Coming up with a brand name is a challenge that can be approached in several ways. You can, of course, come up with a brand name off the cuff, but you can also view it as part of a brand strategy. This ensures the brand name aligns with your positioning and brand values. Experience shows that this is the best way to achieve the best results. Easier said than done, of course, so to help you get started, we’ve created a step-by-step plan.
Creating a company name or developing a brand?
To start, it’s important to know what you want to develop. Creating a company name can be as simple as you want. There are even online company name generators available. While these can indeed provide good inspiration during your brainstorming phase, our advice is not to stop there. A company name is one thing, a brand goes a step further.
A brand is a concept and encompasses, among other things, the promises you stand for and the norms and values you uphold. At the same time, it involves the perception of your target audience. A brand influences the image, experience, your status, attractiveness, price/quality ratio, and loyalty. A company name is an important part of this. Therefore, it’s good not to see creating a company name as separate from brand development. But how do you approach this?
Approach brand development
Whether it’s a start-up or a rebranding, our years of experience have taught us that you should go through at least the following three steps before moving on to naming:
- Explore your market. This starts with your (potential) customers. What does your target audience look like? What do they value? Next, research trends and developments in your field: what’s happening and where will it go in the future? Finally, consider your competition. How are they positioning themselves? How do you stand out?
- Define your positioning and proposition(s). What are the unique characteristics of your company, product, or service? What market opportunities can you capitalize on with your story? What promises do you make? Make sure it’s appealing, unique, authentic, and relevant.
- Develop a marketing plan. Once you’ve clarified your market and how your company fits into it, it’s time to develop a marketing plan. How will you position your brand in the market (and how will it fit into your brand architecture? But also consider questions like: what will your pricing strategy be? Certain brand names are better suited to discounters than premium products. Once you’ve clarified your market, positioning, and marketing plan, you can move on to developing a company name.
Step-by step plan: how to come up with a brand name
You can start brainstorming randomly, but our step-by-step plan can help you work in a focused and effective manner and come to the right decision:
- Consider your positioning and proposition(s). What are you promising and how can you articulate it? What associations do you want your brand name to evoke? Try to express your brand values and promises in a variety of ways. Get inspired with synonyms, proverbs and other existing brand names. Put yourself in the shoes of your target group and see how they would experience it. In this phase it is good to generate as many ideas and options as possible.
- Next, think about how you want to position yourself against competitors in the market? Do you want a similar style or something completely different? For example, you can choose a descriptive brand name (such as Beter Bed, Vakantiediscounter or Carglass) or a more abstract brand name (such as Coolblue, Ziggo or Senseo).
- Pick your favorites and create a shortlist. Just make sure you keep your options open here with an eye to the next steps.
- Determine whether there are any possible negative associations including in other languages, and whether the names are simple and easy to pronounce.
- Perform a legal check for availability. In the trademark register you can see whether a brand name has already been registered in a particular category. Here you can also record your final choice.
- Check also available domain names for your websites. Register your favorite names with .nl or .com before someone else does. Tip: don’t check this too often; there are companies that monitor this automatically. They’ll see the activity and will quickly register your desired domain name, ready to sell it to you.
This approach and these steps are exactly how we achieve the best brands and positionings for our clients. Interested in what this means in practice? Also check out our cases.
Workshop naming & (re)branding
In this article we argue that you should approach the process of coming up with a brand name properly and thoroughly. But what if you are not yet sure whether such a process is suitable for your situation or if you cannot manage it on your own? For this we have our workshop ‘What’s in a (brand)name?‘. In this session, we will jointly go through the steps towards naming and explain what is involved in (re)branding. We answer questions such as:
- How to come up with a brand name that is strong and distinctive
- What pitfalls are there when it comes to naming?
- What does rebranding involve?
- How do we get the management team or steering committee on board with our new ideas?
