More Thoughts on Product Naming
After fielding several comments on my last post regarding product naming (”What’s in Name?“), I realized that I had over simplified the problem some. I’m going to add some necessary follow-up thoughts here.
I was previously considering the product naming exercise from the point of view of a start-up. A catchy name works for a start-up because start-ups are building a brand around the product. The game changes considerably for larger companies. Imagine a company the size of IBM with 5,000 products in its portfolio, all with cutesy names like Wizzi. Discussing the portfolio with customers would go from comical to ridiculous in a hurry.
Companies with large product portfolios and well established brands will want to leverage the brand and provide descriptive, functional names for new products. Recall that in our example, the product detected marketing-speak in presentations. Let’s add to the example the fact that the product is marketed by a large, well-known software company - ByteCo. Rather than use a catchy name, ByteCo would be better served to name the product “ByteCo Presentation Cleanser”, “ByteCo Gobbledygook Cleanser”, or something of the sort. Doing so would allow the company to leverage their brand and would allow the product to describe itself to potential buyers browsing the existing product portfolio.
A similar approach is to develop a brand around a suite of products (in addition to the company brand). Microsoft has done this well with the Office suite of products. Having the Office brand applied to a product immediately tells consumers much about the product: it’s for desktop use, productivity related, integrated with Outlook, Word, etc. IBM has been similarly successful with the WebSphere name.
Note the examples above also indicate that descriptive names aren’t necessarily verbose. These kinds of semi-descriptive names are another great option for start-ups. NetFlix, for example, is both catchy and descriptive at the same time.
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The issue here is really branding. As Seth Godin, has stated, the best brand names are a blank slate. If you offer a consistent value proposition, the name comes to stand for it in the mind of the customer, sometimes with little or no explicit marketing.
In the case of a large company with many products, the company has to choose whether it wants to brand the products individually or leverage company brand. There pros and cons, and the best course depends on the company, the product, and the circumstances.
I must say, however, that most people in large companies are too quick to dismiss the idea of branding an individual product. There is always a temptation to leverage an existing brand (which tends to dilute or undermine it). Also, the bean counters will inevitably point to the cost of establishing a new brand. I’d recommend these bean counters read Al and Laura Ries’s WAR IN THE BOARD ROOM.