March 27, 2009
OPEN Forum Message
Business Forecasting 2012
Our special feature on forecasting sheds light on how to choose the right model, offers advice from Jack Stack and more.
Get started
Virgin America sounds racy (”Let’s have fun”). Johnson & Johnson seems safe (”They seem like reliable neighbors”). How do you feel about Xcyte? It takes a second to grasp that it’s pronounced the same as “excite.”
That’s a dangerous moment for the company, according to a recent study. As you name your products and company consider these findings by psychologists Norbert Schwarz and Hyunjin Son. All names carry a personality. Unfamiliar words are foreboding. If they are hard to pronounce they are perceived as more risky.
In a study students read a list of made-up food additive names, all involving 12 characters. They ranged from the easier-to-pronounce “Magnalroxate” to the difficult “Hnegripitrom.” As you anticipated Hnegripitrom was rated high risk.
Risky can be seen as a positive thrill for some, if you are naming an amusement ride, yet negative if you are labeling a medicine.
Why don’t more technology and pharmaceutical companies have familiar-sounding names like Apple? Another study shows we are primed to like what’s familiar – so tie your name to something they already know and unduly attract positive feelings.
How quickly does your company or product name evoke a mental picture, a smile of understanding? What personality trait do you want your firm to embody and what familiar object, place or other physical thing will remind us of that quality?
Use an animal that reinforces a key trait of your firm: think of the classic muscle car, Mustang or speed for Puma running shoes. Involve humor: A grilled chicken take-out place in San Francisco is PoultryInMotion. Combine words to make a new one: Ecobroker is an apt, succinct designation for green Realtors. Use a familiar phrase: Just Desserts and Porta-Potty are self-evident and fun to say.
What’s at stake in a name? Think of the instant, toxic mental picture you feel when you read Blackwater or Countrywide – so negative that they changed names. Blackwater becomes the vague and confusing Xe, pronounced like the letter “z.” and Countrywide is transformed into the bland but straightforward Bank of America Home Loans.
To sell in this scary economy, consider repackaging your services or products (or bundling them with partnering firms) to help your kind of client be better prepared. Then name the service.
For example, since inevitably businesses will experience greater employee theft and embezzlement, a forensic accountant, lawyer and computer software detective might join forces to offer a two-part service:
1. Preventive audit and corrective measures, and
2. What to Do When an Employee Steals service.
Come up with a better name for us than KeepEmployeesHonest?
Finally, be sure no one else is using your name, once you’ve chosen one, then protect it.
* * * * *
About the Author: Kare Anderson is an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of LikeABILITY, Make Yourself Memorable and SmartPartnering. A popular speaker on SmartPartnering and on how to be more frequently-quoted to become your kind of customers’ top- of-mind choice, she also publishes the SayitBetter newsletter, with 32,000 subscribers in 28 countries.
Check your balance, review recent transactions and pay your bill on the go.
