the Perfect Drug Name

Wall Street Journal Online: Start-Ups In Search of the Perfect Name

New York Times: American Home is Changing Name to Wyeth

Entrepreneur.com: You Name it: "Sorry, what did you say your name was again?"

The Street.com: How to Name a Blockbuster Drug

North Jersey.com: Naming New Drugs

Attaché Archives: The Name Game

Washington Post: New Colors, Shapes and Names

 

 

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August 28, 2008

The 6 Coolest Jobs for Weird Majors
You can put an unconventional degree to work for you in a surprisingly cool career

By Liz Wolgemuth

The start of the school year is close at hand—the pencils are being sharpened, the tree leaves are preparing to rust, and your school would like you to declare a major. It's tempting to write down something standard, but if you're willing to forgo the allure of everyday majors like English or philosophy, then an uncommon degree could put you in good stead for one of these jobs (Note: These majors might not be "weird" to the professors who teach them, but they aren't plain vanilla either.):

Linguistics: Question: How do companies choose the brand names for their products? Answer: Carefully. Companies aim to communicate a lot through the way a brand name looks, sounds, and the associations it carries. Linguistics majors look at the syntax, semantics, phonetics, and other components of language—and they'll find the job of a brand namer an unusually good fit for their knowledge of plosives, fricatives, and nomenclature.

Linguistics plays a big role at New York-based namebase, a brand naming firm responsible for coining "Fruitopia" and Tyson's "Any'tizers," says President and Creative Director Jim Singer. The daily grind at Singer's firm involves searching for a neologism (a coined word) that communicates so well, it virtually advertises the product itself. Sound is key. The name of a small car should sound small. The name of an antidepressant should sound helpful or upbeat. The company's linguistic analysis checks for word associations and colloquialisms in a variety of languages.

Consumer science: While a budding financial planner's first instinct might be to get a business or economics degree, a consumer science degree will offer a unique perspective: Students focus on the business of doing what's best for the consumer, rather than what's best for business, says Cynthia Jasper, chair of the Department of Consumer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students in the Wisconsin program can join an extracurricular group where they train to offer financial counseling to fellow college students shouldering credit card debt or other financial burdens.

The outlook for the profession is good: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of personal financial advisers will grow 41 percent between 2006 and 2016—making it one of the top 10 fastest-growing occupations.

Classics: The classics, or classical civilizations, major is good preparation for a lawyer, but it's not—as some would suspect—because students will better understand the meaning of "habeas corpus" or "caveat emptor." Rather, says Prof. David Traill, director of the classics program at University of California-Davis, it's because study of Latin and Greek requires careful reading and attention to meaning and grammar. That skill can prove enormously useful to lawyers, and even to burgeoning law students who are tackling the LSAT exam. Latin and Greek students often gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the English language, which helps with the writing involved in legal careers. Plus, Traill says, the major may help students get into law schools that seek a diversity of majors among the crowd of applicants.

Food science: Got a good tongue? Try the work of a flavor chemist, or flavorist. Flavorists create natural and artificial flavors for a variety of food, beverages, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products. There's a lot of science involved in the laboratory re-creation of naturally occurring flavors, but there's also a great deal of creativity required. "It's an art," says Kenneth Kraut, president of the Society of Flavor Chemists. "It's almost like making a painting." A flavorist with 15 years or so in the business can make between $100,000 and $150,000, Kraut says.

Packaging: Bottled water has been getting a bad rap lately, in large part because of its plastic packaging, which requires plenty of petroleum in its manufacturing and takes up significant stretches of space in landfills. In fact, many products' packaging is getting a second look as consumers and companies become more concerned with environmental impact.

If you believe in green, you can put a packaging degree to work as a sustainability engineer, helping companies reduce the volume and weight of their packaging and improve its ability to be recycled. Job prospects are good for packaging majors. According to the School of Packaging at Michigan State University, starting salaries are regularly in the same range as those of engineering majors.

Logic and computation: It might be logical to continue on in academia with this rare degree, young professor. Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania are the only schools listed by the College Board as offering a major in logic. The logic and computation major is brand new to Carnegie Mellon this term, and studies touch on analytical philosophy, computer science, math, and statistics. All in all, this makes it a good choice for business or law, but an especially good choice for academia. "Many students will continue on to graduate-level programs across the country and become faculty members at the university level," says Ray Mizgorski, a career consultant at Carnegie Mellon.

 

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August 08, 2008

What's in a Name?

by Cornelia Rowe

 

You will spend the next few years growing and nurturing it. You will hope that it will develop into something strong, something in which you will see a return on your emotional and financial investments. It is essential that you give it just the right name.

That’s right – your baby: your small business.

Small business is On Topic at FOXBusiness.com in August. Check back every day to read stories about how to start, build and enhance your small business.

“You can communicate so much with a great name for your company or product,” said James Singer, creative director at Name Base, a national brand-naming consulting firm. “A great name becomes its own advertisement and can save you millions in marketing dollars.”

If you’re starting up a small business, one of the most important decisions you’ll make is what to name it. Not only is it vital in conveying what product or service you’re offering, it’s a major factor in creating brand awareness.

Obviously, you'll want a catchy name. But what are some other things to take into consideration when it comes to christening your business? Here are a few tips.

Play up your company's unique selling proposition. The name should stress what your company is selling.

“It makes it so much easier on potential customers if you build the unique selling proposition of your company into your business name,” said Joe Kennedy, the author of The Small Business Owner’s Manual: Everything You Need To Know To Start Up and Run Your Small Business.

A moniker that’s direct and to-the-point will be advantageous when attracting clientele through the Web or search listings. “When people get on the internet, they expect information right away,” said Kennedy. “I’ve you’ve embedded (the unique selling proposition) into the name, it sure makes it easier on people.”

Case in point: clients surfing the ‘net or thumbing through the Yellow Pages in search of a plumber will find you faster and easier if ‘plumbing’ is in your name.

And while we’re speaking of the Internet….

Be conscious of how it will look online. What this boils down to is thinking about what your business’s name will look when you type it as a web address. It’s that simple.

Exhibit A: Powergen, a UK power company that was rumored to have bought this domain for its Italian division: www.powergenitalia.com. (To be fair, after much giggling in the British Press, a Powergen rep claimed the company had nothing to do with purchasing the domain.)

Or TherapistFinder, a company tailored to helping people find therapists in California. It’d be easy to get the wrong idea when typing in www.therapistfinder.com.

And ending your business with the word ‘exchange’ is a naming don’t. Domain Rookie, a web company dedicated to helping people invest in domains, has a whole list of businesses whose web addresses could be awkwardly misconstrued: Homes Exchange (www.homesexchange.com), Experts Exchange (www.expertsexchange), and MomsExchange (www.momsexchange.com) just to name a few.

And while we’re having fun with this, Who Represents – an online company that puts customers in touch with celebrity representation– might want to reconsider www.whorepresents.com.

Avoid consumer confusion. “You don’t want your name to be similar to someone else’s or someone might associate it with another company," said Darius Keyhani, a member of the intellectual property law firm of Meredith and Keyhani. “That could be actionable and constitute as trademark infringement.”

Keyhani said the first thing you should do is check with your Secretary of State to see corporate filings of trademark requests and make sure no one else has your name or one similar. “You can also hire a search company and do a search of the marks,” he said. “Do a search all over the United States and make sure nobody else is using your name and using the same mark in association with the services.”

Forget acronyms. Until you’re a Fortune 500 company that everybody is familiar with, acronyms are instantly forgettable. ‘Don’t use an acronym unless it evolves organically,’ said Singer.

"For instance, IBM – International Business Machine. Their customers started calling it IBM, they didn’t come out and announce that’s what they were called. And GE, of course. In those cases, it’s fine. But otherwise, you’re just going to get lost in alphabet soup."

Be visual. The best names are ones that bring images to mind when you hear them. Even for products and services that aren’t necessarily visually-oriented, having a name with an associative image can go a long way toward raising your company's profile.

“You want to find something that’s catchy, neat…something that might be well-liked or create the kind of feeling or conception that you want in a market that you’re trying to attract,” said Keyhani. “The name should not be descriptive of what you’re providing, but have a creative sense. Like Viagra – it plays off of Niagara. They were playing off associations with the waterfall.”

Pay attention to phonetic strength. Small phonetic nuances can also be helpful. Naming experts say that plosives - words that sound almost like a small explosion via p, k or t sounds – catch the ears of listeners.

“Kodak starts with a plosive and ends with a plosive,’ said Singer. ‘And it has bright vowels in the middle, so it’s a beautifully coined word. And it has that dactylic rhythm – the first syllable is stressed. So that’s a good device when trying to make sure the name is memorable and has strength. Even if it doesn’t mean anything, it can mean a lot on a subliminal level, an emotional level.’

Consider unconventional naming methods. Laugh all you want at this one – but remember, it was JP Morgan who said “millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do.”

Lloyd Strayhorn, author of Numbers and You: A Numerology Guide for Everyday Living, has used both astrology and numerology to help name small businesses. For instance, for a New Jersey real estate developer who was just starting out, Strayhorn and his client came up with DL Moore Developers, which had corresponding numbers that added up to 8. According to Strayhorn, 8 is a number that rules real estate and banks.

“Most clients that have come me will have names that they have in mind and what I’ll do is numerically analyze the names to see if they are in sync with the individual, and more importantly, with what they’re doing,” said Strayhorn. “Its challenging enough to stay afloat, but why stay afloat with a name that works against you?”

 

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March 1, 2008
ELECTION 2008

If the Candidates were Pharmaceuticals

Bill Radke
Michael Raphael

Bill Radke: In a moment, I'm going to ask you to give the candidates their ideal brand names, but let's start with the names they've got. How well are they working?

Jim Singer: I think some work better than others. I think Barack, the sound of his name -- it's a very powerful name. In the world of phonetics, and this is strictly talking about the sounds of words, there are certain elements that cause a word to be more powerful or less powerful. His happens to be a very strong name. It starts with a plosive, which is a little explosion that you create when you say a "p," a "t" or a "k" sound, or a "b"-that's a labial plosive. That catches the ear of the listener, so the first thing he's got going for him is the puff of air, and the "Ba-rack" which is another plosive, a very strong ending similar to some pharmaceuticals out there such as Prozac.

You were part of the team that came up with the name Prozac. How does that process work?

We sit around a table and think up good-sounding words, and then we take them apart and try to sell them to the clients afterwards with a lot of science behind it. But really we're just kind of babbling in there, and when a good one comes out, we write it down.

You just cut your commission in half with the admission that you're babbling without science.

(laughs) Right.

OK, Jim, we asked you earlier this week-so you've had a little time to think about it. If the four front-running presidential candidates were pharmaceuticals, what would you name them?

We thought that for Barack, he stands, ostensibly, for change and hope - and came up with Hopium. For Barack Obama, his drug is Hopium.

Wait a second. Are you sure that's a good idea? Doesn't he have some past recreational drug use?

Oh, that's right. And he not only doesn't deny it, he touts it.

Well, okay. Not that he's not a strong shot of Hopamine, but I'm just wondering if that's a good idea for him.

Hopamine, that's a good one, Bill.

And then for Hillary, she has to constantly prove that she's tough, because you know, sometimes the assumption is that a woman might not be as tough on terrorism as a man. So we thought of some names that had the morpheme, the word-part "tuff." Tuffarelle ...

Nice plosive there.

Exactly. Or Tuffagra.

McCain, now, he's not only willing to keep our troops in Iraq for as long as it takes, but he'd like to even increase the troop numbers. So we thought his drug name might be Escalatra.

And then for Huckabee, we thought, well, he's an evangelical Christian, his drug might be Zelotra, or Zelotene.

Of course, you're politically neutral here.

Of course, I'm neutral. No bias whatsoever (laughs).

No, I don't detect that. Okay, Jim that's excellent. Congratulations to you and your staff.

For this kind of a naming project, we charge $50,000, $75,000 and upwards, but this is gratis.

Thanks. Consider it your pledge to public radio.

 

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December 12, 2007

How Not To Name Your Company (eTron Hits The Fan)

by American Media Service Press Release

New York Naming Company Highlights Naming Blunders

When the radio spot first aired on ESPN Radio – the sports driven station on AM radio, listeners couldn’t believe they were hearing the words: “poo poo” and “ka ka” on the air. It was from a cheeky commercial by Namebase a brand naming consultancy in New York. With a funny twist they point out the dangers of trying to name your company or its products internally. In the spot, The CEO of the company wants to call the new product “eTron” “everybody loves the little “e” and that it says electronic”. Only trouble is, etron means excrement or feces in French. Or as they put it in the ad: “It means Poo Poo” and the boss says sheepishly you mean “Ka Ka”?

Before the spot began airing on ESPN, Namebase’s media buyer: American Media Concepts in Brooklyn approached Bloomberg’s program director Frank Vulpi who was somewhat put off by the potty talk. He thought “poo” and “kaka” weren’t quite suitable for the Mayor’s Own station. But Jonathan Hatch from Slope Sounds noted: “They’re making a valid point in this commercial– you have to be very careful about whether or not the name you choose is appropriate in other languages and cultures. It makes a great case for using a professional naming consultant.”

We had no idea that a Taiwan company had already made the eTron faux pas.
Http://www.etron.com takes you to an electronics company who obviously does not do business with France… Or French speaking people. Joshua Hsu of eTron Inc did not return our calls.

Past naming mistakes are legion. Most people are familiar with the Nova naming fiasco. Chevy noticed that their Nova was not selling well in Spanish speaking countries since No Va translates to: “Will Not Go”. Then Ford goofed in Brazil. It seems “pinto” is Portuguese slang for “small penis”. Rolls Royce changed the name of its “Silver Mist” in Germany because Mist means 'dung' or 's*!t' in German– the name was changed to “Silver Cloud”. Enron was first registered as Enteron until someone noticed that Enteron means intestine or colon.

“The brand naming business really caught fire during the VC boom of 1999-2000.” Says Jim Singer, President and Creative Director of Namebase. The New York based naming agency. “Every day new companies would call – many with lackluster business plans, underwhelming products and some with no visible revenue stream at all- but they had tons of money from the VC’s . How could we say no?” Since then most large companies have begun using naming consultants. Singer notes: “A good name can become its own advertisement saving a company millions of marketing dollars. A great name creates its own momentum, exciting both employees and customers.”

Singer notes: “nearly 90% percent of our clients come to us after attempting some degree of internal naming effort. Then they realize how difficult it is to find a good name that is available to trademark” And one that doesn’t mean “Ka Ka” in French.

 

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Mar. 11, 2006

Product Name Game Can Prevent Red Faces

by Audrey Dutton, Columbia News Service

In Greece, thirsty travellers stroll into a market and pick up cold cans of Zit soft drink. In Japan, athletes sip on Pocari Sweat. In London, England, parents reach for boxes of Kellogg's Coco Pops Coco Rocks, even though "coco rocks" is slang for dark brown crack cocaine.

Wanting to avoid a flop, a fuzzy translation or an offensive misnomer, companies increasingly enlist the help of branding and naming firms. These firms compile their best ideas for product names — tossing out the gauche, silly and inappropriate.

"There's a lot of Drinky McDrinkerson for a beverage product," says Ryan Ramaekers, marketing strategist for Girvin, a branding and design firm in Seattle. "You've got to be able to be silly to keep the creative juices flowing."

The process of naming a product takes a few weeks. The company usually tells branders the most salient message or image it wants to convey, and that gives namers some direction as they brainstorm together. But to clear the path for a flash of genius, they first have to purge their not-so-genius ideas.

"It's important to not keep yourself from being contrived or cliché in the beginning," says Ken Pasternak of Marshall Strategy, a branding company in San Francisco. Brainstorming means that even the worst ideas get a spot on the list.
Then branders take their results — sometimes thousands of names — and chip away at the list. For many firms, this is one of the longest parts of the process. They run trademark searches and check for availability of website names. To find unexpected double meanings, they search the Web.

One firm runs cultural sensitivity checks, which become especially vital when companies expand into global markets. Finally, the strategy turns inward: How can the name be sold to Company X?

Edward Saenz, the founder of Gravity Branding, says that when he embarked on a project to name what is now the Nissan Versa, he thought about the target market. "Knowing that it's a younger audience we're appealing to, we looked at the names of nightclubs," he says.

He wanted excitement, an urban feel. He came up with Suede. But when he pitched it, the Nissan executives "looked at us and said, `The car is metal.'"

Cars seem especially prone to bilingual slip-ups. The Buick LaCrosse drew snickers from Quebecois teenagers who use the term "lacrosse" when talking about masturbation. Mitsubishi avoided being red-faced over its Pajero model after learning that the word meant "a person who enjoys pleasuring himself" in its Spanish-speaking markets. So Mitsubishi sold the car in Spanish-speaking countries and North America as a Montero.

Then there's the often cited Chevy Nova. "No va" means ``doesn't go" in Spanish, and many believe this harmed sales of the car. But according to David A. Ricks, professor of management and international business at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and author of Blunders in International Business, it's possible this is an urban legend. "I've been in touch with people from General Motors, and I have gotten mixed answers," he says.

Coca-Cola learned the translation lesson when it ventured into the Chinese market in 1928. The company consulted translators for its advertisements, but some industrious shopkeepers made their own Coke signs with phonetic translations. Customers were perplexed. Instead of "Coca-Cola," they read, "Bite the wax tadpole." Even so, Coca-Cola thrived in China, and the gaffe is now part of company lore. "Every so often they will even put it in their annual reports," Ricks says.

Marketing experts say that with hundreds of products to choose from, names do make a difference. And branding professionals argue that while lawyers can give specialized corporate law advice, branders can give specialized naming advice.

Whether it is a Yahoo or an Apple, it seems that a rose by any other name might not smell as Fantastik. One wrong sound could render a product undesirable, says Jim Singer, who named Prozac and presides over Namebase, a branding and naming company in New York. He says certain sounds were a subconscious turnoff to English-speaking ears. "Scota. The "sc" sounds like scuzzy, scurvy," he says.

But clever wordplay can improve a product's image, he says. Singer named Fruitopia — a word combination that consumers fancied. His firm also pitched a name for Tropicana's nondairy fruit smoothie: "Froothies." The tagline? "We took the `moo' out of `smoothies.'" (The company opted for "Tropicana Fruit Smoothies" instead.)

Sometimes, wordplay can yield unintended hilarious results. That is, in part, why branders exist: to make sure the next Pepsi or Lean Cuisine will not become a punch line.

Saenz of Gravity ran a recent branding project for a leading pharmaceutical company. He set out to name a new feminine hormone medication."Naturaplur," he thought. " `Plur' for `plural effects,' and `natura' for `natural energy.'"
The name had all the qualities of a winner: it was distinct, easy to spell, memorable and easy to pronounce. There was just one problem. In Cambodia's Khmer language, it translated roughly to "stupid eye."

 

 

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September 11, 2004

Super-secret car name decoder story – You know what 'Mustang' means. How about 525i, TL, STS, ES300, 9-2X...

by Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN/Money staff writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Remember when cars had names? Evocative, sometimes powerful, sometimes way off the mark, like Mustang, New Yorker, Bonneville and Capri. They meant something, or at least were easy to remember.
Good old fashioned names are still with us, of course, and new ones -- like Cobalt and Freestyle -- are still being introduced. But many luxury car companies have given up on naming their babies altogether, preferring alpha-numeric nomenclature systems that take the guesswork and focus groups out of deciding what to call a new model.

"It's only the luxury brands that have the luxury of using alphanumerics," said Jim Singer, president of NameBase, a marketing company that has helped create names for some Kia, Suzuki and Renault cars. The implication: a flashy car can sell itself. Acura, starting in 1995, went from using names like Integra and Vigor for its cars to using combinations of two and three consonants like RL and TSX.

"We would rather have more emphasis on the Acura brand," said Chris Naughton, a company spokesman.

Singer is no fan of alphanumerics for car names."You're missing a huge opportunity to communicate more about the vehicle," he said. Is it fast? Is it rugged? Is it big and comfy? Who knows? Still, while those serial-number car names may look like someone threw a spoonful of chrome-plated alphabet soup at a car's deck-lid, they really do have meaning. Yes, 530i really does have a story to tell. These are general rules, by the way, and there are some exceptions.

BMW

BMW's numbering system is fairly simple. Numbers, usually odd numbers, indicate the relative size and expense of cars. Everyone has heard of BMW's 3-series, 5-series and 7 series cars. In Europe, BMW sells the bargain-priced 1-series. The next two digits indicate engine size. The BMW 325i has a 2.5 liter engine. The BMW 330i has a 3.0 liter engine. The letter i is a holdover from times when fuel injection was something to brag about rather than something you would find in even run-of-the-mill economy cars. In Europe, where BMW sells diesel-powered cars, one can also see the 325d on the road. Sometimes two letters appear after the number, as in the 325Ci and 325Xi. The first letter indicates a special type, as with the two-door 325Ci coupe or the all-wheel drive 325Xi.

Lexus

Let's take, for example, the Lexus LS 430. The second letter in any Lexus car's name indicates the body style. An S is a sedan, an X is a sport/utility vehicle and a C is a convertible. The 3-digit number is based on the engine size in liters. So the LS 430 has a 4.3 liter engine, and a GS 300 has a 3.0 liter engine. The first letter in a Lexus name indicates the relative size and cost of the car. The higher in the alphabet the letter is, the higher the price. For some reason -- a Toyota spokesman wasn't sure why -- the R SUVs are an exception to this particular rule. They are actually the least expensive Lexus SUVs.

Saab

Every car Saab makes has a name that starts with the number 9. The 9 simply means "this is not a military vehicle." When the company was founded in the 1930s, Saab was an acronym for Swedish Aircraft, Ab (the Swedish equivalent of Inc.) After World War II, while Saab was still strictly an airplane company, it was decided that all civilian projects should be given numbers starting with 9. The Saab 90 and 91 were civilian aircraft. Saab's next project was a car. Since it was not a military vehicle, the car was given the number 92. Since the numbers always had to start with 9 it didn't take too long before Saab was into three-digit, then four-digit, car names. In 1998 came the car that would have been the Saab 90,000. At that point, Saab went back to double digits, but the numbers were now separated. In ordinary text, the numbers are written with a hyphen in between, like this: 9-5. On the back of a Saab, the second digit is offset in a slightly different typeface. As with BMWs, the second number indicates the relative size and price of the vehicle. If it's followed by an X, as with the 9-2X, that means it has all-wheel drive.

Acura

Acura's two- and three-letter combinations mean absolutely nothing. They're just completely made-up combinations of letters.
One exception that rule -- or lack of one -- predates Acura's overall move to letters. When the Acura NSX sports car was in development in the 1980s that name stood for New Sports Experimental.

Cadillac

Cadillac has dispensed with names like Seville and Deville, replacing them with three-letter combinations like STS and DTS. For those with fond memories of those old names, the first letter remains. The STS is the modern descendant of the old Cadillac Seville and the DTS is the rough equivalent of the Deville. The C in CTS, Cadillac's entry-level model, has no particular meaning. (It's Cadillac's naming scheme and they get to decide what things stand for, so it doesn't stand for Catera, either.) The letters TS stand for "touring sedan." For the performance version of the CTS, the company added a V to create the CTS-V. The XLR, a two-seat convertible, is the "luxury roadster" of the X series. Otherwise, an X on a Cadillac stands for "crossover." The RX in the name of Cadillac's SRX SUV stands for "reconfigurable crossover." Cadillac is in the process of doing away with the Escalade name on its SUVs but hasn't quite gone all the way yet. For now, each Escalade model has a 3-letter addendum on its name: EXV for the crossover version and ESV for the performance version.

Mercedes

The letters in front of Mercedes car names, like E320, indicate the "class." Sedans are C, for the least expensive, E or S, for the most expensive. SUVs are M or the more exclusive G. Convertibles are, in order of expense, the SLK, CLK and SL. Like BMW, Mercedes scrapes the bottom of the alphabetical barrel in its home continent selling the A-class which is not available here.
The three numbers indicate engine size. An E320 has a 3.2 liter engine, for example.

 

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February 26, 2006

Whats in a Name?

by Jean Halliday, Advertising Age

 

For a starting price of $32 million, you can own the Duesenberg trademark.

A Duesey of a price? Not according to Frank Delano, CEO of Frank Delano International, who has been hired to sell the rights to the storied but defunct motorcar brand. "We are talking about the sale of one of the greatest iconic brand names in the annals of American marketing and advertising history."

Tom Kinnear, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said an existing car or truck name that's well-known can be worth a couple of billion of dollars in brand equity. Heck, even an established vehicle name with negative baggage is worth roughly $200 million.

Though automakers sometimes name their own vehicles, they routinely hire experts to pitch names for new models. Mr. Delano said he bid $100,000 to name American Honda Motor Co.'s first pickup but lost to a low bidder of $30,000 who came up with the moniker Ridgeline (Honda couldn't be reached for comment).

Mr. Delano said auto names should capture one of three things: the essence of the product, the uniqueness of the product or the spirit of the vehicle. "The great names do all three," he said. Ford's Mustang and Nissan's Pathfinder, which Mr. Delano's firm named in the 1980s, are classic examples.

However, among U.S. luxury carmakers, traditional names are disappearing. When Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln brand shifts to alpha-based car names this fall, it will become the last luxury marque to make the move to something the experts call "alphabet soup."

Lincoln's 2006 midsize Zephyr sedan, introduced late last fall, will be reintroduced as the 2007 MKZ and Lincoln's Aviator replacement will be the MKX. Despite the ordering of the letters, Lincoln calls them "Mark Z" and "Mark X," a spokeswoman said. "There may be a little period of adjustment for people to get used to how we are pronouncing it."

But Jim Singer, president-creative director of Namebase, New York, which has worked with Suzuki and Kia, said the trend towardalphanumeric car names (which started four years ago with General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac) is "a big jumble" that causes confusion among consumers. He said alphanumeric names often fail to reinforce the owner's emotional bond with the car.

Lincoln will have to spend big to educate consumers about its new vehicle names and correct pronunciations, experts said. It could take consumers up to five years to understand Lincoln's new nomenclature system. According to the Lincoln spokeswoman, the automaker wants consumers to focus on the Lincoln name, not individual models. Art Spinella, president of auto consultant CNW Marketing Research, said, "Of all the problems Lincoln has, changing the names of its vehicles should be far down the list."

 

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February 2003

Venture Capital: Renaming Company Entails Risks

By John Cook

 

Avenue A announced yesterday that it would change its name to aQuantive Inc.

That's hardly earth-shattering news. But it does bring up an interesting question that's been on my mind: Why do companies spend millions of dollars and countless hours of research to dump well-established brand names?

A made-up word that plays off the root of "quant," Seattle-based Avenue A hopes investors, customers and employees will associate its new name with quantitative results. The 6-year-old online advertising firm also wants to bring three of its business units under one corporate brand.

Renaming the company wasn't easy, with Chief Financial Officer Michael Vernon saying that "this naming exercise was quite an interesting process."

Avenue A, which will convert its moniker, Web site and Nasdaq symbol March 24, engaged an outside consulting firm and formed a special committee of employees to help with the long process. It evaluated hundreds of names before settling on aQuantive.

"We had to change directions a few times," said Vernon, who declined to disclose the cost of the rebranding effort or the dropped names. "We got close to something we thought we liked, and then went out and did the name search and the URL search and found that one or both weren't available."

That's a common refrain in the business of corporate naming. So many Web sites and businesses have laid claim to English, Spanish and French terms that few words are left.

That's why many companies have resorted to making up their own names. Accenture, Agilent, Altria and Verizon are just a few recent examples.

Terry Heckler, founder of Seattle-based Heckler Associates, which helped name Starbucks, Cinnabon, Loudeye and Panera Bread, said companies have limited options these days.

"Any word out of the dictionary you can't protect," Heckler said. "Or you better have a helluva a budget to try.

The number of descriptive words have mostly been used for existing businesses, he added.

"You have to invent names in order to come up with unique names," he said.

Jim Singer, a branding expert who founded Namebase in 1995, agreed. "We do a lot of naming of cars, and all the good animals are gone, all the good places are gone, so then what do you do when all the good names are taken?" said Singer, who charges about $50,000 for his naming services. "It is a huge problem."

To solve it, Singer and his peers create new names.

But some of the made-up words -- known as neologisms -- just don't make much sense. Occasionally, they confuse consumers, employees and the investing public, according to branding experts.

"The made-up words are not as memorable," said Lee Ballard, a name and branding expert with 20 years of experience working with clients such as NationsBank and Oryx Energy. "We have done some research and the public really doesn't like them."

Singer, whose clients have included Coca-Cola, Creo, Honda and Goodyear, said there are instances when made-up brand names fail miserably. He points to Accenture -- formerly Andersen Consulting -- as a prime example.

"You really have to struggle to overcome that name," he said. "It is phonetically dull, and it is a name you can say with your teeth clenched." (Still, Accenture may be better off with its new moniker after Arthur Andersen's collapse last year.)

Singer said there is a tendency for a lot of newly coined names to sound the same. Many begin with the letter "A" or end in "ENT," he said.

Creating names with unique sounds is something of a science. Ballard, who started his career as a linguist studying the Ibaloi language in the Philippines, said memorability, alliteration and vowel harmony are extremely important.

"We try to base it on a word that provides some sort of hook for the mind, so someone doesn't see the name and then can't recall it," he said. In that case, he thinks Avenue A did a good job. That's because people could associate aQuantive with quantitative or quantify.

"It has a little bit of meaning." Singer, who helped name dozens of dot-com companies during the Internet boom, said Avenue A is a decent name with a certain amount of memorability. But it doesn't really say what the company does or why a customer might want to use its services.

"With aQuantive, you keep the A equity that you have in Avenue A and you bring in quantitative, which brings in research," Singer said. "I think it is a pretty good move."

Heckler agreed. "It sounds appropriate," he said. "I can spell it, so it meets my personal spelling ability test."

Name changes have become fairly commonplace in Seattle's high-tech community.

Progressive Networks morphed into RealNetworks in 1997.

Asymetrix Learning Systems switched to Click2learn in 1999.

And Encoding.com revealed Loudeye a few months before its initial public offering in 2000.

Picking a name that grows along with the business and effectively describes what services the company provides still remains a challenge.

"You want a unique name first," Heckler said. "Otherwise, you can't protect it or own it in people's minds.

 

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September 23, 2002

Quest for the Perfect Drug Name

By Linda Marsa, Times Staff Writer

 

What's in a name? Plenty, if you ask Albert Cialis, a retired accountant in southern England. When he discovered that a new impotence drug from Eli Lilly & Co. shared his surname, he was mortified. If the drug became well-known, wouldn't being Mr. Cialis be the equivalent of having the name "Mr. Viagra?" "It's an unfortunate coincidence," said Nicole Hebert, a spokeswoman for Eli Lilly, which makes Cialis, a soon-to-be rival to the blockbuster drug Viagra. Lilly is considering Cialis' request to rename the drug, she said. The brand name Cialis was derived from the "ciel," the French word for sky, and is a play on the idea of "the sky's the limit." The drug is expected to debut in more than 50 countries next year.

While it's doubtful that Lilly would rename a drug this late in the game, the Cialis incident raises the question: Just how do pharmaceutical companies come up with the names for their new therapies? Lipitor, for instance, was derived from the word lipids, the organic compounds that the drug controls. Relenza hints at relief and reliability, with a nod to the illness it combats, influenza. Similarly, Allegra, an allergy medication, combines the root word, allergy, with a softer suffix, "gra," to create a name with a soothing symmetry. Xenical, an anti-obesity drug, practically spells out what it does: X's out calories. Other popular names "don't have a functional tie to the drug," Plasance said. Viagra, for instance, evokes feelings of vigor, and virility, and an association with the force of Niagara Falls. Then there's Vantin, a new antibiotic whose name suggests benefit or advantage.

"Every little sound carries with it a lot of symbolism," said Jim Singer, president and creative director of NameBase/Medibrand in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. After a drug company settles on a name, Singer and Namebase check with doctors, nurses and pharmacists to determine if the name might be confused with other drugs. They typically hire linguists to make sure the name has no negative or obscene meanings or connotations in other languages. Lawyers check global trademark registries to prevent copyright problems. The final step is getting clearance from the Food and Drug Administration, which rejects about a third of the roughly 300 drug name proposals submitted to the regulatory agency each year, said Jerry Phillips, associate director of the FDA's Office of Drug Safety. Common reasons for rejecting a new drug's name are that it is too similar to another drug or that it overstates a product's effectiveness, Phillips said.

 

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June 19, 2002

Start-Ups Spend Time, Money In Search of the Perfect Name

By Martin Veitch and Karen Kelly, Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

Unlike Shakespeare's rose, a company by any other name can end up the butt of consumers' jokes and media ridicule. As finding an original name becomes more important, and more difficult, companies are spending vast amounts of time -- and money -- in their search for the perfect moniker...

...One thing all experts agree on is that the Internet-specific names must be avoided at all costs, especially those once prized generics such as Pets.com that limit a company's area of activity. Also, like dot-com names, many high-tech naming conventions now appear dated. "Nobody wants to be called dot-com anymore and now we stay away from little i or e, or 'cyber' or 'digital' anything," says Jim Singer, president and creative director of Namebase, a naming agency in Cardiff by the Sea, California.

 

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March 11, 2002

American Home Is Changing Name to Wyeth

By Melody Petersen

 

For years, American Home Products has suffered from a hazy corporate image. Even its executives acknowledge that the company's name conjures thoughts of vinyl siding, socket wrenches and lawn furniture rather than life-saving medicines, which are now at its core.

Today the drug company will try to change that, announcing a new name: Wyeth. In choosing its new name, the drug company took a different path from Philip Morris which announced last year that it had invented a new name Ñ Altria.

American Home chose a name that traces to the company's early days. Five years after its founding in 1926, American Home bought a Philadelphia company, John Wyeth & Brother. And the Wyeth name is already part of American Home's largest subsidiary, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, which develops and sells its prescription drugs.

"We thought about a coined name but decided we already have good equity in a name we already have." Robert Essner, the company's president and chief executive, said in an interview. "This is a name that 80 percent of our employees already have on their business card."

Until it began shedding many of its nonprescription drug businesses in the mid-1980's, American Home Products had also sold a variety of household products.

Experts on corporate brands mostly praised the name change.

James R. Gregory, chief executive officer of Corprate Branding, a consulting firm in Stamford, Conn., said American Home had long ranked below most other big pharmaceutical companies in surveys that measure the strength of corporate identities. "American Home Products has not been a real sterling performer," Mr. Gregory said. "Wyeth sounds more like a pharmaceutical company. But it is a tough combination of letters that is not easy for people to remember."

James Singer, president of Medibrand, a firm in Cardiff by the Sea, Calif., said: "The name American Home Products made it sound like they sold floor wax. I think Wyeth is already a well-known brand by physicians."

And, Michael Megalli, a partner at Group 1066 in New York, a brand consulting company in Manhattan, said that if one of the three mergers that American Home had attempted in recent years had succeeded, the company almost surely would have taken the other company's name rather than keep its own.

One benefit the new name will not bring is distancing the company from the scandal involving the diet drug combination, fen-phen. The company has spent billions of dollars settling lawsuits filed by patients who say the drugs damaged their hearts. Wyeth-Ayerst made fenfluramine, an appetite depressant, that was one half the combination, which was pulled from the market in 1997.

 

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December 2001

You Name It: "Sorry, what did you say your name was again?"

Entrepreneur Magazine By Jerry Fisher

 

What characterizes a truly great name?

...In the FedEx logo, the space between the capital "E" and the "x" forms an arrow, signifying speedy delivery to consumers.

Finally, if you've been calmly waiting to learn what the aforementioned "plosives" technique is all about, your patience is rewarded.

According to Jim Singer, president of Namebase, a naming consulting firm in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, plosives occur when a speaker builds up air in his or her mouth and forcefully expels it, as in "ex-plosives." "It gives names extra power when you say them," Singer explains.

He may be on to something. Put your hand in front of your mouth when you say "Priceline" or "Kool-Aid" vs. the newfangled "Accenture." Is the force with you? Namebase demystifies plosives and other naming techniquesÑincluding how to run an employee naming contestÑin a toolkit available through its Web site for entrepreneurial naming efforts.

While it would definitely be desirable to come up with the perfect name-both catchy and forceful-for your business, it won't necessarily be the death knell if you don't. Jim Singer adds: "Consider the word parts for one of the most powerful companies in the world, Microsoft. "Micro" means small, and "soft" is weak- a dose of linguistic Viagra might help."

 

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Meet the Street: How to Name a Blockbuster Drug

By Adam Feuerstein, Staff Reporter

 

Paxil. Zoloft. Nexium. Vioxx. Viagra.

Ever wonder how pharmaceutical and biotech companies come up with names for their bestselling drugs? Is there any logical method to the maddening mix of vowels and double consonants? And what's with all those Z's and X's, anyway?

James Singer, president and chief creative officer of NameBase/MediBrand, spends all day coming up with drug names that roll easily off the tongue and stick in the minds of doctors and patients. Before starting his own firm, Singer worked for a New York branding giant, where he helped to conjure up the brand name for the antidepressant fluoxetine. You know it better as Prozac. We asked Singer to take us through the drug-naming process.

TSC: Is there some kind of drug-naming rulebook, or are you free to use your imagination?

Singer: There aren't any set rules for drug brand names. In fact, most have nothing at all to do with the actual chemical compound or the disease. But it is very important that we avoid any confusion with other drug names. When we come up with a drug name, we have to be extra careful to make sure that it sounds and looks different enough from another drug. Patient safety is crucial.

TSC: So, what are the ingredients for a blockbuster drug name?

Singer: Basically, a good drug name should sound effective. It should be euphonic, which means it should be easy to say and write. And, of course, you want it to be memorable.

TSC: OK, so take us through Prozac. Where did that name come from?

Singer: Again, Prozac has nothing to do with the chemical compound or its indication. It's just a good-sounding name. The word starts with "pro," which implies something positive. The letter P is also what we call a "plosive," which is a strong sound that seems to explode forcefully from the mouth. Studies have shown that brand names that start with "plosive" letters like P, T, K or C are more effective. Think about Coca-Cola, Compaq or Kodak and you get the idea.

TSC: Do all drug names need to have an X or Z?

Singer: (Laughing) No, but those letters are what we call fricatives. They're very fast sounding. In the case of Prozac, it makes people feel like the drug is fast-acting, even though, in reality, it's not.

TSC: That explains the flood of X's and Z's in drug names.

Singer: Right. The "Z" sound, whether it's spelled with a Z or an X, has been very popular for a while. But we're starting to get pretty cautious about using them because they're not very unique anymore. There are just a slew of these out there right now, which can hurt when you're trying to keep your drug name differentiated.

TSC: But didn't you just come up Xenical, the weight-loss drug, for Roche?

Singer: Yeah, but we'd been working on that one for a long time, before the sound became so popular.

TSC: Consumers are bombarded with TV and magazine ads for brand-name drugs these days. Has this new emphasis on direct-to-consumer drug advertising impacted your business?

Singer: Definitely. The best way to get a drug prescribed is to have a patient go to his doctor and ask for it. Years ago, drug brand names were more clinical, but today, drug companies really want names that are sharper and more memorable.

TSC: Spiffy-sounding drug names definitely stick in consumers' minds, but what can you do to improve doctor's handwriting. How do pharmacists know what the doctor ordered anyway?

Singer: (Laughing) Actually, part of our job is to study prospective drug names on doctors and pharmacists to make sure that there aren't any safety problems or confusion with prescriptions. But believe it or not, we're finding that a lot of doctors are now beaming prescriptions electronically using personal digital assistants.

TSC: So, no more problems with lousy doctor handwriting?

Singer: (Laughing) I guess not.

 

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January 15, 2002

Naming New Drugs: Costly, Complex

By Lewis Krauskopf

 

Zyrtec. Vioxx. Prozac.

The names may sound like planets in a science fiction tale, but they're really brand names for prescription medicines that have become part of the medical lexicon.

Naming drugs is no random act. It takes pharmaceutical companies years and costs them about $2.25 million to name each medicine. They hire consultants to find snappy sounds, rule out overlaps, navigate legal and regulatory channels, and hone market strategies for their drug du jour.

Finding a catchy brand represents only part of the naming challenge. Unlike products from Twix to Tide, pharmaceutical companies also face safety hurdles in dubbing their drugs.

Medication errors have occurred when two very different drugs had similar names -- to the point where the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejects a third of all the names it reviews. Last year, for example, the FDA blocked Eli Lilly & Co. from using the name Zovant for its drug to treat sepsis because it was too similar to other hospital-based medicines. It now goes by the name Xigris.

Developing brands for new drugs won't become any easier as the pharmaceutical dictionary becomes more crowded.

"There are so many brand names out there right now that it is more challenging," said Ellen Geisel, Pharmacia Corp.'s senior vice president for customer communications who manages the naming process for the Peapack-based drug maker. "The potential for confusion in the marketplace is there. You really do have multiple complexities."

Pharmacia's brainstormers seek names that are simple and memorable, Geisel said. How does Celebrex, the firm's blockbuster arthritis medicine, rank?

"It's a strong name," Geisel said. "It's also a name that connotes the aspiration of celebrating life because of freedom from pain."

Like Celebrex, many names now attempt to conjure an image of how a drug can improve quality of life rather than play off its scientific roots, said David Jaeger, managing director for Intelbrand Healthcare, a New York-based branding giant.

Vasomax, Nembutal, and