It's all in the name

One of the most difficult tasks in branding work is naming. Whether it’s the name of a new company, product or service, or renaming an existing organisational activity or project, it’s often the proverbial poison chalice. I’ve known naming to cause more divisiveness within an organisation than just about any other communications activity. But how come? Surely, all you have to do is pull the appropriate word or phrase out of thin air (alternatively known as the dictionary or thesaurus), go through the legalities and get on with it! Would it were so simple. Sometime it is – the right usable name just jumps out. Although this is rarely the case, this is the model that people seem to have in their heads when commissioning a new name. Perhaps it’s because people think it’s so easy (for a wordsmith) that they relegate it to an unimportant activity, something that really does not require their involvement or consideration. Only today, I received a request to carry out some pro-bono naming for a social enterprise in which the brief stated that the name ‘is secondary to it being a great service – cost-effective, reliable etc – aimed at a mixed audience of business and households’. It’s the ‘secondary’ bit that alarms me. I wonder how the Chief Exec of the organisation briefing me could suggest that something as important as the name of the service could be ‘secondary’. After all, in the minds of its target audience, the name has to carry all the mnemonic elements of a great, cost-effective and reliable service, as well as tune people in to the very nature of this service. It’s this lack of understanding of the importance of naming that contains within it a miasma of issues that can make the ensuing task so difficult. In a climate of budgetary eclipse, I find myself having to address it more and more. At Ideal, we work with our own direct clients on naming projects. We also help other creative communications agencies conduct naming projects with their clients. There is a general lack of understanding of what it takes to make a naming project successful. The central issue falls out like this: the client thinks it’s a simple activity for a wordsmith; the wordsmith knows, or should know, that there is a way to do it that is more likely to lead to success than any other and communicates this to the client/agency; the client and/or agency often responds that there isn’t the time or budget to do this. So, what happens is that the job goes ahead, under the wrong circumstances and down a more difficult path, building in all the problems at the start and greatly reducing the chances of success in the end. Whatever the circumstances, the big thing ought to be to get the client to understand and accept what success is or might be in a naming process. For example, the outcome of a successful naming process could be the decision to stick with the original name of the organisation/ project/service. That is, not to change the name at all. Specifically because the client has been through a process of understanding all the pros and cons. For a new organisation, project or service, however, a successful outcome depends on understanding what is possible in this context – which means there is a lot of preparatory work to do. The upshot of the kind of naming issues I have described, however, is that the eventual and inevitable stalemate is often blamed on the obstinacy or even lack of insight of the wordsmith. Now, nobody wants to let a client down. In our case, we don’t want to let two clients down – the communications agency and their client. But, if we work in a world in which the ill-informed and under-budgeted client is always right, the prickly issue of naming shows us that it’s better to let a client down in the beginning than at the end. So, from now on, the first and most important question we’ll be putting to anyone who wants Ideal to find a new name for anything will be: ‘Are you prepared to do what it takes to make the naming process successful?’ I expect it to be the beginning of a conversation that could very quickly go one of two ways. At Ideal, however, I know we’ll only be going down the route most likely to lead to success.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/