Sometimes happens that for a new logo is required (wrongly) to include in it elements with a communicative value equal to a print campaign. The same thing can happen looking for a company name. A new company, a start-up, a brand or a new product ... all of them need a name: the first and most important identification element that will represent the company or the product over the time. What features should have the new name? Obviously must be distinctive, original, innovative and maybe even sound attractive, internationally, a name "that helps to sell." That’s all?
I don’t think so, because history teaches us that famous brands have thousand stories and different faces.
Successful Case histories.
Let's see some curious stories about "the creation of a brand name", hoping that gives some ideas to our community and clients. Let’s start from the founder of Avon, the famous cosmetics brand, who named the company after a trip to Stratford upon Avon in England. He was fascinated by the place, and decided to call in that way his own company.
Adolph Dassler named his company "Adidas", a neologism derived from the initials of his nickname and the first letters of the surname.
The founders of Yahoo! read that name in "Gulliver's Travels" for the very first time. "Yahoo" was referred to people rude, unsophisticated and uncouth. The name is also an acronym: “Yet Another Hierarchical officious Oracle!”).
Also the name IKEA is an acronym, composed of several elements: the initials of the founder (Ingvar Kamprad), the first letter of his native Swedish village (Elmtaryd) and the first letter of the town where he grew up (Agunnaryd).
The names chosen for the brand Sharp and Canon have a similar story.
Sharp, the Japanese electronics company, took its name from its very first product, created in 1915: a pencil "ever sharp".
The Canon took its name from the first camera made by the company called Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory in 1933. The model was called Kwanon, the Buddhist bodhisattva Guan Yin.
The founders of Hotmail Company wanted a name with the word "mail" in it. The final choice came from the fact that the name included the letters "html", a tribute to the programming language they had used to make their invention.
A new solution for a new name.
The stories are many, but today few entrepreneurs have an experience, a background or just a last name that lends itself well to represent your business, and not many have the opportunity to make huge investments for the "brand awareness".
The naming contest can be the solution: allowing to evaluate hundreds of proposals created following the brief requirements provided by the client. The ideas that come out from the contest can "stimulate" the imagination of the client and when he reads a possible name for his own company thinking "That’s brilliant, it’s that easy but I was not able to create it by myself": the choice is made.