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If only it was as easy as sitting down with your mates over a pint and thrashing out a couple of names that you like

Coming up with a company name is an exact science that is so often overlooked. Its only when you break down the four categories of naming that you begin to fathom the enormity of the true task at hand.

The right name distinguishes you from your competitors, creates an emotional connection with your audience and helps build a brand that not only holds the attention of your customers, but inspires their loyalty. A brand is the audience’s feeling about how a company or product represents their core values and culture through its name, design and messaging. It is bigger than the name alone, yet the right name reflects and enhances the brand that it represents. Before you create a name, it is vital that you fully understand your company and identify these important values. With this understanding comes measurable results for your company or product and thus enables a long life for your name and brand. Now you are ready to work out where you fit! In essence there are four specific categories:

Descriptive Names
Functional names that are purely descriptive of what a company or product does. Example: VHI Healthcare

Pro: Descriptive names tell the audience clearly who you are or what you do.

Con: In any particular line of business, the number of relevant descriptive words is limited. Descriptive names can be easily repeated-often resulting in a name that is barely distinguishable from those of your competitors. Names that describe what you do also can lack flexibility they no longer apply, and can even cause confusion, if you start doing something else.

Invented  Names
There are two kinds of invented, as in made-up, names: those that are built upon Greek and Latin roots, and those poetic constructions that are based on the rhythm and the experience of saying them.
Example: Viagra, Accenture

Pro: Invented names can be memorable and engaging, are generally easy to trademark and are usually free of negative connotations when first chosen. Viagra, for a different reason, is a good example of this.

Con: Invented names can be image free and emotionally void or intrinsically meaningless and so, if ill-chosen, resistant to the attachment of your message. In such cases they may appear to have no connection to the company or product to which they are attached. Unless you implement an extensive marketing and advertising plan to give meaning to your invented name, it may be difficult to create a well recognised brand. Consumers will always ask “What does Accenture do?”

Experiential  Names
Experiential names offer a direct connection to something real, to a part of direct human experience. Example: Land Rover Discovery

Pro: This type of name generally makes sense to the consumer as applied to a product or company. For example: Land Rover Discovery suggests an adventure every time you get into your SUV.

Con: Differentiation can be a problem. Because these names can be so obvious, they can be overused. They may even be used across several industries. (e.g. Land Rover Discovery/Discovery Channel)

Evocative  Names
These names are designed to evoke the positioning of a company or product rather than the goods and services or the experience of those goods and services. Example: Apple

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/9820827 w=620&h=349]

Pro: This type of name is dissimilar to other names, making it a powerful differentiator. It can work on many different levels, engage your audience in many different ways, and it can be “bigger” than the goods and services for which it is initially coined. Because of its distinctiveness, trademarking can be easier than average. When an evocative name is in sync with your positioning, it is a branding force that can dominate an industry.

Con: If it doesn’t fit with your positioning, an evocative name can be a disaster. Even if it does fit, naysayers may find holes in it during the decisionmaking process.

Now ask yourself the question again . . . how effective is your company name?

No matter how big or small your company is, we have all been there . . . we start off with the best intentions when trying to come up with a company name, thinking we are the experts, but life always throws us a curve ball. Its not as easy as you think and if you look at the current climate we find ourselves in, how many companies have had to diversify to stay afloat only to find their previous company name does not gel with what they are now doing?

Take for instance: (Via: The Baltimore Sun)

MP3Car.com used to be the right name for the Baltimore company. Not anymore.

The company traces its roots to a worldwide online community of geeks in the 1990s who installed personal computers filled with electronic music files, or MP3s, in their cars. But, like many startup companies that surprisingly grew their business in a different direction, MP3Car.com is now struggling to choose a new name that signals what it does well: build sophisticated mobile computers for corporate and government clients.

“MP3Car.com is obviously a misnomer at this point,” said Heather Sarkissian, the company’s chief executive officer. “It’s a very well-known brand. However, it is very confusing to our [business-to-business] enterprise customers.”

MP3Car is going through a common, difficult process known to any company that realizes it has outgrown the name it started with, according to corporate branding experts. Coming up with a new name can be also be a bedeviling exercise for companies that merge with others or that are trying to distance themselves from bad publicity.

In changing a name, companies have to consider a long list of potential issues, such as whether the Internet domain and trademark is available; how well the new name communicates its identity; or even how expensive it is to make the change, experts said. Some companies choose to invent a name, such as Zillow.com, a real estate information firm.

MP3Car.com “should consider a name that not only explains the products they offer today, but also what they might offer in the future,” said Roger Gray, chairman and chief executive of GKV, a Baltimore marketing communications firm. “Many companies don’t think about what they’ll offer in the future. You’ve got to, otherwise they’ll be changing the name every five years, and that’s an expensive proposition.”

MP3Car.com was formed in 2005 and, in part, consists of an online store that sells electronic parts – from power supplies to touch-screens – to thousands around the world who like to build computers for their cars.

Along the way, MP3Car’s engineers developed increasing expertise in building and integrating mobile computers, and they started consulting and selling computers to companies and government agencies.

Recently, the company has experienced steady growth in sales of the off-the-shelf mobile computing packages that it assembles for corporate and government clients. But the name is a stumbling block for potential clients and even investors, Sarkissian said.

With the web and social media becoming more and more common place surely everybody should be looking how effective their company name is . . . and is it time for change?